* * * * *
                                        
                          The non-communities of today
                                        
> Locals joke that the way things are going, somebody will eventually have to
> build a Las Vegas, Las Vegas—a miniature version of the Strip inside a
> hotel on the Strip, so you can avoid the Strip and still experience it.
> 
> Which is something the casual visitor might dearly wish to do, because the
> experience of actually being on this gigantic motorway lined by buildings
> of such monstrous scale—or, at some stretches, vacant lots that appear to
> be the size of Rhode Island—is not apt to gratify many human beings with
> normal neurological equipment. In fact, if ever a setting was designed to
> ravage the central nervous system and induce acute agoraphobia, the Strip
> is it.
> 

“Las Vegas: Utopia of Clowns [1]”

When I mentioned the bit about oneday someone will build Las Vegas, Las Vegas
to Spring [2], she replied that she heard that it was already done.

Not that it surprises me about Las Vegas.

I've been there on several occasions (mostly with my Dad, once with a friend)
and the place is insane. There is no other word to describe it. Each hotel is
trying to out do Disney World on a three mile strip of land in the middle of
the desert.

The author, James Kunstler [3], is an urban design specialist and doesn't
have nice things to say about Las Vegas. Well, James Kunstler doesn't have
many nice things to say about sub urbia in general [4] (and I agree with a
lot of his points; in fact, I think zoning laws have destroyed our
communities way more than sex, drugs or rock-n roll).

> Though the National Defense Interstate Highway System originally had been
> intended for just such mass evacuations, it had actually never been tested
> to this degree before. And, let.s face it, 1959 standards probably didn.t
> apply anymore. For one thing, the sheer number of motor vehicles was up
> exponentially. Not in forty-odd years, either, had a hurricane so large and
> fearsome behaved quite so erratically, and, what with the Federal Emergency
> Management Agency (FEMA) all cranked up to grandstand for the CNN audience,
> and virtually every county and municipality along the southeast coast
> issuing official evacuation orders, the system had clogged up like the
> porkfat-lined vascular system of a baby boom Bubba behind the wheel of his
> beloved suburban utility vehicle (SUV), and, Lordy, the entire fretful
> coastal plain had become a united parking lot.
> 

“Atlanta: Does Edge City Have a Future? [5]”

Last month, at the request of my friend Hoade, I drove around Margate [6]
(and Coral Springs [7], Coconut Creek [8] and North Lauderdale), a town
(towns) we grew up in) and took pictures. A CVS [9] pharmacy (which used to
be Wags, a Denny's-like [10] restaurant). A pet store (which used to be a two
screen movie theater). A dying strip mall (which used to be this huge empty
field twenty years ago). A pre-school (which used to be a restaurant). A
bingo hall (which used to be a grocery store).

There are days when I really miss Brevard [11] … 

[1] http://www.kunstler.com/excerpt_lasvegas.htm
[2] http://www.springdew.com/
[3] http://www.kunstler.com/
[4] http://www.oriononline.org/pages/oo/curmudgeon/index_Kunstler.html
[5] http://www.kunstler.com/excerpt_atlanta.htm
[6] http://www.margatefl.com/
[7] http://coralsprings.org/
[8] http://www.creekgov.net/
[9] http://www.cvs.com/
[10] http://www.dennys.com/
[11] http://www.brevardnc.com/

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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