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Growth Pulse — Las Vegas

Landmark implosion
Photo: Jeff Scheid

Greetings !

The Las Vegas Valley has consistently been one of the country's fastest growing metropolitan areas during the 1990s. The valley seems to be destined to continue in much the same vein in the 2000s. While expansion of the casino/resort industry has been the economic engine driving population and job growth throughout the 1990s, the economy has begun to diversify more. Still, expansion (or re-making, as hints the above photo) of the resort-based sector has not ended, even if it has slowed.

Yet even prior to the "boom decade" grand finalé closing the twentieth century, Las Vegas' growth rate has been a phenomenal one. In fact, the impressive eighty-five percent growth in population between 1990 and 2000 was easily outdone in the World War II / post-war period (1940-1950) when the growth rate topped 194%. The result of the Hoover (Boulder) dam decade was less than half that. If one digs back further in time, to Las Vegas' first "Townsite" decade (nineteen-O's), the growth rate was about three-thousand percent. That marked for certain Las Vegas' transition from a collection of outpost ranches, to a platted urban town destined to grow. The city of Las Vegas was promptly incorporated thereafter in 1911.

Decade-by-decade growth rates aside, in the earlier days, absolute numbers were quite small – going from a few dozen people around the turn of the century to under fifty-thousand persons by 1950. On the other hand, over the next half-century from 1950 to 2000, Clark county grew 2788% to about 1.39 million – and its population is, of course, still climbing.

"Growth" is a contemporary headline buzzword in this town, so is "sprawl," so is "traffic." Still, it is a topic that has been debated for years. The discussion goes pro and con, water hole versus dust bowl, "Old Vegas" and "New Vegas," sustainable versus unsustainable.

Residential development today moves like a wave moving toward the rims of the valley. Another buzzword around here is "compact" or "high-density" development (as if it's some sort of anti-sprawl in comparison to other southwestern cities). This is probably more of a fuction of tight setbacks and building where the infrastructure appears. Below is a nice example of all these facets of development...

Spring Mountain Ranch–Iron Mountain Estates area, 2006

And what Las Vegas web site would be complete, without a little homage to our little growth engine...

The Strip

Topical Sub-Pages

 Las Vegas Developers

A list of Las Vegas valley development-related web sites, such as architects, homebuilders, planned communities, major commerical projects and so forth.

 Links of Las Vegas

A list of Las Vegas valley links, including governmental agencies, media outlets, schools, civic entities, recreation sites, banks, and the weather.

 Las Vegas Casinos

Links to the official home pages of principal Las Vegas Casinos.

OTHER PAGES

 Geography Page

Geograpy was my Undergraduate degree, and (after I had already was in graduate college), I made this page and have kept up with the links. The page reflects it's Great Lakes-Midwestern roots, since I lived in Illinois at the time it was first created.

 Author's (older) Illinois home page