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Shimmering from
the desert haze of Nevada like a latter-day
El Dorado, Las Vegas is the most dynamic,
spectacular city on earth. At the start of
the twentieth century, it didn't even exist;
at the start of the twenty-first, it's home
to well over one million people, with enough
newcomers arriving to need a new school
every month.
Las Vegas is not like other cities. No city
in history has so explicitly valued the
needs of visitors above those of its own
population. All its growth has been fueled
by tourism, but the tourists haven't spoiled
the "real" city; there is no real city. Las
Vegas doesn't have fascinating little-known
neighborhoods, and it's not a place where
visitors can go off the beaten track to have
more authentic experiences. Instead, the
whole thing is completely self-referential;
the reason Las Vegas boasts the vast
majority of the world's largest hotels is
that around thirty-seven million tourists
each year come to see the hotels themselves. |
