Revisiting Learning from Las Vegas
Interview with the New Yorker's Paul Goldberger
November 2008 National Building Museum Online
On December 2, Paul Goldberger, Architecture Critic for The New Yorker will revisit Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's seminal text Learning from Las Vegas during the 2008 L'Enfant Lecture on City Planning and Design. This year marks the 36th anniversary of the original publishing of the book and the perfect opportunity to pose the question, "can we still learn from Las Vegas?" National Building Museum Online spoke with Goldberger about his upcoming lecture, "Revisiting Las Vegas."
Paul Goldberger: Las Vegas has exerted a magnetic pull on the American culture for a long time, and it has only grown since the years when Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown wrote Learning from Las Vegas. Some of it is the sheer excess of it, some of it the visual power of the city, some of it the way in which it often appears to exist as a place apart from the normal mores and conventions of American culture. But the most important reason to look at Las Vegas now is simply because of its growth. It has expanded so rapidly that it can act as a kind of demonstration case of what happens when you engage in rampant growth with relatively few planning and environmental restrictions. While the current economic situation means that things are slowing down, the long term questions about sustainability and planning remain.
NBM Online: The book by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown is called Learning from Las Vegas—what can other cities learn from Las Vegas?
Goldberger: No other city is precisely like Las Vegas, but neither are other cities as different as they sometimes think they are. The Strip is a wildly exaggerated version of the commercial strip outside of many cities, and the problems Las Vegas has had with its downtown are similar to many other cities. The most important lesson other cities can learn is about the urgency of planning on a regional, and not just a local, level.
Goldberger: The Las Vegas Strip was created to accommodate to the automobile, and the desire to spread out across the land and make hotels and casinos that would be vastly bigger and more wide open than anything could be when constrained by downtown streets. In that sense, it's no different from a Wal-Mart getting away from Main Street.
NBM Online: As more municipalities are paying attention to sustainability and the built environment, do you see Las Vegas making efforts to lead the way on this topic and become an exemplary city?
Goldberger: Las Vegas is finally catching on to the need for sustainability and sensible, managed growth, but to some extent it is the old story of locking the barn door after the horse has gotten out, since much damage has been done already, and miles of desert developed that will never be undeveloped. But of course it's far better to hear planners and public officials talk about sustainability late than not at all, and I am optimistic about the interest in planning going forward. I sense an increasing desire in Las Vegas to be known for something other than growth no matter what.
Register now to attend the upcoming L'Enfant Lecture on December 2.
