The term Urban Planning commonly describes the political process of making decisions on how land is used and how design elements should fit within an urban landscape. On the Las Vegas Strip, there’s a great deal of urban planning that has taken place. The landowners on the Las Vegas Strip are led by Ceasers Entertainment, MGM Resorts International, Las Vegas Sands, and Wynn Resorts. These companies have made the urban environment on the Las Vegas Strip what it is today, by a process of private urban planning. They have done a great deal of urban planning, but it is in their own best interest, and usually does not account for residents of Las Vegas who are not direct stakeholders by being either customers or employees. The real estate formats used today on the Las Vegas Strip have evolved from decades of development. Anyone who claims that urban planning is not part of the Las Vegas Strip is using the term under the false assumption that governments should lead the urban planning process. In the case of the Las Vegas Strip, the urban planning process is driven by the landowners.
What is the result of this profit driven urban planning process? A very structured environment. For the most part, the Las Vegas Strip contains almost no publicly owned space. When you are on the Las Vegas Strip, you are a part of a intricately planned environment designed to entertain you as a customer and service you as an employer. On the Las Vegas Strip there are many parks and gardens. The Las Vegas Strip does not need a government to decide that people enjoy these amenities.
There is no other place on earth quite like the Las Vegas Strip. Its completely controlled by private interests devoted to profit and its amazing! What other city in the world has allowed the construction of a faux medieval castle with 4,000 hotel rooms or a giant 30 story pyramid? Macau can only hope.
Most North American cities are very similar to each other. In fact, they’re much like the rest of Las Vegas away from the Strip. Big Box retail plazas and suburban homes.
The Las Vegas Strip reflects the most up to date mass appeals of Americans. During post war suburbanization, the Las Vegas Strip developed a type of Suburban Xanadu. Today, the Strip caters to pedestrians, since Americans are growing to appreciate greater urban density. Across North America, young adults are moving out of the suburban homes where they grew up and into condo towers in the downtown cores. There is a greater appreciation of an urban lifestyle that does not depend on a car.
For Las Vegas locals, the Strip is a place to take family and friends who visit. The Strip is a spectable. For locals, the Strip is a centre for employment and the economic driver that keeps the city viable. Locals understand they will benefit as long as they allow the landowners of the Strip a mostly free hand to refine their environment.
The current trend in corporate organization is to separate ownership of real estate from the underlying operating business. The separation of real estate from the operating business is happening in a number of sectors including restaurants, telecom, gaming industries. The Las Vegas Strip hotel-casinos grew up during an era of vertical integration. Their Suburban Xanadu was built by these integrated organizations. It happened during a time when the same company planned, built, and operated all aspects of the hotel-casino including the gaming, restaurants, entertainment, and real estate. But we’re now entering an era of fragmentation where the landowners of the Las Vegas Strip are separating the various parts of their business. This fragmentation of the real estate at least is already happening. Penn National Gaming created Gaming & Leisure Properties to hold its real estate. Pinnacle Entertainment is spinning off a REIT soon. Ceasers Entertainment has been pushed into creating a REIT by its bankruptcy.
Its only a matter of time until MGM Resorts International will choose to spin off its real estate into a separate company. MGM will be forced to act since Ceasers will gain new vitality after its own conversion to a REIT. The era of the REIT on the Las Vegas Strip will usher in a new round of intense development with an ever greater emphasis on urban planning for the benefit of the customer and landowner.
