SustainLane 2006 US City Sustainability Ranking

Las Vegas: Viva

Having just celebrated its centennial, Las Vegas today sports world-class restaurants, entertainers, and the legendary Strip. It's one of the fastest-growing US cities-booming 12 percent from 2000 to 2004 alone.

Las Vegas is undergoing a fast-forward version of the classic urban development pattern of exurban sprawl that has led other Sun Belt cities to complete dependence on the automobile. As oil prices rise, such a city configuration presents a greater economic challenge for residents and employers. Another stumbling block-which may be a blessing in disguise-is that the city is beginning to run up against federally owned land at its outer limits.

With fast, sprawling growth comes a host of negative economic, environmental, and public health consequences: congestion, increased air pollution and asthma, rising obesity rates, depletion of water resources, and, underlying it all, increased energy consumption. So it's promising that work has started on Project CityCenter, a multibillion-dollar mixed-use development on the Strip (which is officially incorporated Las Vegas) with an emphasis on "non-gambling features," heralding a more urban form of city planning for the region.

Despite a reputation as an environmental dead zone, Las Vegas is making headway in engineering its future around more intelligent uses of resources. Besides green buildings, alternative fueled vehicles, and utility net metering for residents to resell their solar power, Las Vegas has made an important move toward conserving the vast amounts of water it uses. The city opened a water reclamation facility in 2001 that can recycle 10 million gallons of water per day, which will help the desert city famed for its lavish waterfalls better conserve the wet stuff. If the city can start to use solar cells to power all those neon signs and light bulbs, Las Vegas might have a real sustainability story to tell.