A Look at Las Vegas - 1960s, 1990s, 2020s: Week 5
This week I was intrigued by looking at how technology can help to shape a city and play an important role within the urban fabric. The way people see the world and how the world is analyzing and moving forward through the lens of technological advancement. I started the week by continuing my Literature review and looking at The City as Interface by Martijn de Waal, and the author talks about how the Smart City is a future typology of the urban landscape. The City of today is a platform and baseline to build off of for the City of the future. Implementing technology to make society more efficient and be able to have a connection between people and technology as well as a building having a connection with technology. This concept of a Smart City will allow the city to practically run itself while still being open to the uncertainty that truly makes a modern city.
Looking at this book, I was intrigued about taking these concepts and attempting to comprehend what this means for Las Vegas as a growing tech hub. With large companies testing products on the Strip, starting to establish large headquarter, and showing off the latest technological advancements and concepts at CES for the last 22 years, Las Vegas is the perfect baseline to see how people can interact with technology implemented into the urban environment and experience of the city. This is why I looked at the advancement and questions for Las Vegas as we enter the 60 year mark since Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown visited Las Vegas for the first time and the 30 year mark since Mark C. Taylor wrote his analysis of Las Vegas in 1990.
I established this analysis based on 4 major components: How the City was Built?, Transportation, Signage, and Experience. This is a rough baseline for how Las Vegas is continuing to advance its experience and function of place through the use of technology. All notes are taken from my journal of thought
How was the city built?
Las Vegas of the 1960s was primarily built around the technological advancement of the mass production of the post-war automobile. In the 1990s, Taylor looked at Las Vegas and had seen that the city had switched its focus to build the Strip around the pedestrian experience. Looking at this year and into the future, it is apparent that the largest generation that will be visiting Las Vegas is the Millennial (the generation of technology). The city is now converting is structure and experience to be built around the implementation of the digital world. The exterior of the casinos on the Strip is based on the idea of worlds within worlds. What is the implementation of augmented reality that puts another layer of this effect and started to merge the digital world with the physical world? Las Vegas is built on the tourist attractions of being able to experience reality outside of the norm and Las Vegas has to be able to create new experiences around the generation of technology that attracts them to the city.
Transportation:
The 1960s experienced the 1960s post-war Fordism of mass production vehicles. At this time, vehicles were easier to get a hold of for middle class working for families and were an icon of the family lifestyle. The Strip was focused around this technology and was meant to be driven down with the lights and signs all directed to the actual driving surface. On the other hand, Las Vegas of the 90s was built around the movement of pedestrian traffic and the best experience was to walk the strip. Signs started to draw people in from off of the sidewalk. technology made its way into digital signs and flashing lights to grab the attention of the pedestrian. Looking at Las Vegas today, the city is at the forefront of testing new forms of transportation. Being a newly developed technological hub, many companies (Google, Tesla, etc.) are looking at and testing autonomous vehicles in Las Vegas. This concept of self-driving cars is a new form of traffic invented by the rapid growth of development and technology. How is Las Vegas going to adapt to this form of transportation? This is what Taylor was describing in his paper: when people go to Las Vegas to experience anything from the norm of their everyday lives.
Signage:
In the 1960s, Venturi and Scott Brown were looking at the sign as a new archetype. The sign was for directing and supplying information to those that give it attention and the way that a sign can give a standard building meaning to those that might not know what it is. Technology started to rapidly develope in the 1990s, and the Strip was coated in a layer of technology. This technology defined the new identity of the Strip with colors, flashing lights, more square footage of digital advertising space and so on. The experience of Las Vegas has turned into a spectacle at night with the lights and exterior shows put on by automated technology. The off way of the Strip was quickly changing and progressing forward. In this decade signs have become digitally implemented into our devices. People run into signs everywhere now and some of the most expensive advertisement is in the digital world. The question to answer now is: Are physical signs relevant anymore? People do not look at signs to navigate an unfamiliar place anymore. They wait for the little voice to tell them when and where to turn. The internet has the capability, of Geo-Locating, to tell us exactly what is around us and exactly how to get there.
Experience:
Las Vegas has had a timeline of developing experiential types for people that come to visit. Venturi and Scott Brown saw Las Vegas as a destination to get away and go out and gamble, similar to an oasis in the middle of the desert. Moving into the 1990s, Las Vegas had developed into a place of experience through the lights, flashing signs, shopping, gambling, dining, etc. Technology played a role in the way people experience the thematic worlds that the casinos go out to create. The big question for this next decade is: How does Las Vegas implement technology into the Strip to create a new experience for the local and tourist population? How do autonomous vehicles change the urban fabric and function of the Strip and the impact on the outskirts of the city?