Question of the Day - 20 April 2021

This question expresses a sentiment that's been floating around, as far as we know, since the late 1950s and 1960s, when Las Vegas was the object of what's come to be known hereabouts as "the Diatribe." This was a period when southern Nevada suffered through the national and international media’s collective characterization of it as the most corrupt, immoral, and crime-infested urban area of iniquity in the United States.

The Diatribe started a long unhappy tradition of "drive-by journalism and commentary," whereby writers and academics (or their graduate students) spend a few days here, stay in a Strip megaresort, take a quick look around, return to their hometowns, and write a scathing paper, article, or even book condemning the entire metropolitan area.

One of the most common manifestations of this Diatribe attitude has been in the question, "How can Las Vegas be a city when no one actually lives there?"

Long-time locals have heard this a hundred times, as if all the people who serve out-of-towners -- from hotel housekeepers to LVA staff -- fly into McCarran from "real" cities and towns, work their shifts, then fly out again to go home. Obviously, the very idea is too ridiculous to dignify with a response. 

Which brings us to our (dignified) response to this question.

First, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, in general, any place with more than 2,500 residents can be considered a city. That's not a typo and you can look it up: two thousand five hundred! Las Vegas qualifies according to that definition by a factor of 1,000 or so. 

Next, according to various other definitions, a "city" is a large human settlement that's permanently and densely settled. Las Vegas has been permanently settled for nearly 125 years and is fairly dense, with nearly 5,000 people per square mile, only 30% less than the question's citation of the city of Los Angeles at 7,000 per square mile and 33% more than the 3,350 of Phoenix, fifth largest city in the U.S. 

In terms of total population, Las Vegas places at number 27, one rank lower than Portland, Oregon, one higher than Memphis, Tennessee. And that counts just the population of the City of Las Vegas, not the surrounding metropolitan area. On that scale, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Statistical Area ranks 28, one below Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one above Austin, Texas.

A city is also a place whose residents work primarily on non-agricultural tasks. Las Vegas: check.

Cities also have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, and communication. Do we really need to give Las Vegas examples of every one? 

Las Vegas can also be characterized as a having undergone a continuous process of urbanization, with the population increasing dramatically during boom periods, especially over the past 30 years. That, of course, has been combined with non-stop infrastructure-improvement projects, housing that has created a vast urban sprawl, hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in commercial properties and activity, and on and on.  

A city's dense concentration of people and services also has significant negative consequences: pollution; water, utilities, and garbage-collection stresses; urban heat islands; homelessness; traffic; crime; truancy; corruption; and more -- all of which Las Vegas can lay definite claim to. 

Need we continue?

Suffice it to say that this age-old question is simply another way of not-so-subtly casting aspersion (in other words, mocking, ridiculing, debasing, and otherwise sneering at) a real-live city that's home to generations of decent, hard-working, and respectable people. Including us.