From the barren desert, a booming metropolis

“There may be some who feel that Las Vegas is an abomination and should be destroyed,” Mario Puzo wrote in 1977. “They would have to argue, with me at least, that the oil companies are straight, the stock market is not a flimflam, and that our [foreign] policy is not insane. They would even have to argue that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are more honest than the Mafia.”

So begins Geoff Schumacher’s exploration of modern Las Vegas, quoting the creator of filmdom’s enduring symbol of organized crime, to introduce a city that is a font of enormous wealth whose main industry produces nothing. Begun as a remote oasis of legal vice in the Nevada desert, it grew into a national emblem of widespread corruption, the glitzy capital of “anything goes.”

But it’s not the dazzling casinos, caricatured mobsters or colorful history that interests Schumacher. “Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas” examines how what was once thought to be the country’s most aberrant city has evolved into a magnet for America’s middle- and upper-middle classes to put down roots. Part cultural theory, part urban studies, he documents the transformation of this notorious frontier boomtown into a modern Sunbelt metropolis.

Dozens of books have been written about Las Vegas, their jackets usually promising the “definitive” account. But the fluidity of its story makes such definition elusive, each tome obsolete by publication date. Now, however, the impressively researched and highly readable “Sun, Sin & Suburbia” captures the intangible nature of the dynamic, ever-changing city. Schumacher combines skills from his 16 years of work as a reporter, editor and columnist in Las Vegas with a scholar’s perspective and historian’s sensibility that are so often lacking in books by journalists, justifying the subtitle’s adjective “essential.”

Las Vegas attracts 35 million visitors a year. What concerns Schumacher, however, is the city of 1.6 million residents, the fastest-growing place in America since the mid-20th century with an estimated 25% of its transplants now pouring in from California. The population explosion that occurred in the super-boom period of the 1990s went beyond all previous expansion. How residents and civic leaders, developers and environmentalists have responded to this growth is Schumacher’s story. The first chapters tell the obligatory tale of the city’s rise, dispelling some myths (Bugsy Siegel was not the city’s founding father) and perpetuating others (federal and state authorities pushed the mob “once and for all” out of the gambling industry in the 1980s). The pages on the evolution of the Las Vegas Strip are somewhat unsatisfying, lacking context and detail, but the author deftly moves the narrative forward to the defining decade.

By the 1990s, 6,000 people were moving into Las Vegas monthly. Schumacher traces the unrestrained growth -- such as the implosion of landmark Strip casinos, their replacement by mega-resorts and the development of wildly successful master-planned communities. As public officials struggled to keep up with an exploding infrastructure -- feverishly building schools and roads -- real estate developers rushed to fill the housing void.

The 1990s, a time when “the national economy [was] flush with baby boom wealth and dot-com riches,” also marked Las Vegas’ move upscale. The Strip set the tone, beginning with Steve Wynn’s Mirage hotel and casino, followed by art galleries, botanical gardens, Broadway productions and Wynn’s Bellagio, at $1.6 billion, the most expensive and luxurious resort ever built in Las Vegas (until the $2.6-billion Wynn Las Vegas, due to open this spring). The Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino leased space to the Four Seasons Hotel, and high-end retailers replaced the gaudy, kitschy Strip milieu. Luxury homebuilders kept pace with guard-gated golf course communities and Summerlin, Howard Hughes’ unintended legacy. The book details how Summerlin came about, its political and economic intricacies symbolic of the nation’s urban planning.

Hughes acquired 25,000 acres of federal land west of Las Vegas in the 1950s, initially to build an aircraft research facility. The parcel remained vacant long after his death, until the 1980s, when his Summa Corp. executives decided to develop it. Named for Hughes’ grandmother, Summerlin is the epitome of modern middle-class America, a community in which “the roads, the neighborhoods, the parks, the shopping centers, the community events ... are all part of a grand scheme.” As in all U.S. locales, the politics of development clashed with historical and environmental preservation. And, as elsewhere, varied money interests vied for control.

In the end, Schumacher portrays Summerlin as an admirable example of what author Wallace Stegner called “the American West as Living Space.” Summa acquired a reputation as an environmentally sensitive company, popularizing desert landscaping, working to preserve Red Rock Canyon at Summerlin’s edge and adhering to a strict 100-foot height limit on its casino-zoned parcels. What irony that Las Vegas -- symbol of excess -- would become a model of conservation and restraint. Summerlin, the largest residential enclave in Las Vegas -- home to eight golf courses, 20 schools, 100 parks, 100 miles of hiking trails as well as restaurants and medical facilities -- is but one of several in the Las Vegas Valley. In a city famous for its soullessness, the desperate search for a sense of community is palpable.

The U.S. government role in Las Vegas’ birth and continuing success is integral to a full understanding of the place. With the 1931 construction of Hoover Dam and continuing through various World War II and Cold War defense projects, the federal government brought a steady supply of soldiers and laborers to do the work, and they patronized the city’s casinos. “The biggest thing the feds did to boost Las Vegas was not writing a check or building a large structure or road. It was an act of doing nothing,” Schumacher writes. “At a time when gambling was looked upon as sinful, when police were cracking down on illegal gambling dens in cities across the country, Nevada legalized gambling -- and, for the most part, the feds looked the other way.”

But the government’s greatest effect has been through its colossal land disposal program. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management owns tens of thousands of acres across the valley, land that has found its way into developers’ hands through controversial exchanges and public auctions. Schumacher is at his best in detailing these high-stakes enterprises -- heavy-handed lobbying, land swaps rigged in favor of influential developers at the expense of taxpayers. “For all intents and purposes,” he writes, “a federal agency that historically has focused on rural ranching and mining issues is functioning as the largest real estate agent in the state.” The BLM holds the key to the city’s future. “If federal lands were not made available for private use, Las Vegas growth would stop.”

For all its facades, Las Vegas is a real town facing real issues. Nearly all of its negative aspects -- congested roads, pollution, crowded schools -- are directly attributable to the valley’s rapid growth. The frenzied boom-and-bust mentality must give way to a more thoughtful approach, Schumacher argues. But for an adolescent community that is addicted to “more,” that thrives on the adrenaline of change, a new paradigm seems unlikely. *