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Page added on February 15, 2014
Project envisions post oil Vegas
The demands of a changing environment are being met by the innovative students in the school of architecture.
The department for landscape agriculture and planning hosted an event envisioning a post peak oil Las Vegas along with Cal Poly-Pomona, Jan. 30 in the architecture library. The event furthered a much needed dialogue on local sustainability.
The goal was to address social, economic and environmental problems in Las Vegas and answer how they can be addressed for the year 2016 when the global supply of oil will be steadily declining. Lee-Anne Milburn, an associate professor at UNLV explained that “the whole idea was that [the groups] had to look out to 2016 when we are running out of oil…They [were] supposed to figure out how we need to redesign Las Vegas to deal with the fact that we’re going to have less oil, less ability to drive.”
The project involved 80 students from both universities who were divided into five groups. Milburn explained, “each team [was] led by faculty members. Two teams [were] led by faculty members from UNLV and three teams by [faculty from] Pomona.”
UNLV Students presented their projects at an event held Jan. 30 along with students from Cal-Poly Pomona. Photo by: Amy Adler“The project [was] a transect that we took of Las Vegas all the way from Red Rock Canyon all the way over to the desert wetlands conservation park,” Milburn said. “It [was] a 20-mile transect along Tropicana Avenue and we went half a mile north of Tropicana and a half-mile south of Tropicana— from Harmon to Hacienda; and we divided that [area] into the five groups so each group got a chunk of that transect. Each group then had to deal with the issues in that part of the city.”
The groups had less than five days to complete their designs. They started Monday morning at 9 a.m. and gave their presentations Friday.
Each group was assigned four miles of the street and was asked to redesign their section to make it as sustainable as possible considering any potential problems.
Milburn said she hoped the project would help promote the UNLV architecture program. “We are looking to benefit our students from having exposure to other faculty and other programs. [This project] gives them a very particular type of learning experience. It is a very intensive, focused experience where you get to focus on a very specific issue. It is a very different type of opportunity.”
The project was not for any specific class. “It [was] for the whole school,” Milburn said. “It included seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen.”
There was no competition and students chose to participate to gain experience in this intensive exercise.
Students liked the structure of their groups, which combined UNLV and Cal Poly-Pomona participants.
“I like how the two schools that are coming from a different type of teaching are collaborating together,” said landscape architecture major Mandeep Dhillon, 22. “It makes the field stronger because we learn from each other. We [were taught] from different professors and being able to tie those ideas together is good.”
Andrew Morris’s group focused on housing problems in 2016. They proposed “high-rise, high-density housing… with sustainable green walls, water appropriation systems and natural energy sources like solar and wind energy” for the area near Decatur Boulevard.
Other groups focused on the transportation and infrastructure issues, like Cal Poly-Pomona students Carmela Aguilar’s group. “We found many problems for pedestrians with transportation and there was lots of open space,” she said.
Agular’s group focused on Tropicana Avenue between Mountain Vista Drive and Maryland Parkway. Irene Lopez, another member, explained, “we have three different lines of transportation,” highlighting their plans for “hydroelectric taxi cabs and cable cars which run down the center of the strip.”
“We converted all the strip malls into open spaces for agriculture for bio-fueling,” Lopez added. She stated a shared goal among the five groups, saying, “we are building up instead of building out.”
17 Comments on "Project envisions post oil Vegas"
ghung on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 2:40 pm
….“we are building up instead of building out” probably should read “we are packing up and moving out”.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 2:40 pm
Da, like, I’m thirsty, dude. Vegas is about water and water is vanishing in the southwest. That would assume Vegas is vanishing. Not yet at least but there are some serious water issues right around the corner and precious little time for status quo. The Vegas Water Czar lady is great personality to listen to. She is blunt and outspoken. She just received a setback (seelink). Her reasoning is the majority rules over water rights when a region is in crisis. Not so fast!
http://ecowatch.com/2013/12/12/ruling-rejects-water-diversion-project-nevada-utah/en about what Vegas faces.
Lake Mead news:
Water levels at Lake Mead are expected to drop up to 25 feet over the next year after federal officials announced Friday a record-low annual release of water from an upstream reservoir.
And
The water level is currently at 1,106 feet, and a continued drop will force serious action by the Southern Nevada Water Authority. At 1,075 feet, a federal water shortage declaration would be triggered, leading to cuts in supply for Nevada and Arizona. The latest projections show the lake could dip below that threshold by April 2015. If the lake drops below 1,050 feet, it could knock out one of the intake straws the authority uses to pump drinking water from the reservoir to the valley, leading to water shortages. A third intake straw is under construction at a lower elevation, but the $817 million project has been beset by delays and won’t be finished until at least next year.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 2:41 pm
Good one Ghung!
ghung on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 3:10 pm
Yeah, Davy, I expect Vegas will look more like Barter Town in 50 years or so (“bust a deal, face the wheel”), though I could be wrong. Humans have a habit of being stubborn about trying to sustain their least sustainable endeavours. Makes absolutely no sense, especially in the case of Vegas. It’s going to make one helluva ghost town; BYOW.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 3:29 pm
Ghung good point! The slope down the energy gradient will not be rational and it will be dysfunctional. There will be paradoxes for sure. When chaos enter a system watch out. Plus look at what we know about human nature. Nero fiddling when Rome burned! OK “will” is a strong word but at least in theory!
ted on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 3:37 pm
Barter town in 50 years…that long! Wow I would say 10….
J-Gav on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 3:38 pm
Here’s my project for Vegas: Leave it to the coyotes.
rockman on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 3:45 pm
I do appreciate their efforts to convince those students there really is a future for their careers. LOL. But:”We converted all the strip malls into open spaces for agriculture for bio-fueling”. No…they didn’t. They drew maps showing open spaces where strip malls once stood. I wonder if they even discussed the source of capex to make their drawings a reality?
“…to figure out how we need to redesign Las Vegas”. Now they just need to pull some folks in from the accounting school to figure out what it will cost and then run over to the Better Business Bureau and fine out who would pay to build out their clever designs.
Northwest Resident on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 4:15 pm
All anyone needs to do to get an accurate rendition of what Las Vegas will look like in the not-too-distant future is to play the video game “Fallout New Vegas”. The post-apocalyptic world that is the setting for that game might be what much of us end up living in.
Las Vegas is the penultimate symbol of what greed and technology and cheap fossil fuels built. It is an analogy for our human civilization at its peak, complete with all the sin and corruption and vices and glitz — and excitement — that went along with it. As Vegas goes, so goes human civilization, at least, this version of it. Austa la vista, baby.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 4:32 pm
@n/R, exactly what appeals to our shady human nature
@Rock, I wonder if those boys ever had a budget meetings!
@Gav at least the great plains could go back to buffalo. Coyotes aint much good except for eating road kill!
MSN fanboy on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 9:43 pm
AC.. they need AC. Enough said
Makati1 on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 2:26 am
California is full of nuts … and some go to college there. Wait until California looks like Nevada all over. The fires this years should be spectacular.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 2:54 am
Philippines is near the top of countries that have been affected by AGW. The Philippines future effects from AGW looks even worse. So crowing about California is like throwing stones in a glass house my friend.
Keith_McClary on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 5:42 am
“The primary drivers of the Las Vegas economy are tourism, gaming, and conventions, which in turn feed the retail and restaurant industries.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas#Economy
“we have three different lines of transportation,” highlighting their plans for “hydroelectric taxi cabs and cable cars which run down the center of the strip.”
Now they just have to figure out how those tourists, gamblers and conventioneers will get to Vegas.
Makati1 on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 11:21 am
Davy, You need to think again. So far, the Ps have seen little from Global Warming/Climate Change. I live here and should know. Yes, we got a bad typhoon. but it does happen occasionally. They have been getting 5 or 6 every year for centuries. But, we do not get the weather swings of northern countries, like the US, the UK or Europe.
Look at Sandy in the US. Look at the polar vortex in the US. Look at the drought in the US. Look at the flooding in the US. Any finger pointing away has 4 pointing back at you.
I would like a reference to the info you claim marks the Ps as near the top of the list. I have not seen anything that makes that claim.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 1:10 pm
@Makati – no I don’t live there and never been there but this article and many others paint a picture you can’t brush off completely.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/typhoon-haiyan-climate-change-blame-philippines
Extreme weather killed 530,000 people between 1993 and 2012 and caused more than $2.5tn of damage, according to an annual risk report published on Tuesday by Germanwatch, a thinktank partly funded by the German government. The Philippines was rated second most affected country after Haiti, which lost 9.5% of its economy
In other news:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26023166
“Wavier jet stream ‘may drive weather shift” good AGW climate change article
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 1:12 pm
@Makati – do not deny at all what the US faces. Yet, you deny what your country faces. Double standards anyone?