Editor's Note: Aesthetics matter

Las Vegas is not a beautiful city. It has few grassy, tree-lined neighborhood drives such as those that often serve as the opening scene of a movie or television drama, typically with a boy on a bicycle delivering newspapers or riding home from school. Las Vegas does not have natural lakeshores with boats bobbing on the horizon or riverbanks occupied by serious-minded fishermen. (The few artificial lakes dotting the valley just don't have the same charm.) I recently visited western North Carolina, where I was constantly surrounded by great swaths of trees of every known variety. Needless to say, Las Vegas does not have woodsy backdrops.

Las Vegas architecture isn't all that great either. There is little historical architecture, since the handful of older public buildings are less than 100 years old. And Las Vegas was a small town back then, so it didn't demand particularly impressive public structures. Most of the newer buildings, from schools and shopping plazas to offices and hospitals, are low-budget, barebones affairs put up quickly with little attention to aesthetics. The large majority of houses are fast-buck production numbers built since World War II that tend to be classic examples of function over form. (Henry Ford once said something about being able to buy a Model-T in any color as long as it's black. Most local home builders have the same mindset, insisting on a few variations of off-white.) The Strip is another matter. It is beautiful in its way, of course, and architecturally unique. But equating the Strip with greater Las Vegas is like summing up Orange County with a snapshot of Disneyland. The Strip is the Strip, and it has little to do with this place where 1.6 million of us live.

Obviously Las Vegas can't do a whole lot about its natural environment. Try as we might to emulate the green, watery traits of the places from which we came, we can't pull it off. Nor should we try. We live in the desert and should embrace its limitations (and strengths). Fake lakes and rivers are a waste of water and, frankly, a fool's errand. We know better. We are starting to do a better job with xeriscaping, making it lush-looking without using a lot of water. But it will always be a tough sell for some folks who can't resign themselves to the idea of not having thick hedges and well-groomed lawns in front of every building in town.

Las Vegas also looks the way it does because builders are constantly under the gun to satisfy the demands of rapid growth. We need (or at least think we need) gas stations, fast food restaurants, schools and business complexes now--not six months hence, once the high-priced architects have completed their fancy plans. (Skip the middleman, right?) We build fast and with maximum efficiency in mind. The resulting streetscapes tend to be uninspiring and severely lacking in a sense of permanence.

Another reason Las Vegas looks the way it does is it's a tight-fisted town. Taxpayers tend to get agitated when officials want to spend a few extra dollars to make new public buildings look good. Remember the uproar over the libraries built in the early '90s? Each was designed by a different architect, which cost more than having one cookie-cutter design for all of them. The practical-minded howled. And remember the flap over the price tag for the Clark County Government Center a decade ago? Same thing: Some people said we should eliminate the bells and whistles (not that the building ever really had many).

This is all prelude to the subject of today's sermon: "Midtown UNLV." Earlier this month, university President Carol Harter announced a public-private partnership aimed at redeveloping areas surrounding the campus on Maryland Parkway. "The goal of this project is to create a place at our front door that would help transform our surrounding area into a university district--a neighborhood of restaurants, cafes, outdoor gathering places, small-scale galleries and welcoming residential and retail opportunities," Harter said, referencing the vitality of university districts in Madison, Wis., Boulder, Colo., Austin, Texas, and Tempe, Ariz.

This is a fine idea--and long overdue. UNLV would benefit greatly from an improved aesthetic surrounding the campus. The shopping centers across Maryland are not particularly interesting and some are run-down. The housing behind them is worse. At one time many UNLV students and faculty members lived in the numerous apartment complexes and condominiums just east of the university, but that has changed. The UNLV area has become a lot rougher in recent years. Crime is up; decay is evident. And students and faculty members are more likely to drive in from Green Valley or some other suburban enclave. The few bright spots--Big B's Records, the Mediterranean Café--are housed in worn, nondescript strip malls.

UNLV itself also needs work. There are a couple of noteworthy buildings on the 337-acre campus (the new library, for example), but overall it's a mishmash of styles and qualities with no coherence. UNLV is very much a microcosm of Las Vegas--built chaotically to meet the needs of growth rather than following an elegant master plan. There was no Thomas Jefferson around to provide UNLV with a blueprint to follow as it expanded from a handful of students in the mid-'50s to the 27,000 who take classes there today.

Whether Harter can pull off a university district renaissance is hard to measure. Local business people tend to react to market demands, not create them. If they don't see redevelopment bringing immediate returns, they may balk. Why invest in Maryland Parkway when they can cash in out in Anthem or Aliante?

Harter certainly should encourage and help facilitate university district redevelopment, but the campus itself will be the primary catalyst for change. When UNLV looks and feels more enticing, when more kids live on campus, when it's easier to park, when a pedestrian bridge is built over Maryland Parkway (my personal crusade), the surrounding area likely will follow suit.

--GEOFF SCHUMACHER