Abstract
Drawing from a 6-year case study in resource management, this study presents urban, landscape, and architectural examples from a critical examination of the Las Vegas sustainability campaign that asked two basic questions: “what is being sustained” and “by what means?” Data was initially gathered via a spatial-temporal analysis of place that focused on two determinants: ecosystem resources necessary for basic human life and the social political economic development of place. Detailed data was gathered following site visits, participation in professional geographer field-trips, and historical research of water resource management in arid lands. Research findings identified specific, metropolitan areas that were built in arid lands not upon resources of place but upon a political-economic inversion of established water law that initiated over-consumption as a legal precedent and as an economic political tool for non-sustainable growth.
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KEYWORDS
Design Problems, Place-based Design, Urban Design, Landscape Design, Architectural Design
