Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority

Las Vegas has had a bad night these last few years. From one gamble to the next, the city keeps plunking down vast sums of money on new construction, and then can't drive themselves home.

Somehow this is called 'Manhattanization,' in our favorite trade gem, McGraw-Hill Construction News.

Like a middle-aged rake too long on the party circuit, Las Vegas is starting to show the strain of 20 years of unrelieved excess. Roads are congested, schools crowded, water supplies dwindling and the pressures of growth are distorting the market for construction labor and contracting capacity.

Construction prices are rising along with soaring real-estate prices, driving the Manhattanization of the city.

Sounds like Las Vegification to us. Anyway, following that lead is a fairly harrowing assessment of the unmanageable sprawl that Las Vegas is quickly becoming.  read more »