Ruinopolis: Post-Imperial Theory and Learning from Las Vegas

Julia Hell and George Steinmetz

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2014, vol. 38, issue 3, 1047-1068

Abstract: This essay foregrounds a dimension of Las Vegas that other authors only touch on in passing: its connections to empire. The authors propose a post-imperial analysis of the city based on a reconstruction of its history and a reading of the traces of this history in the city's architecture and its self-presentation in American popular culture. This analysis of Las Vegas as ruinopolis draws attention to the ruin sites of the city and its hinterland, reading them through the lens of empire. We work out the imperial territoriality of Las Vegas, including the derelict space of the Las Vegas Paiute Indian Colony, the ‘Pentagon Desert’ around the city with its so-called ‘national sacrifice zone’, and the Strip, with Caesars Palace. We conclude with a post-imperial reading of Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour's canonical Learning from Las Vegas and of the ruin signs of the Neon Boneyard.

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1468-2427.12117 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:38:y:2014:i:3:p:1047-1068

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0309-1317

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research is currently edited by Alan Harding, Roger Keil and Jeremy Seekings

More articles in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().