Columnist Susan Snyder: Las Vegans rush to judgment

Saturday, Feb. 24, 2001 | 10:45 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column also appears Tuesdays and Fridays in the Las Vegas Sun. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Talk about hitting a nerve.

Last Sunday's column asked readers to ponder the reasons people move away. Clark County statistics show we gain an average of 6,180 residents each month. That's a net gain over the 4,512 who leave each month.

People leave for new jobs, or graduate from college and move on. Some die. But I wondered whether some might be chased off by an urban design philosophy that seems more fit for cars than people.

Readers who responded minced few words.

"I'm not so sure Las Vegas' growing pains will ever subside. The fact is Vegas never wanted to be a 'people city,' " Ernie D. writes in his e-mail.

Ouch.

"The government doesn't report the big turnaround that is happening here. The government only shows a picture of roses," another reader writes. "I'm only here one year now, and I'm thinking of going back to the East Coast."

Before you offer to help the guy pack, remember that people who criticize a place don't necessarily want -- or need -- to leave it. Some hope to make it better.

However, one caller who moved here three years ago from Michigan says she just turned down a job offer in Seattle -- one offering twice the salary. Seattle is too expensive, too cold and too dreary by Las Vegas standards.

She says historically Las Vegas was little more than a traveler's desert stopover. Cars are king, she says, because permanent building started in the age of the automobile.

"To move here and (gripe) about cars is like moving here and (griping) about the heat," she said.

True, we can't change the heat. But we can change the way our public officials arrange things.

Or we can keep widening, paving and re-striping. Highways will be obsolete by the time they open. Seven-lane thoroughfares will encourage motorists to drive 50 mph through school zones. And residents will continue to feel frustrated and anxious without knowing why.

Erin Larkin, a Las Vegas mother of two who has lived here 10 years, recalled purchasing her family's "dream home." She was aghast when she spotted the wide swath of asphalt leading into their subdivision.

"No wonder people breeze through the stop sign at the end, so lulled into speeding are they by the wide, open pavement hurling you into the neighborhood," she said.

A Scripps Howard News Service report last week described a grass-roots movement to retake city streets for pedestrians that is creeping across the country. Activists are planning an August convention in Oakland, Calif.

The report says people aren't walking as much as they did a generation ago because "cities and suburbs are increasingly being designed in ways that favor cars and make pedestrians feel unsafe or make walking unpleasant."

The report also says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is launching a study to find out whether urban sprawl is making us fat. It's certainly making some Las Vegans antsy enough to leave. Hopefully it's also making those of us who stay antsy enough to change.

And we can't retrofit our streets until we retrofit our thinking.

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