Editorial: Larger lots deserve city protection

Friday, Aug. 12, 2005 | 5:56 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

August 13-14, 2005

From an airplane window while flying over Las Vegas it is easy fix in your mind what is rural and what is urban. From the street level in this densely packed city, however, the perspective changes. Driving from a section dominated by duplexes and apartment buildings, past eight-to-the-acre single family homes, and on into sections where homes, barns and stables sit on lots of a half-acre and more, is like taking a Sunday drive from the inner city to the countryside. Yet you wouldn't have left the city limits.

The more open, or "rural," areas of Las Vegas range from developments that date back 50 years and more to parcels recently annexed. The city's rural areas are options for everyone from wealthy business people and celebrities to those of modest incomes who don't mind fixing up an old house themselves if it means they can have extra room for their families and animals. As growth brings more and more urbanization, the dwindling rural areas are Las Vegas' last connection to its Western heritage. It's a connection that city planners want preserved.

On Tuesday the City Council Recommending Committee (a subcommittee consisting of two City Council members) will hear a proposal from city staff to create a Rural Preservation Overlay District. The proposed district would take the place of a state law that expired last year. The law prevented developers from coming into areas zoned for half-acre lots, buying up contiguous parcels and applying for zoning changes that would allow them to build at higher densities.

We support the proposed preservation district, despite logical-sounding criticism from builders who ask what is rural about long-established, low-density residential developments such as Rancho Circle and the Scotch 80s, which are within Las Vegas' urban core. In actuality, the city planners are simply using the only official designation available in proposing to fill a void created by the lapsed state law. Rural, in this case, is a relative term.

Without the designation, much of the cherished open space in the city, over time, would be filled in with high-rises and other dense developments. City planners are correct in offering a proposal to counter that vision of the city's future.