"We can summarize Las Vegas's development over time as from:

the Strip	to the Boulevard
urban sprawl	to urban density
parking lot	to front yard
asphalt plain	to Romantic garden
the decorated shed [rectilinear building]	to the duck [building shaped like an object]
electric	to electronic
neon	to pixel
electrographic	to scenographic
signs	to scenes
iconography	to scenography
Vaughan Cannon	to Walt Disney
pop culture	to gentrification
pop taste	'good' taste
perception of the driver	perception of the walker
strip	to mall
mall	to edge city
folk art, vivid, vulgar, and vital	to unconvincing irony"

— Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, 1994
   Las Vegas After Its Classic Age
   reprinted in Iconography and Electronics Upon a Generic Architecture:
   A View from the Drafting Room (1996) [ISBN: 0262720299]

There's an old parable about some people riding on a runaway train towards a downed trestle, arguing over which way to lean in their seats to steer the train away from disaster. The moral is that you don't change the course of a train by leaning; you change its course by getting way out in front and laying new track.

You can argue that this is no help to the people on the train, and you'd be right, but nevertheless, the only way to change the course of a train is to get way out in front and lay new track. All the trains rolling around now are on track somebody laid in the past.

Applying this parable to the future, it is clear to me that making plans and publicizing them can sometime be sufficient to create an outcome. Jules Verne described a submarine named Nautilus the was powered by "molecular energy" and went under the polar ice caps; the US Navy built it and did it. By this logic, the people who will influence the future of the East Mojave Desert are the ones creating and publicizing plans for its future. These include:

• mile-diameter domes and million-person buildings

  Architect/inventor Bucky Fuller described giant geodesic domes well-suited to the desert which would provide affordable climate-control on a mass scale [www.bfi.org]. Visionary/architect Paolo Soleri's project Arcosanti is an experimental desert habitat near Phoenix, AZ, that is designed to house one million residents upon its completion [www.arcosanti.org].

• bullet train Anaheim to Las Vegas in 90 minutes

  The California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission (CNSSTC) is promoting a magnetic-levitation "bullet train" to ease congestion on I-15; planned stops are Anaheim, Ontario, Victorville, Barstow, Primm and Las Vegas. Estimated cost is $4.4 billion; they're looking around for the money [www.maglev-train.com].

• "What If...? Alternative Futures for the California Mojave Desert"

  A group of researchers funded by the Department of Defense have put together scenarios of the future of the Eastern Mojave Desert, especially as regards the four military bases in the region: the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (MCAGCC) at Twenty-nine Palms, the Army National Training Center at Fort Irwin, China Lake Naval Weapons Testing Center, and Edwards Air Force Base [www.giscafe.com/technical_papers/Papers/paper036/p192.php].

As long as I'm listing scenarios, I'd like to toss in a few I dreamed up:

• Route 66 Bike Freeway

  What if you could bicycle from Chicago to L.A. on a limited- access "bike freeway" that never crossed the path of a motor vehicle, and there were restaurants, motels, bike shops and stores along the way at sufficient intervals?

• Time Travel Through the Desert

  Imagine a tour of the East Mojave that roughly follows the Old Spanish Trail out of Las Vegas, in the following manner:

  1. Your party hikes for a few miles along the trail,
  2. your party rides mules for a few more miles,
  3. you all ride in a covered wagon for a few miles,
  4. you pile into a stagecoach and ride some more,
  5. you switch to a railroad car and ride in that for a while,
  6. you transfer to Ford Model A Roadsters and ride along an old alignment of Route 66 for a while,
  7. you get into 18-wheeler truck cab and ride along for a while on I-15, and
  8. you change for the Bullet Train and make the return trip in 45 minutes.

Last update 12:31 PM Fri. 27-Feb-2004 by ABS.