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Las Vegas Gets a New Act

Credit...Maxwell Holyoke-Hirsch

LAS VEGAS — LATELY, a chronic question in Las Vegas is how to make our city more livable. Look at any online list to see what defines livability and you’ll find categories like “best foodie cities,” “best golf cities” and “best places to retire,” cities where work and cars don’t seem to exist, but craft breweries are abundant.

When people discuss livability, I picture the abandoned van that has been parked outside my apartment complex for seven months. It advertises a social network that promises casual sex. “Find the hottest hookups. Guaranteed,” its side reads. At some point it was tagged with spray paint, and for several weeks accompanied by a discarded, upturned couch.

This is a part of living in a low-income neighborhood. Vandalism. Discarded things. It’s also a part of living in Vegas, where worse than getting stuck in traffic is getting stuck next to the “Girls! Girls! Girls!” truck that tows its 12-foot-tall billboard of three topless women in thongs.

My neighborhood, Paradise, lies in the shadow of the Strip. Though once home to Vegas celebrities like Liberace, it now belongs primarily to working-class residents who like its proximity to casino jobs. It is known for thefts, homelessness and traffic accidents, and locals joke that Paradise is anything but. It also provides access to some uniquely Vegas absurdities: A bus stop crowd might include an Elvis impersonator, and 7-Elevens are filled with locals playing slot machines instead of buying coffee.

These qualities might make my neighborhood unusual, but certainly not unlivable. Yet most of the outsiders moving to Vegas — some 50,000 a year — are drawn to the new homes and polished shopping centers of the suburbs or, more recently, the budding urban community in our old downtown. It is here where our livability discussion has recently centered, thanks to the Downtown Project, an organization founded and funded by Tony Hsieh, the billionaire chief executive of Zappos.

For the Downtown Project, increasing livability has meant catering to the “new” Las Vegans by luring restaurateurs, entrepreneurs and tech companies. If livability is measured in trendy cocktails and expensive boutiques, then its efforts are working. Once known for residential hotels and empty storefronts, downtown now showcases gluten-free restaurants, second-story bars and coffee shops. Few Las Vegans would deny that it has aesthetically improved.

At first, I agreed. Downtown’s small businesses, street art and fashionable patrons were a breath of fresh air compared with the derelict shopping centers in Paradise. It reminded me, a bit, of my hometown, Bend, Ore., which often ranks as one of the 100 most livable cities in America, with the same sort of thriving center the Downtown Project strives to create.

Although incredibly livable, Bend lacks many of the same crucial things, like racial, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity, that drive true urban life but are rarely included in livability metrics, and are absent from many of the cities currently advertised as America’s finest.

And this same consequence of livability is already playing out in downtown Las Vegas. Mr. Hsieh and his project have many critics, who point to the wealthier business owners and upper-middle-class families that have moved into the downtown and benefited from the revitalization as low-income residents are pushed away.

The Downtown Project’s stated goal is to make the neighborhood “a place of inspiration, entrepreneurial energy, creativity and innovation, upward mobility, and discovery.” (It recently removed the word “community” from its mission statement, a highly symbolic deletion.) These ingredients certainly combine to form something, but one result is a community of alikeness. With increasing rents, $15 cocktails and a private, members-only dog park, this kind of livability has a price tag, and it is certainly not one most people in Paradise can afford.

Meanwhile, the rest of Las Vegas stays the same, with severe, more universal problems, like one of the country’s worst performing public school systems and increasing crime. Over the last four years, I haven’t seen my neighborhood change, and in four months that van will probably still be there. Paradise is not the sort of place newcomers will come to visit. But it is a diverse community, whose modest, unkempt parks wedged between strip malls are regularly filled with families at picnic tables and teenagers gathering for basketball games. Our bars lack craft beers, but are full of couples in their 60s mingling with college students.

Paradise is also home to my university, one of America’s most diverse, and students often walk past homeless people who make the streets around campus their primary residence. None of these qualities cure our ills, but they offer chances to interact with people from different economic and social backgrounds, crucial ingredients for civic empathy.

These definitions of livability illustrate how those who shape the language are those who hold the power. When we define livability as luxury, or point to a millionaire’s playground as a worthwhile model, then our conversations of how to improve our communities will always come at the expense of the poor. If livability means transforming the places where people already live into places where more wealthy people want to, then I hope it’s not what Paradise strives for.

Brittany Bronson is an English instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a restaurant server.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 25 of the New York edition with the headline: Las Vegas Gets a New Act. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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