Marcher dans les rues de Las Vegas : renouvellement des pratiques touristiques et reconfigurations spatiales des hôtels-casinos

Abstract

This paper studies the rise of walking on the Strip, Las Vegas main tourist neighborhood, since the 1990s. Walking has flourished as a major tourist practice, embodying a distinct breach not only in the way tourist move around but also in the lay-out of the Strip. This tourist neighborhood has indeed been conceptualized and organized by and for car drivers since its origins in the 1940s. This paper studies more precisely the local power plays underlying the evolution of tourist mobility practices, thus analysis successively the role of hotel-casinos operators, local officials, and tourists. The rise of walking has led to spatial reconfigurations both throughout the Strip and at the level of some hotel-casinos. Two recent developments are examined more thoroughly: the Linq Promenade and the Park Vegas, both built in the 2010s. They are deemed exemplary of the new extraversion of hotel-casinos to fit the renewed walking expectations of tourists. They are also interesting to highlight the tension between seemingly open spaces and their de facto privatization.

Keywords

• walking
• tourist practices
• spatial reconfigurations
• city planning
• Las Vegas