"Leaving Las Vegas," Not Just a Film Title

Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani proposes empowering a panel that would include a landscape architect to rethink zoning, housing development and park building in the Las Vegas Valley.

The "Las Vegas Metropolitan Area Social Survey" reports 40 percent of the inhabitants want to leave the state!

While loss of jobs and plummeting home values are the obvious culprits???about 80 percent of Las Vegas homeowners owe more on their houses than they are worth???Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani avers the survey results show the county government didn???t do enough during the "good times" to make the valley more livable.

Ms. Giunchigliani proposed to ask commissioners in May to assemble a five-member panel that might include an architect, an engineer, a landscape architect, a homebuilder and an environmentalist???to explore what can be done with unbuilt housing tracts, empty downtown and suburban lots and to put public properties to better use.

Ms. Giunchigliani believes Vegas needs more green space, including pocket parks within neighborhoods, and more pedestrian areas. She wants the county to review its parks policies, including how they are financed and why it takes so long to get parks built. Clark County relies on developers and revenue from federal land sales to fund parks. But with development and federal land sales stagnant, there needs to be alternative funding sources.

If Ms. Giunchigliani gets her wish fulfillment, the committee might also look at rezoning unbuilt subdivisions, mandating more space between homes, incorporating more sustainable elements (solar energy), outlawing "zero setbacks" and the block walls that segregate and isolate communities.