A perfect example of this new wave is another project on the new 'South Strip,' which also broke ground in July 2006, Urban Village. Urban Village will be a 50-acre, $1.5 billion project of brownstones, lofts, condo hotel units, and flats" (Las Vegas area and city statistics, demographics, and trends, 2009, Appraisers of Las Vegas.). Land use in general has increasingly serviced the luxury tourism market, rather than residential areas, which may partially account for the high crime rate -- many people with few ties to the area pass through Las Vegas. But residential and tourist housing areas have been increasingly blurred, often occupying the same physical spaces, not just the same neighborhoods.

Las Vegas thus has a rather eccentric pattern of sociological development that undercuts traditional zones of transition theory, which suggests that between the central business district and outer rings of working-class and middle-class urban residences, there will...
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