University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Economics

Véritable icône mondiale des loisirs, Las Vegas est souvent associée au strass et aux paillettes du Strip, grand boulevard le long duquel se concentrent les casinos et les attractions touristiques. La ville est généralement associée à une licence festive et aux extravagances architecturales, et pourtant près de deux millions d’habitants vivent et travaillent dans cette capitale économique du Nevada.Dans une démarche alliant géographie urbaine et géographie culturelle, cette thèse propose d’étudier l’urbanité et la citadinité végasiennes afin de déconstruire l’image monobloc de la Las Vegas touristique. L’étude identifie l’existence d’imaginaires touristiques qui façonnent les représentations de Las Vegas dans l’opinion commune américaine et qui sont un des facteurs explicatifs des jugements de valeur et des analyses partisanes qui dominent les écrits universitaires qui lui sont consacrés. Ce travail de décryptage des discours produits sur Las Vegas constitue la première étape d’un examen dépassionné de l’urbanité et de la citadinité végasiennes. La recherche met en évidence une tension fondamentale entre la banalité urbaine et l’exceptionnalité qui résulte de la pratique légale des jeux d’argent et de la spécialisation touristique. En s’appuyant sur une articulation entre des données quantitatives et des entretiens qualitatifs auprès des habitants, cette thèse identifie une citadinité de la déficience, caractérisée par la faiblesse des relations de voisinage et du sentiment de communauté. Cette vision synchronique est complétée par une vision diachronique qui interroge les processus de transformation de la citadinité. La notion d’appropriation est plus particulièrement mobilisée, à travers les dynamiques de patrimonialisation et de transformation urbaine du centre-ville, afin d’identifier les pistes utilisées localement pour (re)construire Las Vegas. / As a world-renowned and iconic entertainment center, Las Vegas conjures up images of glitz, glitter and the Strip, the long boulevard featuring all the large hotel-casinos and entertainment options. Las Vegas is usually considered to be a free-wheeling, anything-goes kind of place and an architectural extravaganza. And yet, almost two-million people live and work in the economic capital of Nevada.Combining the approaches of urban and cultural geographies, this dissertation aims to study the “urbanité” and “citadinité” of Las Vegas in order to deconstruct the uniform image of the touristy Las Vegas. This study identifies the existence of tourism imaginaries shaping the Las Vegas perceptions in the American public opinion and explaining the value judgments and partisan analyses that dominate the academic literature dealing with the city. The decoding of the discourses produced on Las Vegas forms the first step of a neutralized study of the Las Vegas’s “urbanité” and “citadinité”. The research reveals a fundamental tension between urban banality and the originality of the specialization in tourism around gaming. This dialectic represents the main interpretation key to understand Las Vegas’s “urbanité” and “citadinité”. Going back and forth between quantitative data and qualitative interviews, this dissertation identifies what is called a “citadinité of defiency”, defined by the weakness of neighborhood interactions and sense of community. This synchronic vision is complemented by a diachronic one that questions the “citadinité” transformation processes. The notion of appropriation is particularly brought to bear through the dynamics of heritage and the transformations of downtown Las Vegas, so as to highlight the means used locally to (re)construct Las Vegas.

Thesis (D.W.S.)--Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, 2008. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-199).

Thesis (D.W.S.)--Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, 2008. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-199).

This study investigated the impact of changing climate and growing population on water supply and demand in one of the most rapidly growing cities in the semi-arid regions of western US, Las Vegas Valley (LVV), Nevada. Future scenarios of supply and demand using climate and hydrological models of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3) and a more recent CMIP5 have been evaluated and a comparison of their results has been made. A system dynamics model for LVV was developed with a period of study from 1989 to 2049. For the study area, climate and hydrological data projections for the future period (2013-2049) were obtained from the outputs of 16 Global Climate Models (GCMs) of CMIP3 model ensemble with 3 emission scenarios and that from 37 GCMs of CMIP5 model ensemble with 4 Representative concentration pathways. Population growth forecast by Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) and prevalent conservation practices by Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) were used for the model. The water availability scenario in the future for LVV in the form of Lake Mead elevation was assessed and the water demand was also predicted. This study found that mean lake elevation for the future period (2013-2049) can go as low as 21.8% lesser than that for the historical period (1989-2012). 59 of 97 projections of CMIP5 models against 27 of 48 projections of CMIP3 models indicated that the future mean lake elevation would be lower than the historical mean. Demand forecasts showed Southern Nevada Water Authority conservation goal for 2035 could be met under prevalent conservation practices. This study can be very useful for the water managers and planners to predict the future water budget, plan accordingly, and make decisions to achieve water sustainability. This study has been performed as a part of the Thriving Earth Exchange (TEX) program to assess the current vulnerability of LVV to drought, and the impact on supply and demand of water resources for the future climate scenarios.

abstract: This study uses the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to simulate and predict the changes in local climate attributed to the urbanization for five desert cities. The simulations are performed in the fashion of climate downscaling, constrained by the surface boundary conditions generated from high resolution land-use maps. For each city, the land-use maps of 1985 and 2010 from Landsat satellite observation, and a projected land-use map for 2030, are used to represent the past, present, and future. An additional set of simulations for Las Vegas, the largest of the five cities, uses the NLCD 1992 and 2006 land-use maps and an idealized historical land-use map with no urban coverage for 1900. The study finds that urbanization in Las Vegas produces a classic urban heat island (UHI) at night but a minor cooling during the day. A further analysis of the surface energy balance shows that the decrease in surface Albedo and increase effective emissivity play an important role in shaping the local climate change over urban areas. The emerging urban structures slow down the diurnal wind circulation over the city due to an increased effective surface roughness. This leads to a secondary modification of temperature due to the interaction between the mechanical and thermodynamic effects of urbanization. The simulations for the five desert cities for 1985 and 2010 further confirm a common pattern of the climatic effect of urbanization with significant nighttime warming and moderate daytime cooling. This effect is confined to the urban area and is not sensitive to the size of the city or the detail of land cover in the surrounding areas. The pattern of nighttime warming and daytime cooling remains robust in the simulations for the future climate of the five cities using the projected 2030 land-use maps. Inter-city differences among the five urban areas are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Aerospace Engineering 2015

abstract: As urban populations grow, water managers are becoming increasingly concerned about water scarcity. Water managers once relied on developing new sources of water supply to manage scarcity but economically feasible sources of unclaimed water are now rare, leading to an increased interest in demand side management. Water managers in Las Vegas, Nevada have developed innovative demand side management strategies due to the cities rapid urbanization and limited water supply. Three questions are addressed. First, in the developed areas of the Las Vegas Valley Water District service areas, how did vegetation area change? To quantify changes in vegetation area, the Matched Filter Vegetation Index (MFVI) is developed from Mixture Tuned Match Filtering estimates of vegetation area calibrated against vegetation area estimates from high-resolution aerial photography. In the established city core, there was a small but significant decline in vegetation area. Second, how much of the observed decline in per capita consumption can be explained by Las Vegas land cover and physical infrastructure change that resulted from extensive new construction and new use of water conserving technology, and how much can be attributed to water conservation policy choices? A regression analysis is performed, followed by an analysis of three counter-factual scenarios to decompose reductions in household water into its constituent parts. The largest citywide drivers of change in water consumption were increased water efficiency associated with new construction and rapid population growth. In the established urban core, the most significant driver was declining vegetation area. Third, water savings generated by a conservation program that provides incentives for homeowners to convert grass into desert landscaping are estimated. In the city core, 82 gallons of water are saved in June for each square meter of landscape converted in the first year after conversion, but the savings attenuate to 33 gallons per meter converted as the landscape ages. Voluntary landscape conversion programs can generate substantial water savings. The most significant result is that the most effective way to ensure long term, sustainable reductions in water consumption in a growing city without changing water prices is to support the construction of water efficient infrastructure. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sustainability 2014

Syftet med den här studien är att undersöka vilka faktorer som styr olika generationers attityd till elbilen i staden Las Vegas i USA och hur dessa attityder kan forma ett potentiellt köpbeteende. Generationerna som undersöktes var Gen X, Y och Z. Mätningen av attityd i studien inspirerades från Tricomponent Attitude Model, som mäter konsumenternas kognitiva, affektiva och konativa attityd. Studien använde sig av en enkätundersökning med påståenden för att fånga attityder hos konsumenter i staden, vilket gjorde att uppsatsen antog sig en kvalitativ forskningsmetod. Enkäten fick in 64 svar som sedan analyserades utifrån attitydkomponenterna i relation till faktorer, som gav undersökningen numerära verktyg att använda vid mätning av potentiellt köpbeteende. Resultatet visade att Gen X hade ett negativt potentiellt köpbeteende, medan Gen Y och Z hade ett positivt potentiellt köpbeteende. Analysen utgick från att hitta ledtrådar i generationernas grundattityder till de presenterade faktorerna och som därmed kunde förklara köpbeteendet.

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The use of delayed drainage in land subsidence modeling greatly complicates model calibration, particularly when the thickness of the fine-grained interbeds varies throughout the modeled region. This thesis documents two separate projects (chapters) related to the use of delayed drainage in groundwater flow and subsidence modeling with parameter estimation. The overall goal of these projects was to better understand how delayed drainage affects accurate parameter estimation and how it is currently affecting the subsidence processes occurring in Las Vegas Valley. Chapter 1 describes an investigation on the value of subsidence data for groundwater model calibration considering delayed drainage. The calibration results of 13 hydraulic parameters of a synthetic conceptual model evaluated for 24 test cases indicate that (1) the inverse of the square of the observation values is a reasonable method to weight the observations, (2) spatially abundant subsidence data typically produce superior parameter estimates even with observation error under constant and cyclical pumping, (3) when subsidence data are limited and combined with drawdown data, outstanding results are obtained for constant pumping conditions. However, for cyclical pumping with observation errors, the best parameter estimates are achieved when multiple years of seasonal subsidence data are provided. The results provide useful suggestions for real-world calibration problems. Chapter 2 outlines the development of an updated flow and subsidence model for Las Vegas Valley covering the entire period of development of the basin. The new model includes a subsidence package that takes into account delayed drainage of fine-grained interbeds. Previous models used subsidence packages that assumed instantaneous equilibration of heads across all hydrogeologic units. The new model resulted in an agreement with measured water-level and improved the simulation of land subsidence. The analysis shows that the typical residual subsidence in Las Vegas Valley can be accurately simulated by incorporating delayed drainage in a long-term model. The study also indicates the need for more sophisticated modeling practices that use delayed drainage with parameter estimation processes to accurately calibrate flow and subsidence models. / Master of Science