Metropolitan Las Vegas: Challenges, Opportunities, and a Vision

The Brookings Mountain West Initiative, a partnership between UNLV and the Brookings Institution, brings Brookings’ high-quality, independent research to the issues facing the dynamic and fast-growing Intermountain West region. The new initiative builds upon the work of Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program, which focuses on helping metropolitan areas grow in robust, inclusive, and sustainable ways.

In this speech at the Las Vegas roll-out of the project, Mark Muro and nonresident senior fellow Robert Lang argue that Las Vegas presents an exaggerated version of America’s economic quandary. Muro declares that Las Vegas presents in extreme form some of the fundamental questions facing the whole country as it faces a major economic “reset” while Lang contends it can still emerge as America’s next true world city.