Rehydrating Vegas 

#WhatHappensInVegasStaysInVegas

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Las Vegas is a paradox. It is a city founded on illusion, fueled by excess, and designed to escape reality. Its spectacle—of glowing lights, endless consumption, and manicured oases in the desert—relies on unsustainable systems of water diversion, energy dependence, and mass tourism. But what if the same city that perfected artificiality could also reinvent sustainability? This thesis proposes a provocative reimagining: not the end of Las Vegas, but its transformation into a resilient and regenerative city—a model for “sustainable hedonism.”

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A City at the Edge of Collapse

 

Las Vegas is at a tipping point. It depends on the Colorado River, which is drying up. Lake Mead, its largest water source, is predicted to reach critically low levels within a decade. The city’s power grid is tied to hydroelectricity and long-distance transmission. Its food is almost entirely imported. And its economy, reliant on 40 million annual tourists, is vulnerable to disruption—from climate, pandemics, or shifting social patterns.

 

MGM Resorts alone generates 7,600 tons of food waste annually—equivalent to more than 15 trillion gallons of embedded water. While the corporation touts LEED Platinum achievements for its CityCenter project, it continues to operate within an unsustainable model of consumption and contradiction.

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Rehydration Through Regeneration

 

This thesis does not propose abandoning the city’s identity. Rather, it proposes hacking it from the inside—transforming existing infrastructure into a closed-loop urban system that reuses, regenerates, and redefines what it means to live and consume in Las Vegas.

 

• Vacant hotels and casinos become vertical farms, multi-family housing, and community-scale industry.

• Food waste from resorts powers anaerobic digesters, producing methane for energy and nutrient-rich slurry for agriculture.

• Water vapor from dehumidification is recaptured and reused in a tightly controlled, circular water system.

• Agriculture is brought inside, vertically stacked, and lit using passive and active strategies to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

 

The proposal envisions Las Vegas not as a cautionary tale—but as a laboratory for post-carbon living, where indulgence and responsibility are not mutually exclusive.

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Design Strategy: Adaptive Infrastructure

 

At the center of the design is the adaptive reuse of a tower on the Strip. Existing hospitality infrastructure is reprogrammed as:

 

• Vertical agriculture chambers for leafy greens and high-efficiency crops

• Marketplaces and kitchens for local food production and distribution

• Mixed-use living units replacing empty hotel suites

• Community gathering zones embedded in what were once spas and ballrooms

 

A diagrid structural system provides stability and modular flexibility for reprogramming. Passive design principles—orientation, thermal zoning, solar gain control—are layered with advanced systems like geothermal heating, waste-powered generators, and LED grow lights.

 

The tower becomes a living machine, feeding itself and its surrounding community.

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Sustainable Hedonism: A Cultural Shift

 

This thesis redefines sustainability not as austerity, but as a reorganization of pleasure around systems of care, reciprocity, and resilience. In this future Vegas, luxury is found in access to fresh food, shared energy, clean water, and community engagement.

 

Rather than rely on distant resources, the city turns inward—producing what it consumes and reinventing its economy from spectacle to sustenance. Local production and trade replace imports. A city once known for escape becomes a city of engaged urban life.

 

If Las Vegas is to survive climate change, economic volatility, and resource scarcity, it must evolve—not incrementally, but fundamentally. This thesis offers a speculative, yet grounded vision of how that evolution could unfold: through the reuse of what already exists, the empowerment of communities, and a radical redefinition of value.

 

In doing so, it suggests that the most unsustainable city in America may yet become its most innovative.