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.
