Virgin Trains USA Vice President Bob O’Malley told delegates at the Nevada Economic Development Conference that design work was 30% complete and that the proposed line between the Las Vega strip and Victorville, on the northeast outskirts of Los Angeles, would be using the Virgin Trains’ Florida project as its model. The line will span [185 miles] with trains travelling up to [149 miles] per hour, which would clock a journey time of approximately 75 minutes. — Construction Global

The damage from the housing crisis — a toxic combination of frenzied buying, rampant construction, predatory lending and investment excess — was extensive. Of the 23,000 single-family homes in the 89031 ZIP code, more than 7,500 have had at least one foreclosure since 2006, according to Attom Data Solutions. — NYT

The Madison Square Garden Company (MSG) confirmed on Friday that it wants to build the Sphere, a glazed orb with up to 18,000 seats and room for 5,000 standing, beside the Olympic Park in east London.

Designs of a similar “sphere” planned for Las Vegas suggest that the vault of the roof will become a giant screen for vast projections, which could evoke the sensation of being underwater or in a forest. — The Guardian

Now, decades after the original hardcover edition sold out, the MIT Press is publishing a facsimile edition of the original large-format Cooper-designed edition of Learning from Las Vegas, complete with translucent glassine wrap. This edition also features a spirited preface by Denise Scott Brown, looking back on the creation of the book and explaining her and Robert Venturi’s reservations about the original design. — MIT Press

After a large solar array, Boulder Solar 1, came online on Dec. 12, the city was able to buy enough carbon-free electricity to power its 140 buildings, streetlights and other facilities. [...]

The renewables, plus energy efficiency savings, are estimated to save the city roughly $5 million per year [...]

The Vegas city council, after threatening to leave the grid entirely in 2015, struck a deal with NV Energy that would help the city get to 100% renewable. — qz.com

Faraday Future’s future is looking bleaker.

After the electric car start-up failed to pay millions of dollars in bills, its contractor Monday halted work on Faraday’s $1-billion North Las Vegas, Nev., car factory. [...] The contractor is Aecom, the Los Angeles-based engineering giant. [...]

Faraday failed to pay $21 million due to Aecom in September and owed $25 million in October and $12 million in November, according to Aecom. — latimes.com

Aecom, America’s largest design engineer, will have its skills tested with a contract to build a high-tech factory for Chinese electric vehicle start-up Faraday Future (FF) in Las Vegas.

The work will have a construction value of $500m, signed on a guaranteed maximum price basis, but FF has said in the past it wants the factory built in half the normal time.

In all, FF is reported to be investing $1bn in its new plant. — Global Construction Review

Critics point to a less-than-robust tech scene, layoffs and shuttered businesses as major stumbling blocks, while others applaud the community's transformation. [...]

"The other thing that we would have done differently, knowing what we know now, is really made our goals much more explicit," Hsieh said.

For example, he would have put "collisions" — serendipitous encounters between individuals who can drive innovation — ahead of co-learning, connectedness and even return on investment. — cnbc.com

We suspect the city’s notoriously bad traffic and general “aloofness” of the people contributed to its low ranking, as well as its culinary scene, which was also ranked dead last in this year’s poll. — Travel + Leisure

Las Vegas’s recovery, like America’s, seems to have to come to the wealthiest first. [...]

But Sin City’s recovery shows the enduring ability of America to make improbable ideas work. Some 2m people live in a glittering, sprawling city deep in the desert and hardly think that this is strange. And with its mix of tech-obsessed yuppies, ageing baby-boomer gamblers and thrusting Hispanics, its demography resembles America’s future. — economist.com

Al describes CityCenter as the product of “the Bilbao effect: the notion that buildings designed by celebrity architects bring in tourists, and in particular a higher-end type of visitor”. MGM’s version was to bring in name-brand architects such as Daniel Libeskind, Helmut Jahn and Norman Foster [...].

“It goes against the casino design convention,” Al says, “by having towers that let in natural light and meet the street the way buildings do in other cities” – with retail spaces, not gaming. — theguardian.com