The perfect suburb (or so they say)

I am angry at my neighborhood. My suburban unrest is not because I have a gossiper next-door. Not because a fellow down the street starts his lawn mower at 6 a.m. on Saturdays. And not because the people in the cul-de-sac park their 50-foot recreational vehicle so no one can turn around. I am mad because my neighborhood is consuming nature at an alarming rate.

It didn't strike me, at first, that I would be unhinged by so many bulldozers as they steamed toward the desert northwest of Las Vegas. I didn't look out the window of my beige house, in my beige subdivision to the beige desert and say, 'My, I think I will miss that place.'

I did, after all, just leave the lush and plentiful hamlet of Level Green, a rolling (not level) and colorful (yes, green) suburb just outside Allegheny County. Our hilltop property boasted the violet and magenta of rhododendron, the garish scented whites and pinks of fruit trees, the heady reds of a few rose bushes. I spent hours atop a churning lawn tractor, attempting to tame the ever-growing grass, never winning. So why would I care about the departure of our homogenized Southwest environment•

Slowly, however, I started to get acquainted with the desert. I had this old-time-cowboy-flick concept of what the desert would be like: tumbleweeds dancing across sandy expanses interrupted only by the occasional cactus, with not a touch a color.

But I was wrong, and I can thank my dogs and my children for taking me out to the land of agaves and coyotes, all disappearing as sprawl Vegas-style takes over.

Our house borders a maddening construction blitz unlike any I have ever experienced. Our charming little subdivision was only partially completed when we moved in, a fact I didn't consider to be much of anything, until the construction equipment, hundreds of laborers, and lunch trucks staked their claim on every inch of the street for 12 hours a day. Thus, the decision came: Walk fearfully through the often dangerous construction zone with two skittish dogs and three curious children, or find a safer and more interesting place.

The park was ruled out immediately (too many kids coming up with bids to pet our dogs and, you want me to pick up their waste with a bag?), sidewalks were our next option, (is there space for a double baby jogger, a Lab and a greyhound, a 6-year-old and a mom?), but at last we found it: the last frontier of Las Vegas ... or so I thought.

Beyond the western beltway construction, beyond the construction of three bordering subdivisions, and beyond the broad vista of the northwest region of Las Vegas, is our new walking place: the desert.

Yes, it can be dusty, but the horizon, as it touches the La Madre Mountains and opens to a pink sunset, is absolutely stunning. Deep ravines, carved by flowing seasonal (and short-lived) rain, make meandering paths, rocky hills are dotted with cactus, and several dry plants crouch next to the earth, hiding from the sun. In the spring, wildflowers dot the greenish-brown expanse. The high desert is the kind of playground my family looks for: open, earthy, habitat-heavy.

But, in approximately a year, the spot where I stop and draw a scorching deep breath and gaze at the red sandstone rocks of nearby Red Rock Canyon, will be someone's beige house, probably very much like our own.

In a fleeting rush of realization of this fact, I want to be an environmentalist, an urban planner, a policymaker who could end this dreadful land consumption, or a developer who decides to give back the 5,000 acres he bought from the Bureau of Land Management because his conscience haunts him. Yeah, that will happen.

I do not however, want to be the coyotes, jack rabbits, wild burros and ground squirrels we see frequently. Their houses do not have climate control and a kidney-shaped pool. Their houses, well, they won't have any next year.

So sprawl is any easy enemy here. The environmental damage will not just be tallied with wildlife; our own fragile lungs will be choking down the products of the 1.5 million people, many of whom will be driving longer in their cars on the growing matrix of highways. When you look down on the infamous Las Vegas Strip from our 4,000-foot vantage point, a yellow haze hangs over the valley like smoke over gaming tables as gamblers puff nervously, hoping for the big win.

But you see, there's the thing. The gaming industry (the politically correct catch-all term for gambling, casinos, partying during conventions and the like) is a booming business. It is a business that requires employees. And employees need a place to live - a quiet place ... away from the bright lights, in the suburbs somewhere. Ahhh. Do you get the picture•

Las Vegas' own prosperity is fueling the housing debate: Is it sprawl when the houses are needed• Is it an urban design issue or progress on testosterone• Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the country because of jobs. Workers need houses. The City of Las Vegas Web page, a tribute to the homey side of the city, includes this dubious claim: 'New housing developments, schools, parks and shopping centers have transformed the once barren desert landscape surrounding Las Vegas into an oasis of prosperity.'

I have several problems with this statement: Who says the desert is barren• And, in this oasis-making process, how much water will be wasted to create the feeling that we are living in a lush, green environment• Hello, Las Vegas: The desert is not so repulsive that it needs to be tamed or transformed.

One of my other issues is more complicated: In this enthusiastic rush to create more houses (read: earn developers more bucks), services and education are lagging behind. Many schoolchildren attend school in 'portables,' windowless-trailers made into classrooms, because schools are overcrowded. Parks and playgrounds are scant given the number of children here. (Did developers think that all those 4,000 square-foot houses would have two adult residents?) Social service agencies that help the growing number of needy residents - homeless people, aging seniors, at-risk youth, domestic crisis victims - are feeling growing pains, and there is a shortage of charitable funds to catch up with the population.

Alas, there is not a shortage of a few things: houses, malls, restaurants and casinos.

My neighborhood is called 'America's premier master-planned community.' I say the planning is all in real estate. Build more houses, and they will come.

Carl Pope, Sierra Club executive director, introduced his organization's 1999 Sprawl Report with this statement: '... Blessed with lands that seemed limitless, challenged to 'go west' and tame our wilderness, our history, our 'manifest destiny,' has been to clear the forests, cut roads through rock, pave and plow our country, and create cities ... and we got good at it. Too good.'

So now, as I wander on the arid but beautiful terrain I have come to appreciate, realizing that houses will soon occupy our dog-walking place, I think about how good local developers are at taming our wilderness. Apparently they are as good as Las Vegas entertainment icons Siegfried and Roy are at taming tigers.

I don't know if anything can stop the growth here. I am thinking that when all these shoddily built stucco homes crumble in 40 years there will be a wasteland, missing the subtle beauty of the desert and the bawdy lights of the Strip. All that will be left is an afterthought: Maybe we shouldn't have done this.

Janit Gorka Stahl is a Las Vegas free-lance writer for the Tribune-Review.