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<\/center><\/p>\n\u00a0\u201cYou have to promise not to drink the Kool-Aid there.\u201d That\u2019s what a colleague familiar with Las Vegas\u2019s infamous \u201cDowntown Project\u201d told me just before I went out to experience this outlandish experiment in urban revival for myself.<\/p>\n
Certainly, the $350m (\u00a3225m) investment in businesses and other spaces in the city\u2019s depressed core by multi-millionaire internet entrepreneur and retailer Tony Hsieh is in a fragile state. Some of the\u00a0excitement and acclaim<\/a>\u00a0that met the effort at its beginning in 2012 has already congealed into a mixture of ridicule, schadenfreude and plain confusion: did Hsieh really think he could run a city like an internet startup? What did he really intend in the first place? And has he already abandoned ship?<\/p>\n
Hsieh\u2019s story, one well-told among American urbanists, resonates with the country\u2019s culture on several levels. The Harvard-educated child of Taiwanese immigrants became rich in the late 1990s when Microsoft purchased LinkExchange, the internet advertising firm he had founded after ditching his corporate job.<\/p>\n
Hsieh\u2019s subsequent foray into venture capitalism led to his investment in the idea of an online shoe store, which soon morphed into the \u201cservice company that just happens to sell shoes\u201d (in Hsieh\u2019s own description) now better known as Zappos. When he brought his company to downtown\u00a0Las Vegas<\/a>, Hsieh also brought his entrepreneurial spirit, his reputation as an unpretentious bon vivant, and his media-friendly sense of spectacle. Furthermore, he brought his interest in privately creating a new start for the city\u2019s depressed centre \u2013 its original gambling district, before the supercharged Strip took over.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n