"Don't Fence Me In": Architecture, Tourism, and Segregation in Las Vegas examines the architecture, planning, and social choices that contributed to the creation of a landscape of heightened inequity in Las Vegas, Nevada, from the development of the Westside to the integration of the school district. This study explores patterns of segregation in Las Vegas and considers the communities and architecture, including clubs, schools and churches, as well as the material culture, such as signage, posters and promotional materials, that expand our understanding of segregated living in the desert city. Intermingled histories of image and building reflect the intersections of both the social and built landscape; therefore, my analysis moves between three scales and modes of evidence---the visual and oral, architectural, and the larger scale of the city.

Patterns of discrimination and separation began in the city's earliest days and remnants of these divisions continue to resonate in Las Vegas. Thus, while the period of de facto segregation is the core of this work, chapters are structured chronologically to follow patterns in Las Vegas' racial landscape from the incorporation of the city as a railroad settlement to 1970. These include discussions of Depression-era growth supported by federal investment in the region, the resultant division of labor and community simultaneous with the growth of tourism, creation of the segregated Westside and its clubs and casinos, the opening of the integrated Moulin Rouge, the rise of political resistance in the face of racism, and the results of interstate construction and school district desegregation between 1965 and 1971.

This study takes into account Las Vegas' rich material culture and spatial problematic in order to understand the interrelationship of violence, class, racism, and architectural practice that has produced the city's urban and cultural topography and traces the ways in which architecture and urban spaces were implicated in the struggle to locate opportunities for resistance in the face of rapid urban growth and discrimination.