Southern Nevada is a place that seems to grow faster than the speed of sound. Just as you utter the words "Wait, what if ..." the idea's already moved on, long out of contemplation range. This could keep you up nights if you're an architect or planner. At the very least, questions might pop into your head while you're stuck in traffic, staring at the nondescript strip mall next to you, and wondering what could have been in a utopian version of the "City of the 21st Century."

Could we ¡V all of us in Southern Nevada ¡V have preserved the washes as a system of trails and wildlife corridors? Could we have designed pedestrian- and bike-friendly neighborhoods? Could we have avoided commercial strips and built truly interesting places to do business?

Such are the issues that Mark Hoversten occasionally mulls, perhaps with more frustration than the average Las Vegan. He's the coordinator of UNLV's landscape architecture & planning program, a program with a unique emphasis on landscape architecture and planning.

So, Hoversten sees the deficiencies in our altered vistas. He knows they could have been prevented with more dialogue and alternatives built into the process.

"Of course, I wish we could have been involved earlier," he says. "On the other hand, you have to be an optimist in this discipline. This state still offers plenty of challenges ¡V both theoretical and practical challenges. All you can do is make a difference when and where you can."

In its brief existence, the program has. And whether you know it or not, the program is touching you.

Planning Evangelist

The landscape architecture & planning program is unusual because it has only two full-time faculty members, Hoversten and Daniel Ortega. A cadre of 17 adjunct professors, all professionals working in the community, also instruct the 70-plus students in the program. It also has four grant-sponsored research associates, including Beth Scott, who, because Hoversten is stuck in morning rush-hour traffic, begins the rundown on what this collection of people is accomplishing together.

They're guiding the landscape and aesthetics master plan for the Nevada Department of Transportation. They helped drive the Las Vegas Springs Preserve idea. They're identifying needs and producing designs to improve recreation areas around Lake Mead for the National Park Service. Through an outreach studio, they come up with design solutions for problems facing Nevada communities from Boulder City to the Carson Valley...

As Scott wraps up the litany of accomplishments, Hoversten walks in, apologizes for Interstate 15, and asks where we are in the discourse. Hearing that we've just laid the foundation for what the program's all about, he says, "Good, now I can give you the propaganda!"

But Hoversten is more preacher than propagandist. He's a man who not only acts like he loves his work but who has seen the light of opportunity for landscape architecture in Nevada. He lives to spread the word.

The Minnesota native, who eventually came to the Mojave Desert to help Summerlin as a land-planning manager, jumped on board with UNLV's fledgling program 13 years ago and has developed it into something that speaks nicely for itself without the need for hyperbole. Well, maybe a little doesn't hurt.

"In the last four years, our students have won six national studio design awards," he says. "Pound for pound that's the best in the country! And this little research office we have here has won seven or eight awards in the last eight years. So as far as bragging rights, we're doing really, really well."

The program's success stems in part from what Hoversten calls a "model in academia in which your research and teaching are seamless." Teaching one thing while researching another, by default, makes one secondary to the other. "A good model is teaching what you're researching, researching what you're teaching ¡V all while your students are doing projects related to the research."

This model, he adds, is used in other departments around the campus, too, from history to anthropology to engineering. It connects learning to the real world and, in turn, the real world (especially Nevada) gets what it really needs when the students graduate: future employees who are prepared with more than textbook learning.

"The beauty," Hoversten says, "is that you get the theory and the experience."

Out of the Classroom, Into the World

That Jude Mendez landed a job as project coordinator for one of the state's top landscape architecture firms is a prime example of this model in academia.

Mendez's culminating student project was a Cottonwood Cove camping area near Lake Mojave that the National Park Service wasn't sure what to do with. "It was a desolate landscape with hardly anything growing out there except for some plant materials and shade trees not native to the area," he recalls. "I did a lot of research on the site ¡V I learned about the Native Americans who used to live there, the soils, the mining history. I tried to do everything I could to restore the native plants and make it an educational campground."

That project won Mendez a national award. For no cost, the Park Service had a plan, and then turned to the private sector to implement it. J.W. Zunino got the bid, then hired UNLV's award-winning student to carry out his vision after graduation in 2002.

Each year, students in the outreach studio provide design services for government agencies and communities. In 2002, for example, fourth-year students developed 20 project designs for the Carson Valley, from community facilities for the Washoe Tribe to a railway link between Minden and Carson City.

The studio's resources also are applied on campus. Last year, students and researchers developed plans for the Paradise campus, the home for the Division of Educational Outreach. It sits on the southeast corner of Tropicana Avenue and Swenson Street, one of the busiest corners in the Las Vegas Valley, and offers passersby a first impression of UNLV.

And once a year the studio takes on a project for the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. On the research office walls, drawings and diagrams show how to make trailheads more enticing and practical. The plan to revamp Boulder Beach not only beautifies and reorganizes its park and campground, but encourages more thoughtful interaction between man and nature.

"The students get guidance from the faculty members and the Park Service to do cutting-edge research," Hoversten says. "The Park Service can't go out and hire somebody to do the projects they need because they don't know what they want done. We help them find out what they want done."

Mendez finished his final Cottonwood Cove design for Zunino over the summer, and the new campground should start taking shape next year. But, as the jump between even the most practical schooling and the bottom-line real world is seldom perfect, don't expect the results to fully reflect Mendez's best-laid plan. "There were budget constraints," he sighs.

Heart and Soul

The landscape architecture & planning program is nonetheless a godsend to budget-conscious agencies. In the past five years, it's provided more than half a million dollars of in-kind planning and design services throughout Nevada. On top of that, Hoversten points out, the program did not compete with the private sector to implement these design strategies, but rather, generated $12 million in new business for local firms.

Occasionally, the faculty and staff take on small design jobs in the name of community service. These tend to be elementary school courtyard projects such as the Sensory Garden at Thornton, the Xeriscape Garden at McDoniel, and the Biblical Garden at Las Vegas Hebrew Academy. "The schools need them so much," Hoversten says. "They're small enough not to demand too much time, and frankly, people love them. If we're going to do a free job, we're going to do something that people love."

But grant-sponsored research on largescale projects ¡V land, water, roads, environment ¡V is where the program has the broadest impact. "We're effective right now," Hoversten says, "but I think in another five years, we're really going to emerge.

"And this," he adds, "is an important time."

For at least two reasons. Las Vegas' Centennial is approaching, and for that occasion Hoversten and company have already accomplished one mission: helping launch the project to preserve the city's birthplace, the Las Vegas Springs Preserve. (That project is involving others on campus as well, including the public history program. More on that program can be found in the Spring 2002 issue of the magazine at magazine.unlv.edu.)

The second has to do with an issue that haunts our growing-pained region: transportation. The chief target is the highway system, which Gov. Kenny Guinn ranks among the "most visible artifacts of our civilization."

So far, Hoversten's aim has been pretty good. "Three years ago, we were 30 years behind the rest of the nation in terms of how we did business," he says, "and today we're within a couple of years of being cutting-edge."

As with the Water District's Las Vegas Springs Preserve, the UNLV program was dealing with an agency that knew it needed some mechanism for including landscape and aesthetics in its plans, but didn't know how to approach it, Hoversten says. So, after researching highway programs across the country, UNLV worked with the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) to form a master plan that finally, starting in 2002, placed aesthetic and landscape issues alongside structural design and engineering.

For one thing, this means less guesswork. NDOT can better predict costs and timelines, and the themes, colors, and textures have been carefully established. "They're no longer reinventing the wheel each time they do a project," Hoversten says.

For those behind the wheel, the drive is more pleasant. "But pleasant is not just frou-frouing it up to make it prettier. Landscape architecture helps you know when your corner is coming up; it helps you know when you should slow down. It's called way-finding."

The lesson is that landscape and aesthetics are integral to design, not added on, Hoversten says. The master plan forces NDOT to look at the surrounding area. Sure, adding new lanes is important, he says. "But what about a pedestrian bridge? Are we dividing a neighborhood in a way we shouldn't? Are we dividing a wildlife habitat? And what do we do about that? The master plan asks those questions and reminds them that there are always alternatives. It helps them make informed decisions."

State officials are beyond grateful for UNLV's role in the master plan, which won the 2002 American Planning Association award for Outstanding Plan in Nevada. "It's a revolutionary document, and we couldn't have done it without them," says Jim Souba, NDOT's assistant chief road design engineer. "It's a visionary plan that sets the overall tone of what we're going to do. It forms the heart and soul of the program."

The agency has just started to roll out the plan along major highway corridors, with the early fruits of these labors evident at the Interstate 15 and Sahara Avenue interchange. The plan's vision could take decades to mature, Souba says, "but you've got to start somewhere. Eventually we'll have a world-class interstate system with landscape values and themes that are reflective of the people and character of the state of Nevada."

What are people saying so far? To quote the most common input from public transportation meetings, "It's about time."

More specifically: "I think it will make a lot of difference in people's land values and quality of life," said Boulder City resident Bill Rowe. "It's high time people started paying attention."

Converting the Masses

Of course, transportation isn't the only battle in Nevada. It falls in a group of issues that Hoversten calls "the most important design challenges facing Nevada and the intermountain West." He lists urban growth, surface drainage, parks and open space, livable neighborhoods, management of public lands, water conservation, and urban design.

His flock of faculty and students tackle what they can, hoping each big issue comes with a grant so they can serve their state. And soon.

For instance: "What will happen if the Ivanpah airport opens?" Hoversten asks. "We should be doing some projections. If we build it out this way, what's going to happen? Or if we build it out that way, is this going to happen? That's our role."

Same for that drought issue you may have heard about.

Besides pounding water-conscious ways into the students who'll be planning and designing our desert's future, Hoversten wants to study how much water various landscape designs require. "That's important and exciting," he says. "The Bureau of Recreation, the Water Authority, and all of the landscape associations have an interest in what such a study will reveal. Right now there's a lot of by-guessing and by-goshing going on. The hard data combined with the artful, graceful approach has not been put forth. That's what landscape architecture can do; it can bridge those areas."

By now, that should sound like more than just some scholarly theory, and Hoversten has earned a number of believers by successfully practicing what he preaches.

"My work with UNLV has been one of the most professionally rewarding experiences I've ever had," NDOT's Souba testifies. "I have a tremendous amount of respect for the capability and knowledge and talent of what I call 'Team UNLV.' They're smart and super dependable. Every time I meet with them they exceed my expectations."