Reno’s Neon Line: Interrogating an urban imaginary

The way urban spaces are imagined has significant implications for the way cities are developed and redeveloped. In 2017, Jacobs Entertainment announced the development of the ‘Neon Line District’ in the western portion of downtown Reno, Nevada. To develop this space, Jacobs purchased and demolished many of the neighbourhoods’ historic motels, which had become a stock of housing of last resort for the city. The purpose of this research is to interrogate that space between the discursive representations of the Neon Line neighbourhood and the material spaces constructed and deconstructed based on those imaginaries. Drawing on literatures on the production of urban space, urban semiotics and urban imaginaries, I developed a multi-method approach to compare the content of the texts of the urban landscape to the social texts produced about it. I found that parallel representations of the space were presented to the public, with representations of the neighbourhood as a site of urban decay being amplified and the new ‘Neon Line’ imaginary being presented as a solution. The developers use of Reno’s historic neon and art from Burning Man suggests the new arts district created has been so for the purposes of attracting tourists with representations of ‘Reno-ness’, while the construction of hostile architecture amidst the Neon Line highlights the reconfiguring of who and what gets to be the public in this neighbourhood meant to revitalize the city. This research highlights the potency of urban imaginaries in shaping the urban material through practices of urban revitalization and the ways that social space is constructed simultaneously through the material and the discursive.