The tunnel people of Las Vegas: How 1,000 live in flooded labyrinth under Sin City's shimmering strip

It seems easy to read this article and feel pity for the article’s subjects: living in underground tunnels is hardly a charmed existence. Conversely, it seems a bit naive to suggest that these people have truly made the choice to live the way they do, or that they should be romanticized for living an unconventional life. 

While reading the article, I was reminded of Michel De Certau’s The Practice of Everyday Life and the chapter about walking through cities. Certau’s book makes a distinction between strategies and tactics, noting that everyday life requires us to use and negotiate the two. Strategies belong to institutions, governments and other bodies that create, in short, the rules of the game. Tactics belong to the individual; they are the means by which we find and exercise our personal power while “playing the game.”

Certau’s point about walking through cities is that although the planners designed them with certain efficiencies or routes in mind, individuals navigate them differently and in ways that are outside the intended design of the city. Whatever their intended purpose was, these people are certainly navigating and using the tunnels in unconventional ways. Tactics in tunnels…

Notes

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