A group of civic leaders has called for government officials to lead and a greater involvement by the gaming industry in deal ing with Southern Nevada's growth-related challenges.

Sustainability is the battle cry of the Las Vegas chapter of the Urban Land Institute, which recently hosted a conference on creating a vision for the region. Speakers talked about the need for changing the tax structure and greater conservation to deal with the region's problems.

Don Snyder, chairman of the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, said it takes leadership to address growth-related problems, but he doesn't know where it's going to come from.

It should start with Gov. Jim Gibbons, he said.

"We need to decide what we need to do as a community," Snyder said. "I have been in Nevada for 21 years, and Nevada has been the fastest growing for 20 of 21 of those years. I am tired of being at the bottom of every good list and the top of every bad list. I am tired of talking about us being the largest community in North America without and fill in the blank. We have a lot that needs to be done, and it needs to be done with a long-term vision."

Transportation and the availability of water are the two biggest issues facing the region, said Dan Van Epp, owner of Van Epp Cos. Water will get a lot more attention in the next two years because it has the potential to limit the region's growth, said Van Epp, who suggested the community must get on the bandwagon of conservation with more stringent controls on the use of water.

In addition, greater emphasis is needed on expanding the modes of transportation and building denser communities that are walkable, he said.

"We made a big mistake a couple of years ago when we walked away from the notion of mass transit," Van Epp said.

Jacob Snow, general manager of the Regional Transportation Commission, said it takes money and political will to deal with transportation problems, which will increase with rising gasoline prices.

"This is a tough town to sell transit in," Snow said. "Parking is free almost everywhere you go, and the high cost of gasoline is going to hurt all of us and have a negative impact on the tourism industry."

Snow said stakeholders must understand that the success of the Strip and the success of downtown Las Vegas are tied to the success of the community.

"I think we are doing much better at that than we were 20 years ago," Snow said. "We still have a long way to go. I still think the economic interest of the resort corridor is, in many people's minds, divorced from the rest of the community. We need to do a better job of bringing those people in to do sustainable planning and visioning planning."

For example, Snow said Southern Nevada needs to change the way it develops. He cited Queensridge as an example of a residential community with only two ways in and out, even for those on foot.

"You can't go anywhere because of the walls," Snow said. "That type of land-use development creates a tremendous amount of automobile dependency and that needs to change."

Snow said Las Vegas has the demographics to support alternative forms of transportation compared to many cities across the country. Salt Lake City, for example, has 700 buses and three light-rail lines compared with 300 buses in Las Vegas. RTC vehicles carried 64 million passengers last year, 10 million more than in Salt Lake City. Ridership in Las Vegas is 40 percent higher than it was in 2002, but the RTC hasn't added a significant level of service, he said.

Many parties have looked at financial solutions as a tax on someone else, but a longer view is needed, Snyder said. After being one of the fastest growing communities in the country, no on should argue that the tax structure that's been in place the past two decades is right for today and is suitable to deal with future growth, he said.

"Part of what we need to do is have a long-term picture of where we want to be and start deconstruction of how we want to spend our money and how we want to raise our money and come up with the best solution," Snyder said. "It is a tough process and takes a tremendous amount of political will."

UNLV has launched a think tank for research and to provide Southern Nevada with guidance on dealing with growth and its effect on transportation, water resources, the environment, workforce housing, economic diversity, the educational system, health systems, parks and recreation, creating a sense of community and addressing other social issues.

Without the investment of the business and gaming community and the political will, there won't be much of a change, said Ron Smith, director of UNLV's Center for Urban Sustainability.

The public hasn't driven that political will because one of the biggest obstacles to overcome is the length of time people have lived in Las Vegas, Smith said. It takes 10 years for people to develop an attachment to their community and want to get involved.

"If we don't value this community; if we don't care about this community; if we cannot create a sense of community, the other things are not going to happen," Smith said. "We are trying to do the right thing to change this, and if we don't bring the larger population around to understand the need for sustainability, it is going to be very difficult to do."