When 89-year-old Jane Jacobs died last week, she was almost unanimously eulogized as the most influential urban planning theorist of the postwar era. Sadly, however, for the millions of us who live west of the Appalachians, there is little physical evidence to support this claim.

In 1961, Jacobs authored "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," a scathing indictment of the Modernist urban planning doctrine that dominated how cities developed in the 20th century. The book was a best seller and sparked impassioned battles over the best ways to build -- and rebuild -- urban neighborhoods. Jacobs, also a spirited activist, is credited with thwarting construction of an expressway through Lower Manhattan in the early '60s.

Basing her conclusions on observing neighborhoods in action and interviewing the people living there, Jacobs championed urban areas that today might be called "mixed use." Her explorations revealed that the most functional neighborhoods were dense, diverse and a little messy. A neighborhood was healthier and safer, she found, when residents walked the streets and kids played in the parks. She celebrated architecture built on a "human scale."

Jacobs castigated planners whose ideas encouraged isolation and empty streets. She condemned "decentrists" who "created monotonous, unnourishing gruel." She called for a more practical, sociological approach to urban planning rather than the "dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order."

Jacobs was indeed a visionary "thinker," as The New York Times simply and aptly described her. "Death and Life" is an essential part of the canon for architecture and urban planning students. It also inspired the "Neighborhood Watch" concept, which argues that a bustling street is safer than an empty one.

But while Jacobs was iconic in academia, her reach did not extend to the development of cities in the American West. Her planning principles certainly are difficult to find in Las Vegas. In fact, the very development trends she criticized in 1961 remain the norm throughout our valley. Some examples:

• Las Vegas development patterns discourage walking. Pedestrians put themselves in danger crossing streets here. Parents don't let their young children walk or bike to school because they fear for their lives.

• Las Vegas neighborhoods are designed to separate people, not bring them together. Many of us don't know our neighbors because our subdivisions serve as deterrents to interaction. Rather than sitting on a front porch, we hide in our walled back yards.

• Many Las Vegas parks are sparsely used because they are isolated from surrounding neighborhoods rather than integrated logically. The small parks routinely built in newer subdivisions often are deserted islands, built to satisfy government open space requirements rather than serve the interests of the people living nearby.

• The condo towers rising in Las Vegas are anathema to Jacobs' call for development on a human scale. Don't count on families raising kids or neighbors getting together for barbecues in these monuments to conspicuous consumption.

• The long-struggling Neonopolis entertainment center in downtown Las Vegas is a classic case of planners not observing human patterns and then integrating the project with its surroundings. Situated at the east end of the Fremont Street Experience, Neonopolis should be a natural gathering place for the thousands of tourists who walk along the promenade every day. Instead, Neonopolis presents tourists with a giant wall, urging them to venture on down Fremont into the seedy -- and yet lively -- Sixth Street no-man's-land. Jacobs surely would have observed traffic patterns on Fremont Street and recommended opening up Neonopolis, naturally drawing pedestrians into the complex.

• The Las Vegas Monorail has a similar flaw. Mass transit is a vital element of a large city, but only if the system takes people where they want to go. The monorail, in its current form, doesn't provide a practical service to anyone. It's little more than a slow-moving thrill ride, providing unobstructed views of the backsides of Strip resorts.

Las Vegas is hardly unique. After all, it's patterned after development in Southern California and Phoenix. Echoing those population centers, Las Vegas isn't really a city at all, but a giant suburb in which most people have little choice but to spend an ever-increasing share of their hard-earned money on $3-per-gallon gasoline.

All that said, Jacobs' beliefs could, in time, bear fruit in Las Vegas. Jacobs was a major influence on the New Urbanism movement, in which neighborhoods are built in the prewar style, designed to encourage walking and neighborly interaction.

Las Vegas can't really say it has a New Urbanist neighborhood today. The District, the pedestrian mall adjacent to the Green Valley Ranch hotel-casino, is a pleasant enough destination, but it's more a marketing concept than a genuine New Urbanist project. While condos occupy space above the shops and restaurants -- thus "mixed use" -- they aren't exactly integrated into a functional neighborhood. The condo residents can't run downstairs to a drugstore or a dry cleaner. If they want to buy a funky birthday present, Sharper Image might have what they need, but what if they need a loaf of bread? Forget it.

But a few more authentic projects are in the works. The most ambitious, Inspirada, is being planned in the southwest part of Henderson. Focus Property Group professes a commitment to New Urbanist principles in designing the 2,000-acre community. It even hired one of the movement's best-known figures as a consultant. So, at the very least, the development will be a significant departure from the usual routine: acres upon acres of bland, car-centric tract homes with strip malls at the major intersections.

Just don't expect Focus to go the distance with Jane Jacobs. Inspirada is more likely to resemble a denser version of Summerlin than the scruffy charm of 1960s-era Greenwich Village.

Geoff Schumacher (gschumacher@review journal.com) is the Stephens Media Group's director of community publications. His column appears Sunday.