2016 UAA Annual Conference

In a globalizing world, the spaces around international boundaries are increasingly complex. On the one hand, border regions have become magnets for what might be generally labeled “cross-border integration,” in the form of labor markets, trade relationships, tourism flows, cultural exchanges or ecosystems that call for innovation. Scholars have thus begun to understand cross-border space, not as a zone that merely separates two nations and needs to be defended, but as a setting for “debordering” or the removal of fortified boundaries. On the other hand, global terrorism, border crime, narcotics smuggling and other developments have caused some nations to engage in what scholars term “rebordering”, the building of new fences, walls and other forms of border security. Given these different forces at play we are moving toward an era of “bordering dynamics,” the interplay of the forces that seek to reinsert the physical border as a kind of barrier, and those that would imagine cross-border daily urban systems or what some call the “transfrontier metropolis.” This panel addresses the question of urban planning across borders in this context, and will tackle four perspectives, at different scales, from micro to macro: first, the idea of building models of shared food, water and energy systems in the context of climate change and cross-border metropolitan space. A second paper explores an ecological revitalization plan for the cross-border river zone in the Tijuana-San Diego metropolis. A third paper examines the dialectic between urban planning of the border crossing zone and downtown Tijuana, illustrating the ongoing conflicts between neighboring spaces that are seemingly integrated but divided by global politics. The final paper offers a geopolitical and theoretical exploration of the notions of rebordering and debordering in the 21st century.

Climate Change and the Food-Energy-Water Trilemma: Challenges for Planning in the US-Mexico Border Region
Keith Pezzoli, University of California, San Diego

Tijuana Solar River: Ecological Restoration Along the Border
Rene Peralta, Woodbury University

Placemaking, the New Debordering and the Resurgence of Tijuana, Mexico
Lawrence Herzog, San Diego State University

The Cross-Border Metropolis Caught Between Debordering and Rebordering: A Plea for a Reflexive Urbanism
Christophe Sohn, Luxembourg Institute of Socio- Economic Research