The Tijuana Approach

For several miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, the wall separating San Diego and Tijuana is made from old metal landing pads used by the U.S. Army during the first Gulf War. The metal sheets driven upright into the dirt are six inches north of the actual border, a half-foot into U.S. territory, creating a very narrow no-man’s strip for about 20 miles. Its width is roughly equal to the length of a new pencil.

It is these forgotten spaces that fascinate Teddy Cruz. A San Diego-based architect who was raised in Guatemala and educated in Mexico City, Cruz believes in loose design: If you indiscriminately give unstructured spaces over to the masses, they will find a use for them. As San Diego sets itself back from the wall, Tijuana crashes up against it, using it as a backyard fence, a fourth wall of a house or a memorial shrine. He wants to bring that free-for-all functionality to el norte.

I drove my rental car across the border in late afternoon to meet Cruz at the Tijuana airport, where he was flying in from Mexico City. He was to give me a tour of what he calls “informalities” in the shantytowns and slums on the outskirts of Tijuana — the places that inspire him to create mixed-use housing projects in San Diego. He often tours Tijuana to watch the evolution of the suburbs. He knows Tijuana well, so I handed the car keys over to him. He promptly got us lost.

“I wanted to avoid downtown traffic, and I got into this,” he said, trying to navigate the knot of bypasses and ramps and detours to get to the rapida — the highway that will take us out of the city. “Tijuana is a labyrinth.”

We’d gotten caught in what makes Tijuana so interesting to Cruz. Compared to San Diego with its street grids, gated communities and downtown revitalization plans, Tijuana is a mess. Municipal oversight is minimal. Developers and maquilladores — large international factories — often get carte blanche to build however they please. But within the chaotic lack of planning are small fissures individuals can exploit.

When we broke free of the downtown snarl and headed to the edge of the city, Cruz pointed to a shantytown creeping up a large hill. These are parachuters — people invading unused land and building housing out of whatever they can find: Tires, garage doors, signs, pallet racks. When enough people invade, they petition the city to bring in services like a line of electricity. We drove for miles along one of these recently paved boulevards and passed hundreds of businesses — mechanics, day cares, barbers, pharmacies, pizzerias, groceries, shops of every description. It’s a sea of signage.

“Look at this!” Cruz said as he waved out of the window. “A huge economy of small businesses! In the informal organization of these environments there is a strong entrepreneurial energy.” Cruz was quick to concede there are a lot of problems in these shantytowns that don’t merit romanticizing, but “There is a lot of opportunity here, people shaping their own economies.” He pointed out a three-story mall with every unit occupied.

Cruz wants to give that power to people in San Diego. He is developing a high-density, mixed-use housing development in San Ysidro, about 15 miles north of the border. By haggling with San Diego city government to waive a number of zoning codes and building permits, he and a nonprofit community organization called Casa Familiar are planning a two-square-block compound of housing, parks, walkways, a community center and “informal” spaces with no pre-determined purpose. It’s those spaces that city planning departments are wary of. Cruz says these spaces will evolve into gathering spaces, small businesses and impromptu housing by the will of the residents.

A question, however, looms: Does anybody want to live in community housing modeled after high-density slums of Tijuana? There is evidence to suggest the answer is no. The American dream of a single-family home is strong, especially among new Mexican immigrants. Even to Mexicans in Mexico. As soon as those parachuters get city services, developers start building en masse. What they build are tiny McMansions — acres and acres of 250-square-foot boxes that look like neo-classical suburban homes in miniature, even with a two-foot setback and separated from one another by about eight inches.

“The developers are being intelligent — they are selling what people want,” said Cruz. “You are selling an individual house on an individual lot. That’s the dream.” The price for the dream is a neighborhood with no transportation services, no parks, no schools. It is still just a shantytown dressed up like a Levittown.

We drove up a hill to get a 180-degree vista of this development, and Cruz showed me how the American dream is evolving itself into a Mexican reality. To the right were the newly constructed beige stucco houses looking like a grid of Monopoly board pieces. To the left was the same development, but a little older. The older neighborhoods are more colorful, and the houses have expanded out from their faux neo-classical boxiness. They melded together as residents have created small businesses in the front and added housing additions to the rear. Property line distinctions blur. There are informal economies, and impromptu communities and unfettered interaction.

Cruz said the people will create what works, even as developers still sell the dream. “They are ignoring what makes these places vital — the willingness of people to co-exist in density.” The future of the architect, as Cruz sees it, is to design an urban process rather than a space. Give them a foundation, and people will make their own space.