Learning from Tijuana - teddy Cruz
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Tijuana-San Diego Border
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Problem
A wide variety of ad-hoc uses of land and unique architectural typologies of Tijuana, in Mexico, have infiltrated the formerly homogeneous suburban area in San Diego. Then, how can architecture provide formal affordable housing and other urban typologies while keeping the cultural identity and sociopolitical processes of the area and understand the unique and fluid fabric of the immigrant neighborhood between the border? |
Solution
Study the unique sociopolitical landscape of conflict in the area, including the relevant political and economic exchanges of immigration, resource flows, and land use to inform urban planning and architecture strategies for urbanization and governance: Legalize zoning rules appropriate to the density and income level, institutionalize the immigrant neighborhood traditions by facilitating collaboration between entities. |
Description
The history of the United States can be expressed through the backbone of the immigrant. In fact, what makes the country so charming for many is the melting pot of different cultures, traditions, and styles that comprise it. The influence of Hispanic, African American, European, and Asian cultures to the traditions and identities of many U.S neighborhoods has become common place and expected: Little Havana in Miami, Little Italy in New York, Chinatown in San Francisco, etc. Culture and Society seem to interact with aspects of the city but, what about an architectural practice that also looks at these qualities as principal to the deign process? Architect and urbanist Teddy Cruz is at the forefront of such discourse. He has spent a number of years studying the growing divisions and inequalities evident in the neighboring communities of Tijuana and San Diego in the region spanning the US/mexico border.
While there seems to be an evident "spill-over" of immigrant's land uses from Tijuana to San Diego, there has been little attention at how architecture can respond to these prevailing forces. Cruz' project suggests that true experimental architectures can emerge from the intelligence of social networks and dynamics of informal settlements. He believes "in the potential of these conditions to facilitate more experimental planning processes." His architecture is a realization that, in informal spaces, there are certain procedures that suggest an alternative political economy... yet they are never isolated. New economies and markets can emerge from those interactions, from within those communities, and they can provide models for rethinking how we build. |
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Since 2006, Cruz has organized "Political Equator" conferences that attract designers and artists from around the world. Yet, his ideas still remain on paper.
██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ United States officials, Mexico Officials, Municipality of San Diego and Tijuana, Financial Institutions, Architect Teddy Cruz, Casa Familiar (Non-Profit), Community Members of San Isidro. Environment: rain gardens, solar panels, dynamic urban fabric Multi-use complex with varying building typologies, buildings that contain both housing and adaptable community space, public space sequences that are purposely under-designed so that it can morph with the community’s needs over time, dwellings set upon a concrete frame and share several communal spaces and community center, larger structures linked by architectural elements. |
Lessons
Cruz notes that over the past few decades the populations of greater San Diego and Tijuana have grown at similar rates, yet San Diego has exploded spatially, and now occupies a land area six times that of Tijuana. This is hardly sustainable and a clear sign of inequity between the cities. The projects that have made Cruz famous seek to inject the spirit of Latin American urbanism — its maximization of space and resources and its flexible, bottom-up approach — into North American city-building. In 2011, this work earned Cruz a Ford Foundation Visionaries Award.
It’s also a zoning board’s nightmare, and Cruz has spent years working with officials to amend the local regulations so his project, undertaken with a nonprofit called Casa Familiar, can move forward.
“We basically proposed during the campaign to develop an Incubator for Civic Imagination,” Cruz recalls. “We thought it was a wonderful name — bringing imagination to bureaucracy.” The new incubator would foster ideas not just within government, but also outside it, and would give residents and community groups a stronger voice in city hall. It would also work closely with the municipal government of Tijuana. The incubator would serve as an urban design studio for a reconstituted planning department, but it would be housed in the mayor’s office, reporting to the mayor’s chief of staff.
The need to reinvent new modes of property—and with them new conditions of ownership—is more evident now than ever before. This is not to say that we should go back to the 60s idea of co-op housing; in that model, though people share ownership of units, it remains the static ownership of things—they don't share resources or the means of production. Housing can be more than shelter; in conditions of poverty, it must be connected to micro-infrastructures and socioeconomic support systems. Housing can even be a neighborhood economic engine; it can be a site for the production of new social and cultural relations spawned by pedagogical programming carried out at the scale of the community. In other words, housing cannot be understood in a vacuum. It must be viewed as a relational tool.
Latin America is the only place in the world where governments have attempted to harness the potential of social networks and the dynamics of informal economies in order to rethink urbanization.
The more we inject ambiguity and flexibility into regulations that govern the use of urban space (and decentralize the power structures that implement them), the more it allows them to be adapted to different environments.
It’s also a zoning board’s nightmare, and Cruz has spent years working with officials to amend the local regulations so his project, undertaken with a nonprofit called Casa Familiar, can move forward.
“We basically proposed during the campaign to develop an Incubator for Civic Imagination,” Cruz recalls. “We thought it was a wonderful name — bringing imagination to bureaucracy.” The new incubator would foster ideas not just within government, but also outside it, and would give residents and community groups a stronger voice in city hall. It would also work closely with the municipal government of Tijuana. The incubator would serve as an urban design studio for a reconstituted planning department, but it would be housed in the mayor’s office, reporting to the mayor’s chief of staff.
The need to reinvent new modes of property—and with them new conditions of ownership—is more evident now than ever before. This is not to say that we should go back to the 60s idea of co-op housing; in that model, though people share ownership of units, it remains the static ownership of things—they don't share resources or the means of production. Housing can be more than shelter; in conditions of poverty, it must be connected to micro-infrastructures and socioeconomic support systems. Housing can even be a neighborhood economic engine; it can be a site for the production of new social and cultural relations spawned by pedagogical programming carried out at the scale of the community. In other words, housing cannot be understood in a vacuum. It must be viewed as a relational tool.
Latin America is the only place in the world where governments have attempted to harness the potential of social networks and the dynamics of informal economies in order to rethink urbanization.
The more we inject ambiguity and flexibility into regulations that govern the use of urban space (and decentralize the power structures that implement them), the more it allows them to be adapted to different environments.
Links
http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/learning_from_tijuana
http://livable.org/livability-resources/best-practices/612
http://www.spatialagency.net/database/casa.familiar
http://nextcity.org/features/view/teddy-cruz-fonna-forman-civic-innovation-san-diego-public-interest-design
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/smallscalebigchange/projects/casa_familiar
http://www.designboom.com/architecture/teddy-cruz-political-equator-border-conflict-05-18-2014/
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/arts/design/12ouro.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/e-misferica-71/cruz
http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/learning_from_tijuana
http://livable.org/livability-resources/best-practices/612
http://www.spatialagency.net/database/casa.familiar
http://nextcity.org/features/view/teddy-cruz-fonna-forman-civic-innovation-san-diego-public-interest-design
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/smallscalebigchange/projects/casa_familiar
http://www.designboom.com/architecture/teddy-cruz-political-equator-border-conflict-05-18-2014/
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/arts/design/12ouro.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/e-misferica-71/cruz