Envisioning transboundary cooperation zones : en la Frontera de Cd. Juarez-EI Paso/

Abstract

The largest binational urban area in the world with a combined population of 2.1 million1 is formed by the pair cities of El Paso, TX and Cd. Juárez. This borderland lays on the 2,000 mile long international boundary that divides the United States and Mexico, a borderland filled with ironies: individually demarcated yet synthesized, secured yet transgressed, fetishized yet denigrated. As result of these paradoxes this borderland suffers of problems of economic disparities, political tensions, social and cultural alienation, and ecological threats. From an aerial photograph these two metropolises read as one, but on the ground their differences translate into daily contradictions, where the multiple layers that encompass these two cities overlap while at the same time are dislocated. El Paso and Ciudad Juarez stretch along the Grand River/Rio Bravo, which mainly through history has delineated the border or la linea between these pair cities. This element stands for a political and militarized boundary that inconsistently also represents a symbolic barrier because of the daily transgression of multiple elements through this territory. This thesis investigates these pair cities as one territory, which challenges the notion of these places as separate entities. The diverse historical and existing layers in Cd. Juárez and El Paso will be analyzed as one interconnected system that feeds and responds to different complexities. By looking through this unilateral lens, I hope to identify solutions -policies and physical reconfigurations- in order to minimize the conflict in this borderland, manifested in the opposing relations between needs, values, interests, and concerns of the two different entities. Despite the conflict between the multiple layers present in borderlands, there is also the opportunity to construct special areas, where the relationship between the sister cities and the multiple conflicting factors could be reconciled. Consequently, the concept of special area suggests a Transboundary Cooperation Zone that allows for new flows and negotiations in the political, social, economic, cultural, and environmental realms.