Border Without Wall

by Fernando Lara & Diana Maldonado, editors

English, 2017

The projects here presented were developed by a partnership between UT Austin and UANL-Monterrey schools of architecture, led by Professors Fernando Lara and Diana Maldonado. They students focused on designing the necessary infrastructure to allow people to cross freely between Mexico and the US. The synthesis that we developed demonstrate that the border system operates under three major industries: 1) the globalization industry which moves $500 Billion in goods between U.S. and Mexico every year; 2) the labor industry which employees millions of Hispanic workers in the U.S.; and 3) the military industry which sells the idea that the border is dysfunctional so that both governments can justify spending billions on militarization. Together, these industries are responsible for an unreasonable amount of oversight (some say harassment) of millions of people who need or want to cross the border for their livelihood, yet they have not been successful in controlling the flow of drugs northbound or weapons southbound.

In order to counter the effects of militarization and improve the lives of those that use the border frequently we propose that: 1) solutions have to be localized, what works for Tijuana / San Diego might not work for Juarez / El Paso or Matamoros / Brownsville; 2) recognize that there are large swaths of land available for development along the border, mostly in the US side, and think of these as opportunities for a border infrastructure that addresses both the environmental sustainability and the social sustainability of border communities; and 3) battle the North-American dependency on the automobile and how policies that privilege cars have become a major security issue on the border.