0:00:00.624,0:00:03.544
The urban explosion

0:00:03.544,0:00:07.522
of the last years of economic boom

0:00:07.522,0:00:11.633
also produced dramatic marginalization,

0:00:11.633,0:00:13.953
resulting in the explosion of slums

0:00:13.953,0:00:16.522
in many parts of the world.

0:00:16.522,0:00:19.739
This polarization of enclaves of mega-wealth

0:00:19.739,0:00:22.619
surrounded by sectors of poverty

0:00:22.619,0:00:25.586
and the socio-economic inequalities[br]they have engendered

0:00:25.586,0:00:29.532
is really at the center of today's urban crisis.

0:00:29.532,0:00:31.338
But I want to begin tonight

0:00:31.338,0:00:34.076
by suggesting that this urban crisis

0:00:34.076,0:00:38.178
is not only economic or environmental.

0:00:38.178,0:00:41.122
It's particularly a cultural crisis,

0:00:41.122,0:00:43.531
a crisis of the institutions

0:00:43.531,0:00:47.727
unable to re-imagine the stupid ways

0:00:47.727,0:00:50.151
by which we have been growing,

0:00:50.151,0:00:53.142
unable to challenge the oil-hungry,

0:00:53.142,0:00:57.096
selfish urbanization that have perpetuated

0:00:57.096,0:00:59.623
cities based on consumption,

0:00:59.623,0:01:05.050
from southern California to New York to Dubai.

0:01:05.050,0:01:09.079
So I just really want to share with you a reflection

0:01:09.079,0:01:11.529
that the future of cities today

0:01:11.529,0:01:14.297
depends less on buildings

0:01:14.297,0:01:17.466
and in fact depends more on the fundamental

0:01:17.466,0:01:21.401
reorganization of socio-economic relations,

0:01:21.401,0:01:23.266
that the best ideas in the shaping

0:01:23.266,0:01:25.158
of the cities of the future

0:01:25.158,0:01:29.073
will not come from enclaves of economic power

0:01:29.073,0:01:30.615
and abundance,

0:01:30.615,0:01:36.339
but in fact from sectors of conflict and scarcity

0:01:36.339,0:01:39.024
from which an urgent imagination

0:01:39.024,0:01:43.187
can really inspire us to rethink urban growth today.

0:01:43.187,0:01:45.983
And let me illustrate what I mean

0:01:45.983,0:01:50.519
by understanding or engaging sites of conflict

0:01:50.519,0:01:54.431
as harboring creativity, as I briefly introduce you

0:01:54.431,0:01:57.118
to the Tijuana-San Diego border region,

0:01:57.118,0:02:01.307
which has been the laboratory to[br]rethink my practice as an architect.

0:02:01.307,0:02:04.039
This is the wall, the border wall,

0:02:04.039,0:02:06.253
that separates San Diego and Tijuana,

0:02:06.253,0:02:09.310
Latin America and the United States,

0:02:09.310,0:02:11.269
a physical emblem

0:02:11.269,0:02:13.965
of exclusionary planning policies

0:02:13.965,0:02:16.369
that have perpetuated the division

0:02:16.369,0:02:18.726
of communities, jurisdictions,

0:02:18.726,0:02:21.998
and resources across the world.

0:02:21.998,0:02:24.732
In this border region, we find

0:02:24.732,0:02:27.134
some of the wealthiest real estate,

0:02:27.134,0:02:29.478
as I once found in the edges of San Diego,

0:02:29.478,0:02:32.035
barely 20 minutes away from the some of

0:02:32.035,0:02:35.966
the poorest settlements in Latin America.

0:02:35.966,0:02:39.238
And while these two cities have the same population,

0:02:39.238,0:02:43.150
San Diego has grown six times larger than Tijuana

0:02:43.150,0:02:44.942
in the last decades,

0:02:44.942,0:02:48.332
immediately thrusting us to confront

0:02:48.332,0:02:50.303
the tensions and conflicts

0:02:50.303,0:02:52.174
between sprawl and density,

0:02:52.174,0:02:54.134
which are at the center of today's discussion

0:02:54.134,0:02:56.854
about environmental sustainability.

0:02:56.854,0:02:59.494
So I've been arguing in the last years

0:02:59.494,0:03:03.230
that in fact the slums of Tijuana can teach a lot

0:03:03.230,0:03:04.998
to the sprawls of San Diego

0:03:04.998,0:03:08.374
when it comes to socio-economic sustainability,

0:03:08.374,0:03:10.886
that we should pay attention and learn

0:03:10.886,0:03:13.230
from the many migrant communities

0:03:13.230,0:03:15.638
on both sides of this border wall

0:03:15.638,0:03:19.143
so that we can translate their informal processes

0:03:19.143,0:03:21.202
of urbanization.

0:03:21.202,0:03:24.386
And what do I mean by the informal in this case?

0:03:24.386,0:03:26.198
I'm really just talking about

0:03:26.198,0:03:29.623
the compendium of social practices of adaptation

0:03:29.623,0:03:32.094
that enable many of these migrant communities

0:03:32.094,0:03:37.155
to transgress imposed political and economic recipes

0:03:37.155,0:03:38.831
of urbanization.

0:03:38.831,0:03:41.866
I'm talking simply about the creative intelligence

0:03:41.866,0:03:44.241
of the bottom-up,

0:03:44.241,0:03:47.561
whether manifested in the slums of Tijuana

0:03:47.561,0:03:51.089
that build themselves in fact[br]with the waste of San Diego,

0:03:51.089,0:03:54.110
or the many migrant neighborhoods[br]in Southern California

0:03:54.110,0:03:56.969
that have begun to be retrofitted with difference

0:03:56.969,0:03:58.842
in the last decades.

0:03:58.842,0:04:00.681
So I've been interested as an artist

0:04:00.681,0:04:03.495
in the measuring, the observation,

0:04:03.495,0:04:05.937
of many of the trans-border informal flows

0:04:05.937,0:04:07.457
across this border:

0:04:07.457,0:04:09.817
in one direction, from south to north,

0:04:09.817,0:04:12.426
the flow of immigrants into the United States,

0:04:12.426,0:04:15.481
and from north south the flow of waste

0:04:15.481,0:04:18.574
from southern California into Tijuana.

0:04:18.574,0:04:20.718
I'm referring to the recycling

0:04:20.718,0:04:23.694
of these old post-war bungalows

0:04:23.694,0:04:27.214
that Mexican contractors bring to the border

0:04:27.214,0:04:30.183
as American developers are disposing of them

0:04:30.183,0:04:33.258
in the process of building a more inflated version

0:04:33.258,0:04:35.118
of suburbia in the last decades.

0:04:35.118,0:04:38.126
So these are houses waiting to cross the border.

0:04:38.126,0:04:40.478
Not only people cross the border here,

0:04:40.478,0:04:43.469
but entire chunks of one city move to the next,

0:04:43.469,0:04:47.454
and when these houses are placed[br]on top of these steel frames,

0:04:47.454,0:04:50.263
they leave the first floor to become the second

0:04:50.263,0:04:52.239
to be in-filled with more house,

0:04:52.239,0:04:53.943
with a small business.

0:04:53.943,0:04:56.820
This layering of spaces and economies

0:04:56.820,0:04:59.102
is very interesting to notice.

0:04:59.102,0:05:01.725
But not only houses, also small debris

0:05:01.725,0:05:03.949
from one city, from San Diego, to Tijuana.

0:05:03.949,0:05:06.319
Probably a lot of you have seen the rubber tires

0:05:06.319,0:05:08.965
that are used in the slums to build retaining walls.

0:05:08.965,0:05:11.303
But look at what people have done here in conditions

0:05:11.303,0:05:13.453
of socio-economic emergency.

0:05:13.453,0:05:16.598
They have figured out how to peel off the tire,

0:05:16.598,0:05:19.117
how to thread it and interlock it

0:05:19.117,0:05:23.353
to construct a more efficient retaining wall.

0:05:23.353,0:05:25.997
Or, the garage doors that are brought

0:05:25.997,0:05:28.965
from San Diego in trucks

0:05:28.965,0:05:33.663
to become the new skin of emergency housing

0:05:33.663,0:05:35.533
in many of these slums

0:05:35.533,0:05:37.924
surrounding the edges of Tijuana.

0:05:37.924,0:05:39.325
So while, as an architect,

0:05:39.325,0:05:41.237
this is a very compelling thing to witness,

0:05:41.237,0:05:42.885
this creative intelligence,

0:05:42.885,0:05:44.928
I also want to keep myself in check.

0:05:44.928,0:05:46.964
I don't want to romanticize poverty.

0:05:46.964,0:05:48.925
I just want to suggest

0:05:48.925,0:05:50.928
that this informal urbanization

0:05:50.928,0:05:54.772
is not just the image of precariousness,

0:05:54.772,0:05:57.716
that informality here, the informal,

0:05:57.716,0:06:02.123
is really a set of socio-economic[br]and political procedures

0:06:02.123,0:06:04.740
that we could translate as artists,

0:06:04.740,0:06:07.315
that this is about a bottom-up urbanization

0:06:07.315,0:06:08.932
that performs.

0:06:08.932,0:06:11.099
See here, buildings are not important

0:06:11.099,0:06:13.752
just for their looks,

0:06:13.752,0:06:17.084
but in fact they are important for what they can do.

0:06:17.084,0:06:20.323
They truly perform as they transform through time

0:06:20.323,0:06:22.332
and as communities negotiate

0:06:22.332,0:06:25.980
the spaces and boundaries and resources.

0:06:25.980,0:06:28.532
So while waste flows southbound,

0:06:28.532,0:06:31.460
people go north in search of dollars,

0:06:31.460,0:06:33.979
and most of my research has had to do

0:06:33.979,0:06:37.690
with the impact of immigration

0:06:37.690,0:06:40.044
in the alteration of the homogeneity

0:06:40.044,0:06:42.812
of many neighborhoods in the United States,

0:06:42.812,0:06:44.684
particularly in San Diego.

0:06:44.684,0:06:47.100
And I'm talking about how this begins to suggest

0:06:47.100,0:06:49.308
that the future of Southern California

0:06:49.308,0:06:52.020
depends on the retrofitting

0:06:52.020,0:06:55.452
of the large urbanization on steroids

0:06:55.452,0:06:57.834
with the small programs,

0:06:57.834,0:06:59.732
social and economic.

0:06:59.732,0:07:01.652
I'm referring to how immigrants,

0:07:01.652,0:07:03.604
when they come to these neighborhoods,

0:07:03.604,0:07:06.732
they begin to alter the one-dimensionality

0:07:06.732,0:07:08.652
of parcels and properties

0:07:08.652,0:07:12.932
into more socially and[br]economically complex systems,

0:07:12.932,0:07:16.668
as they begin to plug an[br]informal economy into a garage,

0:07:16.668,0:07:18.814
or as they build an illegal granny flat

0:07:18.814,0:07:21.484
to support an extended family.

0:07:21.484,0:07:26.836
This socioeconomic entrepreneurship

0:07:26.836,0:07:29.662
on the ground within these neighborhoods

0:07:29.662,0:07:33.362
really begin to suggest ways of translating that

0:07:33.362,0:07:37.525
into new, inclusive, and more equitable

0:07:37.525,0:07:39.502
land use policies.

0:07:39.502,0:07:42.356
So many stories emerge from these dynamics

0:07:42.356,0:07:45.125
of alteration of space,

0:07:45.125,0:07:46.927
such as "The Informal Buddha,"

0:07:46.927,0:07:49.192
which tells the story of a small house

0:07:49.192,0:07:52.317
that saved itself, it did not travel to Mexico,

0:07:52.317,0:07:54.289
but it was retrofitted in the end

0:07:54.289,0:07:56.770
into a Buddhist temple,

0:07:56.770,0:07:58.122
and in so doing,

0:07:58.122,0:08:01.148
this small house transforms or mutates

0:08:01.148,0:08:02.938
from a singular dwelling

0:08:02.938,0:08:05.868
into a small or micro socio-economic

0:08:05.868,0:08:09.700
and cultural infrastructure inside a neighborhood.

0:08:09.700,0:08:12.524
So these action neighborhoods, as I call them,

0:08:12.524,0:08:14.292
really become the inspiration

0:08:14.292,0:08:18.098
to imagine other interpretation of citizenship

0:08:18.098,0:08:20.056
that has less to do, in fact,

0:08:20.056,0:08:22.172
with belonging to the nation-state,

0:08:22.172,0:08:25.956
and more with upholding the notion of citizenship

0:08:25.956,0:08:27.804
as a creative act

0:08:27.804,0:08:30.796
that reorganizes institutional protocols

0:08:30.796,0:08:32.924
in the spaces of the city.

0:08:32.924,0:08:35.748
As an artist, I've been interested, in fact,

0:08:35.748,0:08:38.569
in the visualization of citizenship,

0:08:38.569,0:08:42.180
the gathering of many anecdotes, urban stories,

0:08:42.180,0:08:45.172
in order to narrativize the relationship

0:08:45.172,0:08:48.240
between social processes and spaces.

0:08:48.240,0:08:51.236
This is a story of a group of teenagers

0:08:51.236,0:08:54.374
that one night, a few months ago,

0:08:54.374,0:08:57.260
decided to invade this space under the freeway

0:08:57.260,0:09:00.582
to begin constructing their own skateboard park.

0:09:00.582,0:09:03.692
With shovels in hand, they started to dig.

0:09:03.692,0:09:06.564
Two weeks later, the police stopped them.

0:09:06.564,0:09:08.188
They barricaded the place,

0:09:08.188,0:09:10.156
and the teenagers were evicted,

0:09:10.156,0:09:12.884
and the teenagers decided to fight back,

0:09:12.884,0:09:15.428
not with placards or slogans

0:09:15.428,0:09:18.052
but with constructing a critical process.

0:09:18.052,0:09:20.865
The first thing they did was to recognize

0:09:20.865,0:09:23.876
the specificity of political jurisdiction

0:09:23.876,0:09:26.572
inscribed in that empty space.

0:09:26.572,0:09:28.620
They found out that they had been lucky

0:09:28.620,0:09:30.480
because they had not begun to dig

0:09:30.480,0:09:32.847
under Caltrans territoy.

0:09:32.847,0:09:35.925
Caltrans is a state agency that governs the freeway,

0:09:35.925,0:09:38.644
so it would have been very[br]difficult to negotiate with them.

0:09:38.644,0:09:40.494
They were lucky, they said, because they began

0:09:40.494,0:09:42.748
to dig under an arm of the freeway

0:09:42.748,0:09:45.180
that belongs to the local municipality.

0:09:45.180,0:09:47.124
They were also lucky, they said,

0:09:47.124,0:09:49.110
because they began to dig in a sort of

0:09:49.110,0:09:51.296
Bermuda Triangle of jurisdiction,

0:09:51.296,0:09:54.604
between port authority, airport authority,

0:09:54.604,0:09:57.479
two city districts, and a review board.

0:09:57.479,0:09:59.980
All these red lines, are they invisible

0:09:59.980,0:10:02.804
political institutions that were inscribed

0:10:02.804,0:10:05.700
in that leftover empty space.

0:10:05.700,0:10:08.532
With this knowledge, these teenagers

0:10:08.532,0:10:11.245
as skaters confronted the city.

0:10:11.245,0:10:13.676
They came to the city attorney's office.

0:10:13.676,0:10:15.364
The city attorney told them

0:10:15.364,0:10:17.444
that in order to continue the negotiation

0:10:17.444,0:10:19.188
they had to become an NGO,

0:10:19.188,0:10:21.740
and of course they didn't know what an NGO was.

0:10:21.740,0:10:24.280
They had to talk to their friends in Seattle

0:10:24.280,0:10:26.468
who had gone through the same experience.

0:10:26.468,0:10:28.498
And they began to realize the necessity

0:10:28.498,0:10:30.913
to organize themselves even deeper

0:10:30.913,0:10:35.014
and began to fundraise, to organize budgets,

0:10:35.014,0:10:37.418
to really be aware of all the knowledge

0:10:37.418,0:10:40.651
embedded in the urban code in San Diego

0:10:40.651,0:10:42.730
so that they could begin to redefine

0:10:42.730,0:10:46.735
the very meaning of public space in the city,

0:10:46.735,0:10:49.242
expanding it to other categories.

0:10:49.242,0:10:51.800
At the end, the teenagers won the case

0:10:51.800,0:10:54.242
with that evidence, and they were able

0:10:54.242,0:10:56.720
to construct their skateboard park

0:10:56.720,0:10:58.667
under that freeway.

0:10:58.667,0:11:00.713
Now for many of you, this story

0:11:00.713,0:11:02.983
might seem trivial or naive.

0:11:02.983,0:11:05.178
For me as an architect, it has become

0:11:05.178,0:11:07.225
a fundamental narrative,

0:11:07.225,0:11:09.369
because it begins to teach me

0:11:09.369,0:11:11.401
that this micro-community

0:11:11.401,0:11:14.755
not only designed another category of public space

0:11:14.755,0:11:18.698
but they also designed the socio-economic protocols

0:11:18.698,0:11:21.673
that were necessary to be inscribed in that space

0:11:21.673,0:11:24.603
for its long-term sustainability.

0:11:24.603,0:11:26.149
They also taught me

0:11:26.149,0:11:28.057
that similar to the migrant communities

0:11:28.057,0:11:29.713
on both sides of the border,

0:11:29.713,0:11:33.507
they engaged conflict itself as a creative tool,

0:11:33.507,0:11:35.250
because they had to produce a process

0:11:35.250,0:11:38.882
that enabled them to reorganize resources

0:11:38.882,0:11:40.747
and the politics of the city.

0:11:40.747,0:11:43.058
In that act, that informal,

0:11:43.058,0:11:45.250
bottom-up act of transgression,

0:11:45.250,0:11:47.507
really began to trickle up

0:11:47.507,0:11:50.763
to transform top-down policy.

0:11:50.763,0:11:55.250
Now this journey from the bottom up

0:11:55.250,0:11:57.323
to the transformation of the top down

0:11:57.323,0:12:00.058
is where I find hope today.

0:12:00.058,0:12:03.952
And I'm thinking of how these modest alterations

0:12:03.952,0:12:07.156
with space and with policies

0:12:07.156,0:12:09.212
in many cities of the world

0:12:09.212,0:12:11.803
in primarily the urgency

0:12:11.803,0:12:14.002
of a collective imagination

0:12:14.002,0:12:15.658
as these communities

0:12:15.658,0:12:18.157
re-imagine their own forms of governance,

0:12:18.157,0:12:20.772
social organization, and infrastructure,

0:12:20.772,0:12:22.730
really is at the center

0:12:22.730,0:12:24.757
of the new formation

0:12:24.757,0:12:28.013
of democratic politics of the urban.

0:12:28.013,0:12:31.253
It is, in fact, this that could become the framework

0:12:31.253,0:12:34.382
for producing new social

0:12:34.382,0:12:37.423
and economic justice in the city.

0:12:37.423,0:12:39.149
I want to say this and emphasize it,

0:12:39.149,0:12:42.690
because this is the only way I see

0:12:42.690,0:12:44.934
that can enable us to move

0:12:44.934,0:12:47.422
from urbanizations of consumption

0:12:47.422,0:12:51.455
to neighborhoods of production today.

0:12:51.455,0:12:53.281
Thank you.

0:12:53.281,0:12:57.281
(Applause)