0:00:00.685,0:00:03.727
The urban explosion

0:00:03.727,0:00:07.952
of the last years of economic boom

0:00:07.952,0:00:11.463
also produced dramatic marginalization,

0:00:11.463,0:00:13.737
resulting in the explosion of slums

0:00:13.737,0:00:16.352
in many parts of the world.

0:00:16.352,0:00:19.599
This polarization of enclaves of mega-wealth

0:00:19.599,0:00:22.434
surrounded by sectors of poverty

0:00:22.434,0:00:25.816
and the socioeconomic inequalities[br]they have engendered

0:00:25.816,0:00:29.378
is really at the center of today's urban crisis.

0:00:29.378,0:00:31.736
But I want to begin tonight

0:00:31.736,0:00:34.174
by suggesting that this urban crisis

0:00:34.174,0:00:38.054
is not only economic or environmental.

0:00:38.054,0:00:40.952
It's particularly a cultural crisis,

0:00:40.952,0:00:43.837
a crisis of the institutions

0:00:43.837,0:00:47.573
unable to reimagine the stupid ways

0:00:47.573,0:00:49.997
which we have been growing,

0:00:49.997,0:00:53.310
unable to challenge the oil-hungry,

0:00:53.310,0:00:57.067
selfish urbanization that have perpetuated

0:00:57.067,0:00:59.529
cities based on consumption,

0:00:59.529,0:01:04.960
from southern California to New York to Dubai.

0:01:04.960,0:01:08.958
So I just really want to share with you a reflection

0:01:08.958,0:01:11.282
that the future of cities today

0:01:11.298,0:01:13.989
depends less on buildings

0:01:13.989,0:01:16.404
and, in fact, depends more

0:01:16.404,0:01:21.154
on the fundamental reorganization[br]of socioeconomic relations,

0:01:21.154,0:01:23.158
that the best ideas in the shaping

0:01:23.158,0:01:24.988
of the city in the future

0:01:24.988,0:01:29.037
will not come from enclaves of economic power

0:01:29.037,0:01:30.415
and abundance,

0:01:30.415,0:01:36.046
but in fact from sectors of conflict and scarcity

0:01:36.046,0:01:38.886
from which an urgent imagination

0:01:38.886,0:01:42.910
can really inspire us to rethink urban growth today.

0:01:42.910,0:01:46.490
And let me illustrate what I mean

0:01:46.490,0:01:50.395
by understanding or engaging sites of conflict

0:01:50.395,0:01:54.476
as harboring creativity, as I briefly introduce you

0:01:54.476,0:01:57.009
to the Tijuana-San Diego border region,

0:01:57.009,0:02:01.214
which has been the laboratory to[br]rethink my practice as an architect.

0:02:01.214,0:02:03.726
This is the wall, the border wall,

0:02:03.726,0:02:06.237
that separates San Diego and Tijuana,

0:02:06.237,0:02:09.078
Latin America and the United States,

0:02:09.078,0:02:11.115
a physical emblem

0:02:11.115,0:02:13.765
of exclusionary planning policies

0:02:13.765,0:02:16.276
that have perpetuated the division

0:02:16.276,0:02:18.709
of communities, jurisdictions

0:02:18.709,0:02:21.844
and resources across the world.

0:02:21.844,0:02:24.547
In this border region, we find

0:02:24.547,0:02:26.964
some of the wealthiest real estate,

0:02:26.964,0:02:29.431
as I once found in the edges of San Diego,

0:02:29.431,0:02:31.655
barely 20 minutes away

0:02:31.655,0:02:35.781
from some of the poorest [br]settlements in Latin America.

0:02:35.781,0:02:39.144
And while these two cities have the same population,

0:02:39.144,0:02:42.980
San Diego has grown six times larger than Tijuana

0:02:42.980,0:02:44.742
in the last decades,

0:02:44.742,0:02:48.132
immediately thrusting us to confront

0:02:48.132,0:02:50.179
the tensions and conflicts

0:02:50.179,0:02:51.927
between sprawl and density,

0:02:51.927,0:02:53.918
which are at the center of today's discussion

0:02:53.918,0:02:56.746
about environmental sustainability.

0:02:56.746,0:02:59.478
So I've been arguing in the last years

0:02:59.478,0:03:03.183
that, in fact, the slums of Tijuana can teach a lot

0:03:03.183,0:03:04.844
to the sprawls of San Diego

0:03:04.844,0:03:08.374
when it comes to socioeconomic sustainability,

0:03:08.374,0:03:10.793
that we should pay attention and learn

0:03:10.793,0:03:13.106
from the many migrant communities

0:03:13.106,0:03:15.621
on both sides of this border wall

0:03:15.621,0:03:18.958
so that we can translate their informal processes

0:03:18.958,0:03:21.017
of urbanization.

0:03:21.017,0:03:24.139
What do I mean by the informal in this case?

0:03:24.139,0:03:25.967
I'm really just talking about

0:03:25.967,0:03:29.623
the compendium of social practices of adaptation

0:03:29.623,0:03:32.462
that enable many of these migrant communities

0:03:32.462,0:03:37.016
to transgress imposed political and economic recipes

0:03:37.016,0:03:38.569
of urbanization.

0:03:38.569,0:03:41.819
I'm talking simply about the creative intelligence

0:03:41.819,0:03:44.194
of the bottom-up,

0:03:44.194,0:03:47.391
whether manifested in the slums of Tijuana

0:03:47.391,0:03:51.135
that build themselves, in fact,[br]with the waste of San Diego,

0:03:51.135,0:03:53.893
or the many migrant neighborhoods[br]in Southern California

0:03:53.893,0:03:56.969
that have begun to be retrofitted with difference

0:03:56.969,0:03:58.626
in the last decades.

0:03:58.626,0:04:00.834
So I've been interested as an artist

0:04:00.834,0:04:03.418
in the measuring, the observation,

0:04:03.418,0:04:05.690
of many of the trans-border informal flows

0:04:05.690,0:04:07.380
across this border:

0:04:07.380,0:04:09.817
in one direction, from south to north,

0:04:09.817,0:04:12.410
the flow of immigrants into the United States,

0:04:12.410,0:04:15.419
and from north to south the flow of waste

0:04:15.419,0:04:18.450
from southern California into Tijuana.

0:04:18.450,0:04:20.718
I'm referring to the recycling

0:04:20.718,0:04:24.170
of these old post-war bungalows

0:04:24.170,0:04:27.629
that Mexican contractors bring to the border

0:04:27.629,0:04:30.474
as American developers are disposing of them

0:04:30.474,0:04:33.042
in the process of building a more inflated version

0:04:33.042,0:04:35.118
of suburbia in the last decades.

0:04:35.118,0:04:38.033
So these are houses waiting to cross the border.

0:04:38.033,0:04:40.385
Not only people cross the border here,

0:04:40.385,0:04:43.652
but entire chunks of one city move to the next,

0:04:43.652,0:04:47.546
and when these houses are placed[br]on top of these steel frames,

0:04:47.546,0:04:50.123
they leave the first floor to become the second

0:04:50.123,0:04:52.177
to be in-filled with more house,

0:04:52.177,0:04:53.835
with a small business.

0:04:53.835,0:04:56.712
This layering of spaces and economies

0:04:56.712,0:04:58.994
is very interesting to notice.

0:04:58.994,0:05:01.509
But not only houses, also small debris

0:05:01.509,0:05:03.856
from one city, from San Diego, to Tijuana.

0:05:03.856,0:05:06.242
Probably a lot of you have seen the rubber tires

0:05:06.242,0:05:08.871
that are used in the slums to build retaining walls.

0:05:08.871,0:05:11.224
But look at what people have done here in conditions

0:05:11.224,0:05:13.452
of socioeconomic emergency.

0:05:13.452,0:05:16.613
They have figured out how to peel off the tire,

0:05:16.613,0:05:18.978
how to thread it and interlock it

0:05:18.978,0:05:23.106
to construct a more efficient retaining wall.

0:05:23.106,0:05:26.318
Or the garage doors that are brought

0:05:26.318,0:05:28.826
from San Diego in trucks

0:05:28.826,0:05:33.555
to become the new skin of emergency housing

0:05:33.555,0:05:35.394
in many of these slums

0:05:35.394,0:05:37.724
surrounding the edges of Tijuana.

0:05:37.724,0:05:39.140
So while, as an architect,

0:05:39.140,0:05:41.067
this is a very compelling thing to witness,

0:05:41.067,0:05:42.761
this creative intelligence,

0:05:42.761,0:05:44.774
I also want to keep myself in check.

0:05:44.774,0:05:46.810
I don't want to romanticize poverty.

0:05:46.810,0:05:48.801
I just want to suggest

0:05:48.801,0:05:50.942
that this informal urbanization

0:05:50.942,0:05:54.541
is not just the image of precariousness,

0:05:54.541,0:05:57.623
that informality here, the informal,

0:05:57.623,0:06:02.153
is really a set of socioeconomic[br]and political procedures

0:06:02.153,0:06:04.862
that we could translate as artists,

0:06:04.862,0:06:07.207
that this is about a bottom-up urbanization

0:06:07.207,0:06:08.732
that performs.

0:06:08.732,0:06:11.558
See here, buildings are not important

0:06:11.558,0:06:13.521
just for their looks,

0:06:13.521,0:06:16.962
but, in fact, they are important for what they can do.

0:06:16.962,0:06:20.061
They truly perform as they transform through time

0:06:20.076,0:06:22.224
and as communities negotiate

0:06:22.224,0:06:25.733
the spaces and boundaries and resources.

0:06:25.733,0:06:28.854
So while waste flows southbound,

0:06:28.854,0:06:31.382
people go north in search of dollars,

0:06:31.382,0:06:33.917
and most of my research has had to do

0:06:33.917,0:06:37.812
with the impact of immigration

0:06:37.812,0:06:40.286
in the alteration of the homogeneity

0:06:40.286,0:06:42.612
of many neighborhoods in the United States,

0:06:42.612,0:06:44.576
particularly in San Diego.

0:06:44.576,0:06:46.961
And I'm talking about how this begins to suggest

0:06:46.961,0:06:49.614
that the future of Southern California

0:06:49.614,0:06:52.137
depends on the retrofitting

0:06:52.137,0:06:55.344
of the large urbanization -- I mean, on steroids --

0:06:55.344,0:06:57.832
with the small programs,

0:06:57.832,0:06:59.608
social and economic.

0:06:59.608,0:07:01.713
I'm referring to how immigrants,

0:07:01.713,0:07:03.511
when they come to these neighborhoods,

0:07:03.511,0:07:06.562
they begin to alter the one-dimensionality

0:07:06.562,0:07:08.544
of parcels and properties

0:07:08.544,0:07:12.931
into more socially and[br]economically complex systems,

0:07:12.931,0:07:16.668
as they begin to plug an[br]informal economy into a garage,

0:07:16.668,0:07:18.982
or as they build an illegal granny flat

0:07:18.982,0:07:21.484
to support an extended family.

0:07:21.484,0:07:26.559
This socioeconomic entrepreneurship

0:07:26.559,0:07:29.662
on the ground within these neighborhoods

0:07:29.662,0:07:33.208
really begins to suggest ways of translating that

0:07:33.208,0:07:37.355
into new, inclusive and more equitable

0:07:37.355,0:07:39.394
land use policies.

0:07:39.394,0:07:42.125
So many stories emerge from these dynamics

0:07:42.125,0:07:44.986
of alteration of space,

0:07:44.986,0:07:46.834
such as "the informal Buddha,"

0:07:46.834,0:07:49.407
which tells the story of a small house

0:07:49.407,0:07:52.408
that saved itself, it did not travel to Mexico,

0:07:52.408,0:07:54.412
but it was retrofitted in the end

0:07:54.412,0:07:56.662
into a Buddhist temple,

0:07:56.662,0:07:57.891
and in so doing,

0:07:57.891,0:08:01.147
this small house transforms or mutates

0:08:01.147,0:08:02.845
from a singular dwelling

0:08:02.845,0:08:05.667
into a small, or a micro, socioeconomic

0:08:05.667,0:08:09.623
and cultural infrastructure inside a neighborhood.

0:08:09.623,0:08:12.370
So these action neighborhoods, as I call them,

0:08:12.370,0:08:14.398
really become the inspiration

0:08:14.398,0:08:17.794
to imagine other interpretations of citizenship

0:08:17.794,0:08:19.974
that have less to do, in fact,

0:08:19.974,0:08:21.956
with belonging to the nation-state,

0:08:21.956,0:08:25.802
and more with upholding the notion of citizenship

0:08:25.802,0:08:27.696
as a creative act

0:08:27.696,0:08:30.547
that reorganizes institutional protocols

0:08:30.547,0:08:32.877
in the spaces of the city.

0:08:32.877,0:08:35.732
As an artist, I've been interested, in fact,

0:08:35.732,0:08:38.461
in the visualization of citizenship,

0:08:38.461,0:08:42.026
the gathering of many anecdotes, urban stories,

0:08:42.026,0:08:45.094
in order to narrativize the relationship

0:08:45.094,0:08:48.224
between social processes and spaces.

0:08:48.224,0:08:51.343
This is a story of a group of teenagers

0:08:51.343,0:08:54.266
that one night, a few months ago,

0:08:54.266,0:08:57.198
decided to invade this space under the freeway

0:08:57.198,0:09:00.412
to begin constructing their own skateboard park.

0:09:00.412,0:09:03.553
With shovels in hand, they started to dig.

0:09:03.553,0:09:06.410
Two weeks later, the police stopped them.

0:09:06.410,0:09:08.111
They barricaded the place,

0:09:08.111,0:09:10.063
and the teenagers were evicted,

0:09:10.063,0:09:12.776
and the teenagers decided to fight back,

0:09:12.776,0:09:15.243
not with bank cards or slogans

0:09:15.243,0:09:17.996
but with constructing a critical process.

0:09:17.996,0:09:20.711
The first thing they did was to recognize

0:09:20.711,0:09:23.691
the specificity of political jurisdiction

0:09:23.691,0:09:26.418
inscribed in that empty space.

0:09:26.418,0:09:28.496
They found out that they had been lucky

0:09:28.496,0:09:30.310
because they had not begun to dig

0:09:30.310,0:09:32.693
under Caltrans territoy.

0:09:32.693,0:09:35.925
Caltrans is a state agency that governs the freeway,

0:09:35.925,0:09:38.490
so it would have been very[br]difficult to negotiate with them.

0:09:38.490,0:09:40.370
They were lucky, they said, because they began

0:09:40.370,0:09:42.777
to dig under an arm of the freeway

0:09:42.777,0:09:45.040
that belongs to the local municipality.

0:09:45.040,0:09:46.939
They were also lucky, they said,

0:09:46.939,0:09:48.677
because they began to dig in a sort of

0:09:48.677,0:09:51.019
Bermuda Triangle of jurisdiction,

0:09:51.019,0:09:54.496
between port authority, airport authority,

0:09:54.496,0:09:57.309
two city districts, and a review board.

0:09:57.309,0:10:00.087
All these red lines are the invisible

0:10:00.087,0:10:02.665
political institutions that were inscribed

0:10:02.665,0:10:05.699
in that leftover empty space.

0:10:05.699,0:10:08.654
With this knowledge, these teenagers

0:10:08.654,0:10:11.337
as skaters confronted the city.

0:10:11.337,0:10:13.491
They came to the city attorney's office.

0:10:13.491,0:10:15.440
The city attorney told them

0:10:15.440,0:10:17.336
that in order to continue the negotiation

0:10:17.336,0:10:19.279
they had to become an NGO,

0:10:19.279,0:10:21.540
and of course they didn't know what an NGO was.

0:10:21.540,0:10:24.479
They had to talk to their friends in Seattle

0:10:24.479,0:10:26.390
who had gone through the same experience.

0:10:26.390,0:10:28.574
And they began to realize the necessity

0:10:28.574,0:10:30.913
to organize themselves even deeper

0:10:30.913,0:10:35.047
and began to fundraise, to organize budgets,

0:10:35.047,0:10:37.371
to really be aware of all the knowledge

0:10:37.371,0:10:40.604
embedded in the urban code in San Diego

0:10:40.604,0:10:42.822
so that they could begin to redefine

0:10:42.822,0:10:46.642
the very meaning of public space in the city,

0:10:46.642,0:10:49.134
expanding it to other categories.

0:10:49.134,0:10:51.769
At the end, the teenagers won the case

0:10:51.769,0:10:54.242
with that evidence, and they were able

0:10:54.242,0:10:56.857
to construct their skateboard park

0:10:56.857,0:10:58.467
under that freeway.

0:10:58.467,0:11:00.912
Now for many of you, this story

0:11:00.912,0:11:03.152
might seem trivial or naive.

0:11:03.152,0:11:05.101
For me as an architect, it has become

0:11:05.101,0:11:07.439
a fundamental narrative,

0:11:07.439,0:11:09.292
because it begins to teach me

0:11:09.292,0:11:11.247
that this micro-community

0:11:11.247,0:11:14.739
not only designed another category of public space

0:11:14.739,0:11:18.544
but they also designed the socioeconomic protocols

0:11:18.544,0:11:21.641
that were necessary to be inscribed in that space

0:11:21.641,0:11:24.602
for its long-term sustainability.

0:11:24.602,0:11:26.087
They also taught me

0:11:26.087,0:11:28.122
that similar to the migrant communities

0:11:28.122,0:11:29.651
on both sides of the border,

0:11:29.651,0:11:33.368
they engaged conflict itself as a creative tool,

0:11:33.368,0:11:35.172
because they had to produce a process

0:11:35.172,0:11:38.789
that enabled them to reorganize resources

0:11:38.789,0:11:40.623
and the politics of the city.

0:11:40.623,0:11:43.148
In that act, that informal,

0:11:43.148,0:11:45.403
bottom-up act of transgression,

0:11:45.403,0:11:47.552
really began to trickle up

0:11:47.552,0:11:50.670
to transform top-down policy.

0:11:50.670,0:11:55.173
Now this journey from the bottom-up

0:11:55.173,0:11:57.353
to the transformation of the top-down

0:11:57.353,0:11:59.871
is where I find hope today.

0:11:59.871,0:12:04.120
And I'm thinking of how these modest alterations

0:12:04.120,0:12:07.063
with space and with policy

0:12:07.063,0:12:09.088
in many cities in the world,

0:12:09.088,0:12:11.802
in primarily the urgency

0:12:11.802,0:12:14.076
of a collective imagination

0:12:14.076,0:12:15.550
as these communities

0:12:15.550,0:12:17.957
reimagine their own forms of governance,

0:12:17.957,0:12:20.648
social organization, and infrastructure,

0:12:20.648,0:12:22.576
really is at the center

0:12:22.576,0:12:24.664
of the new formation

0:12:24.664,0:12:27.976
of democratic politics of the urban.

0:12:27.976,0:12:31.253
It is, in fact, this that could become the framework

0:12:31.253,0:12:34.274
for producing new social

0:12:34.274,0:12:37.330
and economic justice in the city.

0:12:37.330,0:12:38.948
I want to say this and emphasize it,

0:12:38.948,0:12:42.597
because this is the only way I see

0:12:42.597,0:12:44.810
that can enable us to move

0:12:44.810,0:12:48.035
from urbanizations of consumption

0:12:48.035,0:12:51.393
to neighborhoods of production today.

0:12:51.393,0:12:53.281
Thank you.

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