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The urban explosion

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of the last years of economic boom

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also produced dramatic marginalization,

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resulting in the explosion of slums

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in many parts of the world.

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This polarization of enclaves of mega-wealth

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surrounded by sectors of poverty

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and the socioeconomic inequalities
they have engendered

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is really at the center of today's urban crisis.

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But I want to begin tonight

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by suggesting that this urban crisis

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is not only economic or environmental.

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It's particularly a cultural crisis,

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a crisis of the institutions

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unable to reimagine the stupid ways

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which we have been growing,

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unable to challenge the oil-hungry,

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selfish urbanization that have perpetuated

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cities based on consumption,

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from southern California to New York to Dubai.

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So I just really want to share with you a reflection

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that the future of cities today

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depends less on buildings

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and, in fact, depends more

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on the fundamental reorganization
of socioeconomic relations,

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that the best ideas in the shaping

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of the city in the future

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will not come from enclaves of economic power

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and abundance,

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but in fact from sectors of conflict and scarcity

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from which an urgent imagination

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can really inspire us to rethink urban growth today.

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And let me illustrate what I mean

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by understanding or engaging sites of conflict

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as harboring creativity, as I briefly introduce you

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to the Tijuana-San Diego border region,

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which has been the laboratory to
rethink my practice as an architect.

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This is the wall, the border wall,

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that separates San Diego and Tijuana,

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Latin America and the United States,

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a physical emblem

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of exclusionary planning policies

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that have perpetuated the division

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of communities, jurisdictions

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and resources across the world.

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In this border region, we find

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some of the wealthiest real estate,

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as I once found in the edges of San Diego,

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barely 20 minutes away

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from some of the poorest 
settlements in Latin America.

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And while these two cities have the same population,

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San Diego has grown six times larger than Tijuana

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in the last decades,

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immediately thrusting us to confront

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the tensions and conflicts

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between sprawl and density,

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which are at the center of today's discussion

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about environmental sustainability.

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So I've been arguing in the last years

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that, in fact, the slums of Tijuana can teach a lot

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to the sprawls of San Diego

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when it comes to socioeconomic sustainability,

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that we should pay attention and learn

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from the many migrant communities

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on both sides of this border wall

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so that we can translate their informal processes

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of urbanization.

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What do I mean by the informal in this case?

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I'm really just talking about

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the compendium of social practices of adaptation

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that enable many of these migrant communities

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to transgress imposed political and economic recipes

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of urbanization.

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I'm talking simply about the creative intelligence

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of the bottom-up,

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whether manifested in the slums of Tijuana

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that build themselves, in fact,
with the waste of San Diego,

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or the many migrant neighborhoods
in Southern California

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that have begun to be retrofitted with difference

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in the last decades.

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So I've been interested as an artist

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in the measuring, the observation,

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of many of the trans-border informal flows

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across this border:

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in one direction, from south to north,

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the flow of immigrants into the United States,

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and from north to south the flow of waste

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from southern California into Tijuana.

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I'm referring to the recycling

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of these old post-war bungalows

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that Mexican contractors bring to the border

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as American developers are disposing of them

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in the process of building a more inflated version

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of suburbia in the last decades.

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So these are houses waiting to cross the border.

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Not only people cross the border here,

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but entire chunks of one city move to the next,

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and when these houses are placed
on top of these steel frames,

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they leave the first floor to become the second

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to be in-filled with more house,

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with a small business.

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This layering of spaces and economies

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is very interesting to notice.

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But not only houses, also small debris

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from one city, from San Diego, to Tijuana.

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Probably a lot of you have seen the rubber tires

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that are used in the slums to build retaining walls.

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But look at what people have done here in conditions

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of socioeconomic emergency.

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They have figured out how to peel off the tire,

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how to thread it and interlock it

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to construct a more efficient retaining wall.

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Or the garage doors that are brought

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from San Diego in trucks

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to become the new skin of emergency housing

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in many of these slums

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surrounding the edges of Tijuana.

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So while, as an architect,

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this is a very compelling thing to witness,

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this creative intelligence,

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I also want to keep myself in check.

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I don't want to romanticize poverty.

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I just want to suggest

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that this informal urbanization

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is not just the image of precariousness,

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that informality here, the informal,

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is really a set of socioeconomic
and political procedures

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that we could translate as artists,

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that this is about a bottom-up urbanization

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that performs.

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See here, buildings are not important

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just for their looks,

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but, in fact, they are important for what they can do.

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They truly perform as they transform through time

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and as communities negotiate

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the spaces and boundaries and resources.

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So while waste flows southbound,

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people go north in search of dollars,

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and most of my research has had to do

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with the impact of immigration

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in the alteration of the homogeneity

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of many neighborhoods in the United States,

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particularly in San Diego.

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And I'm talking about how this begins to suggest

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that the future of Southern California

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depends on the retrofitting

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of the large urbanization -- I mean, on steroids --

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with the small programs,

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social and economic.

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I'm referring to how immigrants,

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when they come to these neighborhoods,

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they begin to alter the one-dimensionality

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of parcels and properties

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into more socially and
economically complex systems,

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as they begin to plug an
informal economy into a garage,

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or as they build an illegal granny flat

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to support an extended family.

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This socioeconomic entrepreneurship

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on the ground within these neighborhoods

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really begins to suggest ways of translating that

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into new, inclusive and more equitable

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land use policies.

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So many stories emerge from these dynamics

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of alteration of space,

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such as "the informal Buddha,"

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which tells the story of a small house

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that saved itself, it did not travel to Mexico,

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but it was retrofitted in the end

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into a Buddhist temple,

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and in so doing,

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this small house transforms or mutates

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from a singular dwelling

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into a small, or a micro, socioeconomic

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and cultural infrastructure inside a neighborhood.

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So these action neighborhoods, as I call them,

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really become the inspiration

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to imagine other interpretations of citizenship

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that have less to do, in fact,

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with belonging to the nation-state,

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and more with upholding the notion of citizenship

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as a creative act

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that reorganizes institutional protocols

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in the spaces of the city.

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As an artist, I've been interested, in fact,

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in the visualization of citizenship,

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the gathering of many anecdotes, urban stories,

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in order to narrativize the relationship

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between social processes and spaces.

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This is a story of a group of teenagers

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that one night, a few months ago,

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decided to invade this space under the freeway

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to begin constructing their own skateboard park.

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With shovels in hand, they started to dig.

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Two weeks later, the police stopped them.

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They barricaded the place,

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and the teenagers were evicted,

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and the teenagers decided to fight back,

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not with bank cards or slogans

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but with constructing a critical process.

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The first thing they did was to recognize

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the specificity of political jurisdiction

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inscribed in that empty space.

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They found out that they had been lucky

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because they had not begun to dig

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under Caltrans territoy.

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Caltrans is a state agency that governs the freeway,

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so it would have been very
difficult to negotiate with them.

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They were lucky, they said, because they began

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to dig under an arm of the freeway

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that belongs to the local municipality.

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They were also lucky, they said,

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because they began to dig in a sort of

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Bermuda Triangle of jurisdiction,

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between port authority, airport authority,

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two city districts, and a review board.

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All these red lines are the invisible

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political institutions that were inscribed

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in that leftover empty space.

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With this knowledge, these teenagers

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as skaters confronted the city.

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They came to the city attorney's office.

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The city attorney told them

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that in order to continue the negotiation

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they had to become an NGO,

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and of course they didn't know what an NGO was.

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They had to talk to their friends in Seattle

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who had gone through the same experience.

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And they began to realize the necessity

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to organize themselves even deeper

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and began to fundraise, to organize budgets,

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to really be aware of all the knowledge

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embedded in the urban code in San Diego

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so that they could begin to redefine

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the very meaning of public space in the city,

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expanding it to other categories.

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At the end, the teenagers won the case

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with that evidence, and they were able

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to construct their skateboard park

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under that freeway.

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Now for many of you, this story

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might seem trivial or naive.

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For me as an architect, it has become

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a fundamental narrative,

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because it begins to teach me

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that this micro-community

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not only designed another category of public space

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but they also designed the socioeconomic protocols

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that were necessary to be inscribed in that space

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for its long-term sustainability.

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They also taught me

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that similar to the migrant communities

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on both sides of the border,

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they engaged conflict itself as a creative tool,

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because they had to produce a process

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that enabled them to reorganize resources

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and the politics of the city.

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In that act, that informal,

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bottom-up act of transgression,

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really began to trickle up

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to transform top-down policy.

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Now this journey from the bottom-up

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to the transformation of the top-down

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is where I find hope today.

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And I'm thinking of how these modest alterations

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with space and with policy

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in many cities in the world,

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in primarily the urgency

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of a collective imagination

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as these communities

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reimagine their own forms of governance,

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social organization, and infrastructure,

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really is at the center

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of the new formation

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of democratic politics of the urban.

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It is, in fact, this that could become the framework

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for producing new social

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and economic justice in the city.

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I want to say this and emphasize it,

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because this is the only way I see

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that can enable us to move

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from urbanizations of consumption

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to neighborhoods of production today.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)