How architectural innovations migrate across borders
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0:01 - 0:04The urban explosion
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0:04 - 0:08of the last years of economic boom
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0:08 - 0:11also produced dramatic marginalization,
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0:11 - 0:14resulting in the explosion of slums
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0:14 - 0:16in many parts of the world.
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0:16 - 0:20This polarization of enclaves of mega-wealth
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0:20 - 0:22surrounded by sectors of poverty
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0:22 - 0:26and the socioeconomic inequalities
they have engendered -
0:26 - 0:29is really at the center of today's urban crisis.
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0:29 - 0:32But I want to begin tonight
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0:32 - 0:34by suggesting that this urban crisis
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0:34 - 0:38is not only economic or environmental.
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0:38 - 0:41It's particularly a cultural crisis,
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0:41 - 0:44a crisis of the institutions
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0:44 - 0:48unable to reimagine the stupid ways
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0:48 - 0:50which we have been growing,
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0:50 - 0:53unable to challenge the oil-hungry,
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0:53 - 0:57selfish urbanization that have perpetuated
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0:57 - 1:00cities based on consumption,
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1:00 - 1:05from southern California to New York to Dubai.
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1:05 - 1:09So I just really want to share with you a reflection
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1:09 - 1:11that the future of cities today
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1:11 - 1:14depends less on buildings
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1:14 - 1:16and, in fact, depends more
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1:16 - 1:21on the fundamental reorganization
of socioeconomic relations, -
1:21 - 1:23that the best ideas in the shaping
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1:23 - 1:25of the city in the future
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1:25 - 1:29will not come from enclaves of economic power
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1:29 - 1:30and abundance,
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1:30 - 1:36but in fact from sectors of conflict and scarcity
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1:36 - 1:39from which an urgent imagination
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1:39 - 1:43can really inspire us to rethink urban growth today.
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1:43 - 1:46And let me illustrate what I mean
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1:46 - 1:50by understanding or engaging sites of conflict
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1:50 - 1:54as harboring creativity, as I briefly introduce you
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1:54 - 1:57to the Tijuana-San Diego border region,
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1:57 - 2:01which has been the laboratory to
rethink my practice as an architect. -
2:01 - 2:04This is the wall, the border wall,
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2:04 - 2:06that separates San Diego and Tijuana,
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2:06 - 2:09Latin America and the United States,
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2:09 - 2:11a physical emblem
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2:11 - 2:14of exclusionary planning policies
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2:14 - 2:16that have perpetuated the division
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2:16 - 2:19of communities, jurisdictions
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2:19 - 2:22and resources across the world.
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2:22 - 2:25In this border region, we find
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2:25 - 2:27some of the wealthiest real estate,
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2:27 - 2:29as I once found in the edges of San Diego,
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2:29 - 2:32barely 20 minutes away
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2:32 - 2:36from some of the poorest
settlements in Latin America. -
2:36 - 2:39And while these two cities have the same population,
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2:39 - 2:43San Diego has grown six times larger than Tijuana
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2:43 - 2:45in the last decades,
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2:45 - 2:48immediately thrusting us to confront
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2:48 - 2:50the tensions and conflicts
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2:50 - 2:52between sprawl and density,
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2:52 - 2:54which are at the center of today's discussion
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2:54 - 2:57about environmental sustainability.
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2:57 - 2:59So I've been arguing in the last years
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2:59 - 3:03that, in fact, the slums of Tijuana can teach a lot
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3:03 - 3:05to the sprawls of San Diego
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3:05 - 3:08when it comes to socioeconomic sustainability,
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3:08 - 3:11that we should pay attention and learn
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3:11 - 3:13from the many migrant communities
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3:13 - 3:16on both sides of this border wall
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3:16 - 3:19so that we can translate their informal processes
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3:19 - 3:21of urbanization.
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3:21 - 3:24What do I mean by the informal in this case?
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3:24 - 3:26I'm really just talking about
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3:26 - 3:30the compendium of social practices of adaptation
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3:30 - 3:32that enable many of these migrant communities
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3:32 - 3:37to transgress imposed political and economic recipes
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3:37 - 3:39of urbanization.
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3:39 - 3:42I'm talking simply about the creative intelligence
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3:42 - 3:44of the bottom-up,
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3:44 - 3:47whether manifested in the slums of Tijuana
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3:47 - 3:51that build themselves, in fact,
with the waste of San Diego, -
3:51 - 3:54or the many migrant neighborhoods
in Southern California -
3:54 - 3:57that have begun to be retrofitted with difference
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3:57 - 3:59in the last decades.
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3:59 - 4:01So I've been interested as an artist
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4:01 - 4:03in the measuring, the observation,
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4:03 - 4:06of many of the trans-border informal flows
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4:06 - 4:07across this border:
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4:07 - 4:10in one direction, from south to north,
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4:10 - 4:12the flow of immigrants into the United States,
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4:12 - 4:15and from north to south the flow of waste
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4:15 - 4:18from southern California into Tijuana.
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4:18 - 4:21I'm referring to the recycling
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4:21 - 4:24of these old post-war bungalows
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4:24 - 4:28that Mexican contractors bring to the border
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4:28 - 4:30as American developers are disposing of them
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4:30 - 4:33in the process of building a more inflated version
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4:33 - 4:35of suburbia in the last decades.
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4:35 - 4:38So these are houses waiting to cross the border.
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4:38 - 4:40Not only people cross the border here,
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4:40 - 4:44but entire chunks of one city move to the next,
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4:44 - 4:48and when these houses are placed
on top of these steel frames, -
4:48 - 4:50they leave the first floor to become the second
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4:50 - 4:52to be in-filled with more house,
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4:52 - 4:54with a small business.
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4:54 - 4:57This layering of spaces and economies
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4:57 - 4:59is very interesting to notice.
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4:59 - 5:02But not only houses, also small debris
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5:02 - 5:04from one city, from San Diego, to Tijuana.
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5:04 - 5:06Probably a lot of you have seen the rubber tires
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5:06 - 5:09that are used in the slums to build retaining walls.
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5:09 - 5:11But look at what people have done here in conditions
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5:11 - 5:13of socioeconomic emergency.
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5:13 - 5:17They have figured out how to peel off the tire,
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5:17 - 5:19how to thread it and interlock it
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5:19 - 5:23to construct a more efficient retaining wall.
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5:23 - 5:26Or the garage doors that are brought
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5:26 - 5:29from San Diego in trucks
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5:29 - 5:34to become the new skin of emergency housing
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5:34 - 5:35in many of these slums
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5:35 - 5:38surrounding the edges of Tijuana.
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5:38 - 5:39So while, as an architect,
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5:39 - 5:41this is a very compelling thing to witness,
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5:41 - 5:43this creative intelligence,
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5:43 - 5:45I also want to keep myself in check.
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5:45 - 5:47I don't want to romanticize poverty.
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5:47 - 5:49I just want to suggest
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5:49 - 5:51that this informal urbanization
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5:51 - 5:55is not just the image of precariousness,
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5:55 - 5:58that informality here, the informal,
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5:58 - 6:02is really a set of socioeconomic
and political procedures -
6:02 - 6:05that we could translate as artists,
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6:05 - 6:07that this is about a bottom-up urbanization
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6:07 - 6:09that performs.
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6:09 - 6:12See here, buildings are not important
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6:12 - 6:14just for their looks,
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6:14 - 6:17but, in fact, they are important for what they can do.
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6:17 - 6:20They truly perform as they transform through time
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6:20 - 6:22and as communities negotiate
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6:22 - 6:26the spaces and boundaries and resources.
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6:26 - 6:29So while waste flows southbound,
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6:29 - 6:31people go north in search of dollars,
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6:31 - 6:34and most of my research has had to do
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6:34 - 6:38with the impact of immigration
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6:38 - 6:40in the alteration of the homogeneity
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6:40 - 6:43of many neighborhoods in the United States,
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6:43 - 6:45particularly in San Diego.
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6:45 - 6:47And I'm talking about how this begins to suggest
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6:47 - 6:50that the future of Southern California
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6:50 - 6:52depends on the retrofitting
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6:52 - 6:55of the large urbanization -- I mean, on steroids --
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6:55 - 6:58with the small programs,
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6:58 - 7:00social and economic.
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7:00 - 7:02I'm referring to how immigrants,
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7:02 - 7:04when they come to these neighborhoods,
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7:04 - 7:07they begin to alter the one-dimensionality
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7:07 - 7:09of parcels and properties
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7:09 - 7:13into more socially and
economically complex systems, -
7:13 - 7:17as they begin to plug an
informal economy into a garage, -
7:17 - 7:19or as they build an illegal granny flat
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7:19 - 7:21to support an extended family.
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7:21 - 7:27This socioeconomic entrepreneurship
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7:27 - 7:30on the ground within these neighborhoods
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7:30 - 7:33really begins to suggest ways of translating that
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7:33 - 7:37into new, inclusive and more equitable
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7:37 - 7:39land use policies.
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7:39 - 7:42So many stories emerge from these dynamics
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7:42 - 7:45of alteration of space,
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7:45 - 7:47such as "the informal Buddha,"
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7:47 - 7:49which tells the story of a small house
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7:49 - 7:52that saved itself, it did not travel to Mexico,
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7:52 - 7:54but it was retrofitted in the end
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7:54 - 7:57into a Buddhist temple,
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7:57 - 7:58and in so doing,
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7:58 - 8:01this small house transforms or mutates
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8:01 - 8:03from a singular dwelling
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8:03 - 8:06into a small, or a micro, socioeconomic
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8:06 - 8:10and cultural infrastructure inside a neighborhood.
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8:10 - 8:12So these action neighborhoods, as I call them,
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8:12 - 8:14really become the inspiration
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8:14 - 8:18to imagine other interpretations of citizenship
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8:18 - 8:20that have less to do, in fact,
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8:20 - 8:22with belonging to the nation-state,
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8:22 - 8:26and more with upholding the notion of citizenship
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8:26 - 8:28as a creative act
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8:28 - 8:31that reorganizes institutional protocols
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8:31 - 8:33in the spaces of the city.
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8:33 - 8:36As an artist, I've been interested, in fact,
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8:36 - 8:38in the visualization of citizenship,
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8:38 - 8:42the gathering of many anecdotes, urban stories,
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8:42 - 8:45in order to narrativize the relationship
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8:45 - 8:48between social processes and spaces.
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8:48 - 8:51This is a story of a group of teenagers
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8:51 - 8:54that one night, a few months ago,
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8:54 - 8:57decided to invade this space under the freeway
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8:57 - 9:00to begin constructing their own skateboard park.
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9:00 - 9:04With shovels in hand, they started to dig.
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9:04 - 9:06Two weeks later, the police stopped them.
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9:06 - 9:08They barricaded the place,
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9:08 - 9:10and the teenagers were evicted,
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9:10 - 9:13and the teenagers decided to fight back,
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9:13 - 9:15not with bank cards or slogans
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9:15 - 9:18but with constructing a critical process.
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9:18 - 9:21The first thing they did was to recognize
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9:21 - 9:24the specificity of political jurisdiction
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9:24 - 9:26inscribed in that empty space.
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9:26 - 9:28They found out that they had been lucky
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9:28 - 9:30because they had not begun to dig
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9:30 - 9:33under Caltrans territoy.
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9:33 - 9:36Caltrans is a state agency that governs the freeway,
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9:36 - 9:38so it would have been very
difficult to negotiate with them. -
9:38 - 9:40They were lucky, they said, because they began
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9:40 - 9:43to dig under an arm of the freeway
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9:43 - 9:45that belongs to the local municipality.
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9:45 - 9:47They were also lucky, they said,
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9:47 - 9:49because they began to dig in a sort of
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9:49 - 9:51Bermuda Triangle of jurisdiction,
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9:51 - 9:54between port authority, airport authority,
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9:54 - 9:57two city districts, and a review board.
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9:57 - 10:00All these red lines are the invisible
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10:00 - 10:03political institutions that were inscribed
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10:03 - 10:06in that leftover empty space.
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10:06 - 10:09With this knowledge, these teenagers
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10:09 - 10:11as skaters confronted the city.
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10:11 - 10:13They came to the city attorney's office.
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10:13 - 10:15The city attorney told them
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10:15 - 10:17that in order to continue the negotiation
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10:17 - 10:19they had to become an NGO,
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10:19 - 10:22and of course they didn't know what an NGO was.
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10:22 - 10:24They had to talk to their friends in Seattle
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10:24 - 10:26who had gone through the same experience.
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10:26 - 10:29And they began to realize the necessity
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10:29 - 10:31to organize themselves even deeper
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10:31 - 10:35and began to fundraise, to organize budgets,
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10:35 - 10:37to really be aware of all the knowledge
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10:37 - 10:41embedded in the urban code in San Diego
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10:41 - 10:43so that they could begin to redefine
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10:43 - 10:47the very meaning of public space in the city,
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10:47 - 10:49expanding it to other categories.
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10:49 - 10:52At the end, the teenagers won the case
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10:52 - 10:54with that evidence, and they were able
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10:54 - 10:57to construct their skateboard park
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10:57 - 10:58under that freeway.
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10:58 - 11:01Now for many of you, this story
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11:01 - 11:03might seem trivial or naive.
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11:03 - 11:05For me as an architect, it has become
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11:05 - 11:07a fundamental narrative,
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11:07 - 11:09because it begins to teach me
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11:09 - 11:11that this micro-community
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11:11 - 11:15not only designed another category of public space
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11:15 - 11:19but they also designed the socioeconomic protocols
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11:19 - 11:22that were necessary to be inscribed in that space
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11:22 - 11:25for its long-term sustainability.
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11:25 - 11:26They also taught me
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11:26 - 11:28that similar to the migrant communities
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11:28 - 11:30on both sides of the border,
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11:30 - 11:33they engaged conflict itself as a creative tool,
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11:33 - 11:35because they had to produce a process
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11:35 - 11:39that enabled them to reorganize resources
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11:39 - 11:41and the politics of the city.
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11:41 - 11:43In that act, that informal,
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11:43 - 11:45bottom-up act of transgression,
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11:45 - 11:48really began to trickle up
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11:48 - 11:51to transform top-down policy.
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11:51 - 11:55Now this journey from the bottom-up
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11:55 - 11:57to the transformation of the top-down
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11:57 - 12:00is where I find hope today.
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12:00 - 12:04And I'm thinking of how these modest alterations
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12:04 - 12:07with space and with policy
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12:07 - 12:09in many cities in the world,
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12:09 - 12:12in primarily the urgency
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12:12 - 12:14of a collective imagination
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12:14 - 12:16as these communities
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12:16 - 12:18reimagine their own forms of governance,
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12:18 - 12:21social organization, and infrastructure,
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12:21 - 12:23really is at the center
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12:23 - 12:25of the new formation
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12:25 - 12:28of democratic politics of the urban.
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12:28 - 12:31It is, in fact, this that could become the framework
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12:31 - 12:34for producing new social
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12:34 - 12:37and economic justice in the city.
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12:37 - 12:39I want to say this and emphasize it,
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12:39 - 12:43because this is the only way I see
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12:43 - 12:45that can enable us to move
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12:45 - 12:48from urbanizations of consumption
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12:48 - 12:51to neighborhoods of production today.
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12:51 - 12:53Thank you.
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12:53 - 12:57(Applause)
- Title:
- How architectural innovations migrate across borders
- Speaker:
- Teddy Cruz
- Description:
-
As the world's cities undergo explosive growth, inequality is intensifying. Wealthy neighborhoods and impoverished slums grow side by side, the gap between them widening. In this eye-opening talk, architect Teddy Cruz asks us to rethink urban development from the bottom up. Sharing lessons from the slums of Tijuana, Cruz explores the creative intelligence of the city's residents and offers a fresh perspective on what we can learn from places of scarcity.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 13:14
janet dragojevic edited English subtitles for How architectural innovations migrate across borders | ||
Morton Bast approved English subtitles for How architectural innovations migrate across borders | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for How architectural innovations migrate across borders | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for How architectural innovations migrate across borders | ||
Madeleine Aronson accepted English subtitles for How architectural innovations migrate across borders | ||
Madeleine Aronson edited English subtitles for How architectural innovations migrate across borders | ||
Joseph Geni edited English subtitles for How architectural innovations migrate across borders | ||
Amara Bot edited English subtitles for How architectural innovations migrate across borders |