Urbanism Thinking

From the ‘Non-stop Sprawl: McMansion Retrofitted’(pig.1), we can see the image of the future of urbanism in Teddy Cruz's mind. He talks about "retrofitting the large with the small". The urban explosion of San Diego and the explosion of slums in Mexico which is just separated by the border wall can be a good example. The socioeconomic inequality Tijuana San Diego Border Region created is not only economic or environmental crisis but also the cultural crisis. It's like how cities growth today. People come from the south to north chasing for money. At the same time, waste flows southbound. How the immigrants gonna build their neighborhood by reorganizing one-dimensionality of properties, adding supporting spaces for an extended family, etc. to make better social and economic living environment, which shows how the small effects the large (urbanism).

What's more, Teddy Cruz thinks that the inspirations to shape the future of cities could come from the urgent imagination of urban growth today. I totally agree with this point. Such as the waste flat houses in the U.S. because of the new high skyscrapers will be moved over the border to Mexico to be used as residential or emergency buildings. But these buildings will also be used differently like changing the ground floor to be the second-floor and adding another space on the bottom. It's kind of like moving chunk of the city from A to B, which creating the urbanism of B because of the urbanism happening in city A.