Two Countries, Two Cities, One Trend? Urban Redevelopment, Neighborhood Change and Reinterpretations in the San Diego-Tijuana Borderland

From an outsider perspective, the national border between the U.S. and Mexico appears as a hardly passable line that cuts off two distinct societies. However, on the local level, strong ties exist between the two cities of San Diego and Tijuana; economically, culturally, and socially, the border line is being stretched into a borderland. However, the cities seem to share not only goods, labour force, or environmental conditions, among other aspects, but also a parallelism of certain developments and trends can be recognised. While downtown San Diego and the neighborhoods of its former suburban inner ring have been struck by a major ‘redevelopment wave’ within the last decades, also downtown Tijuana and its edges are currently experiencing multi-layered transformations in terms of infill development, creative placemaking projects and the emergence of a cosmopolitan urban landscape of culinary experiences with fine-dining, breweries and trendy street food courts. The present paper focuses on the historic and recent transformations in the central neighborhoods of San Diego and Tijuana and illustrates how the various spaces have changed over time in the course of a bi-nationally occurring redevelopment and reinterpretation trend. In the sense of a horizontal geographical approach, the paper constitutes an initial overview over the multiplicity of the developments and the various layers in which the transformations are taking place in San Diego and Tijuana.