Lecture Teddy Cruz and Jose Luquin
Wednesday Nov.30, 2006

For Otra/Another final lecture we invited Teddy Cruz and Jose Luquin to present their work and thoughts on the redevelopment of Downtown in San Diego and Tijuana. Teddy was appointed by San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders to the board of the Centre City Redevelopment Corporation (CCDC) a public, non-profit corporation created by the City of San Diego to staff and implement Downtown redevelopment projects and programs. Jose Luquin is an architect/educator with 25 years of teaching experience at the Instituto Tecnologico de Tijuana.

Jose Luquin began the presentation with a lecture on the current work by the students of Instituto Tecnologico de Tijuana realized at Pio Pico Street of Downtown Tijuana. The presentation included a video survey of the area with a soundtrack that was unrelated to the visual complexity and character of the images. Music by Thievery Corporation distanced the images from the contextual sounds of everyday life on the busy street and NorTec music was somehow generic. After the two minute journey, Luquin presented a series of images of the various proposal students realized for the 11 blocks of the street that runs north –south. The premise was to propose redevelopment to the area by implementing pedestrian activities and participation of the older residents by means of using their land as investment to discourage gentrification (a word that does not exist in Spanish). Most of the projects cleared the blocks and inserted new designs that ranged from commercial, housing and public use buildings. This studio exercise was meant to be an interrogative into the future of downtown Tijuana, which is in the brink of change, yet issues of mix-use programming and zoning plans where not evaluated in the exercise. A typical Latin America view of redevelopment through tabula rasa with neo modern buildings is still apparent, missing the opportunity of engaging the existing economic and social context. The studio participants emphasized the need for a strong government policy that would limit informal construction and generation of uncontrolled business practices.

Teddy Cruz presentation format and content changed somewhat from what I had seen before, yet at the end he discussed part of the discourse of the Political Equator lecture. He began by showing statistics on density in San Diego between urban and suburban development as a process for research and discussion on the particularities which might be useful as an antithesis for sprawl (another word that does not exist in Spanish). He also touched on the current trend of accumulating statistics on density for the creation of information models, yet exclude the "mapping" of social conditions within development. Teddy criticized the latest exhibition of the 10^th Venice Biennale consisting of physical models of density data based on various cities around the globe, and explained that new models of density should not only deal with quantitative data, but should increase opportunities for social interactions.

In the following slides he revisited a couple of his well known projects such as the development for Casa Familiar in the border city of San Ysidro an example of high density and qualitative spatial conditions for migrant and low income population. As cases study for this and other projects he presented that night, Teddy discussed the conditions of informal developments in Tijuana. Loose urban regulations, self construction techniques and negotiation of boundaries are the primary elements Teddy investigates for process that could be injected into San Diego’s development policy as well as to inform design techniques for the creation of density with heterogeneous social spaces.

The final images included a short version of Political Equator, Teddy’s version of globalization’s injustice to the working class that as he describes is needed to maintain economic power and development of consumerist infrastructure including sprawl and suburbs. What is interesting is that Teddy turns to Tijuana for versions of informality and negotiation, while Jose Luquin seeks to implement the strict reinforcement of zoning and planning rules similar to the ones found in San Diego. I believe, the issue still relevant for Tijuana is how we begin rehabilitation of historic a site, which for economic survival has turned to hybrid urban conditions that include informal practices. San Diego still has the task of generating development that is heterogeneous and multicultural without the evading conditions of identity. This dialogue between Luqiun and Cruz resembles the paradoxical effects that make up this region. Yet, I believe there is a feeling of optimism between the two border cities even though the conditions are contrasting . If we look at their origin they share modern idealism, Tijuana’s Plan de Zaragoza and San Diego’s Nolan Plan where both City Beautiful planning designs implemented in the late 19^th century.