A drive south from San Diego into Mexico will thrust you across two starkly different cityscapes. On one side: suburban stucco homes spread across green Southern Californian lawns. On the other: a loose set of homes built with frenzied growth, sometimes with re-cycled materials and discarded consumer goods. But neither side is an ideal, or a failed, urban landscape. We can draw insights and ideas about successful social housing by studying both sides of the border.

This past Friday was the launch of the Otra / Another Conference in Tijuana, where American and Mexican architects, urban planners, and theorists, have gathered to present ideas for low and moderate income housing for the masses. Among the speakers on Friday were Mark Lee and Robert Somol of UCLA. They presented their work, which included Quick, Loose, and Dirty: a Tijuana Novela, which portrayed Tijuana as a sustainable city with its landscape of re-used and recycled materials. Other participants included California based architect Teddy Cruz, who has been working on mixed use housing developments for Mexican immigrants in San Ysidro, near San Diego.

The Conference continues for the rest of November, at the Instituto de Cultura de Baja California in Tijuana, with speakers scheduled to lecture on topics such as government polices of social housing in the US and Mexico, the development of illegal settlements in Tijuana, the potential role of the architect as designer/developer, and the impact of suburban developments on the periphery.

Check out the Otra / Another blog for more information!