11 ms·

A Mexican architect has a vision for a city straddling the U.S.-Mexico border

82 points by waqasaday 10y ago

dogma1138 10y ago
The problem with US/Mexican "relations" isn't cultural, ideological or philosophical it's mostly due to the economic disparity between the 2 nations and a city won't change it. There are already places where the US and Mexico effectively share a cross border municipality/urab environment. Adding another one won't change anything it can either create a false state if only the richest of Mexicans move in or will result in the same state as many other border urban areas right now where the Mexican side provides cheap day labor and a "safer" platform for criminal activity due to the financial disparity.
- jackcosgrove 10y ago
  So how do you solve a problem like that? The best solution is to make Mexico richer, which a lot of corporations are doing by moving operations there. A city like this is proposed to speed this along, with the eventual goal of dissolving the border. I think it would succeed in its goal of increasing trade and integration. The solution we've pursued thus far does indeed make Mexico richer, but it also makes parts of the US poorer. That's a big problem as we've found out this election, and one which both political parties discounted, the Republicans moreso since apparently the nationalist faction of their coalition is larger than the labor faction of the Democrats' coalition. You can justify current policy with utilitarianism (net welfare of the planet is maximized by globalizing as fast as possible) and realpolitik (we're going to globalize as fast as we possibly can without losing elections). However whenever change occurs too quickly over the will of the people, there is a reaction and we came very close to upsetting the apple cart this election. I think the opinion makers should set about trying to ameliorate the dislocations caused by globalization rather than trying to accelerate it. The latter course smacks of indifference and hubris.
  - ZoF 10y ago
    This is really well stated, completely agree.
  - ihsw 10y ago
    > the Republicans moreso since apparently the nationalist faction of their coalition is larger than the labor faction of the Democrats' coalition. Trump is grabbing votes from the labor faction more than any past Republican candidate -- his stance clearly taps into the American psyche, that American exceptionalism is real and that every American company should put American workers first. Jobs, jobs, jobs! is a great platform to run on. Increasing net welfare of the planet by globalizing as fast as possible would undeniably end in failure as the resources would not at all be redistributed evenly, as can currently be seen as plain as day. Globalization is a threat to everybody as it increases instability across the board except for the very wealthy. There is value in retreating to isolationism.
    - jackcosgrove 10y ago
      > Globalization is a threat to everybody as it increases instability across the board except for the very wealthy. Globalization benefits the wealthy and global poor, the latter the most. The losers are the middle and working classes of developed countries. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/people-are-angry-about-globalization-this-chart-explains-why/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/people-are-angry-abou... See Figure 4.
      - ihsw 10y ago
        Why do we let this happen? How is it the responsibility of the American people? This is a prime example of a tragedy of commons -- we are depleting the resources of America at the expense of Americans. The return on investment just isn't there. I'm not going to deny that lifting hundreds of millions of foreigners out of poverty is noble but why does the entirety of America's middle class have to be hollowed out? Those foreigners being lifted out of poverty aren't paying taxes to the US, they don't deserve the help they're getting, and the very wealthy aren't at all paying their fair share of taxes. To say that wealth will simply be created by a burgeoning middle class through replicating the Chinese model is delusional, it implies wealth will simply trickle down and we all know how silly Reaganomics is. China achieved their current status by rabidly enforcing the consumption of Chinese products and services and now they are reaping the benefits, and we have to do the same thing. China prevented their wealth from escaping through isolationist policies, it is clear that this model is the best way to secure our future. Simply lifting people out of poverty without enforcing domestic consumption is suicide by a thousand cuts.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  > The problem with US/Mexican "relations" isn't cultural, ideological or philosophical it's mostly due to the economic disparity between the 2 nations and a city won't change it. I don't believe this is completely true. How does an economic disparity happen? Through material factors or cultural, ideological, or philosophical factors. Mexico for various reasons has had an incredibly difficult time having a stable political system. Santa Anna came back from exile and screwed his people over how many times? How many times did power violently sway back and forth between the liberals and conservatives in the early part of the 20th century? Why is Mexico now effectively a narco state ruled by the cartels and crony politicians? I'll give you a hint: it's not because of resources or good land or good people: all of which it has in plenty. Mexico should be booming due to NAFTA. So much of this development we now see in East Asia could have very easily gone right across the border if it had a working political system. No, there's clearly bigger issues. Building a new city on the border isn't going to fix that. We already have Juarez.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    Well, land does have a lot to do with it, historically. Or rather, the people who controlled the land vs. the people who didn't control the land is the source of a lot of the historical instability in Mexico, which really ought to be a warning to people who argue that inequality and dispossession are perfectly fine and expected consequences of a good system.
    - dmix 10y ago
      > which really ought to be a warning to people who argue that inequality and dispossession are perfectly fine and expected consequences of a good system. A "good system" doesn't just mean rewarding the top contributors with more but also implies the existence a strong and fair legal system where human, business, and property rights are respected and criminal law is enforced. That is almost always a necessary prerequisite for capitalism to function (even Adam Smith wrote about this quite a bit in the 1700s) but capitalism usually gets faulted regardless - even when market economies are pigeonholed on top of a) purposefully neglectful authoritarian states or b) places with under-developed legal systems. There have been plenty of cases in Mexico where rightful owners of land were 'dispossessed' and this didn't happen as a result of a functioning free-market system (which is what I believe you were taking a swipe at). Whether the land rights were fairly distributed or respected post-colonization is also not a cause/effect result of a market economy but a result of the functions of the state/legal system. It certainly won't help either when responsibility is post-defacto shifted onto markets where the powerless poor will have even less authority than in courts or government. Stealing a bunch of stuff then shifting previously centralized authority/responsibility over to markets is a sadly common tactic in underdeveloped regions, not surprising there was such hostility towards capitalism in South/Central America in the past 60 yrs where it was rushed in without addressing underlying systemic issues (see also: Russia and parts of eastern europe in 80/90s).
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  No, the problem is simply political. Mexicans and their American descendents vote D. D's want more Mexicans, R's don't want that. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with a shared economic area and huge economic disparity. Consider Bombay, Bangalore or Pune - all lovely places which bring high skill/high income folks together with low skill/low income folks looking to move up in the world. The result is beautiful modern neighborhoods like Koramangala, Bandra or Koregaon park, up and coming areas (described by westerners as "slums") like Dharavi or Baiganwadi, and free trade that benefits everyone. You have rich Parsis/Gujus moving in and working at banks, smart Tamils working in software, poor Biharis driving their Ubers, and everyone benefits. Do you think Bombay should close her borders to Bihar, or even inland Maharashtra? The only big issues are political externalities - i.e., Mexicans might vote for politicians that make the US more like Mexico. That's an issue even in the US (California refugees voting for CA-like policies in their new states), and is best solved with disenfranchisement/reduced democracy rather than trade barriers.
  - hx87 10y ago
    > California refugees voting for CA-like policies in their new states That depends on which CA refugees you're talking about--the ones who fled when it was undergoing a red -> blue transition, or the ones that were priced out? The former are political refugees and tend to vote for very anti-(current)-CA policies, whereas the latter aren't exactly analogous to Mexican immigrants in the US--they love everything about CA except the price and are trying to create low-cost CAs in exile, whereas Mexicans are escaping more structural problems and are in no hurry to recreate the conditions that made them left.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    > Mexicans and their American descendents vote D. D's want more Mexicans, R's don't want that. GWB got over 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004. Mexicans tend to be very conservative. That's the truth in California as much as it is in the South. These conservative roots match the Republicans more so than the Democrats, but it's the immigration stance that has tilted Hispanics towards the Democrats, but only recently, and even that is probably a temporary thing. The notion that the Democrats have Hispanic (and especially Mexican) voters locked up isn't a reality. > The only big issues are political externalities - i.e., Mexicans might vote for politicians that make the US more like Mexico. That's an issue even in the US (California refugees voting for CA-like policies in their new states), and is best solved with disenfranchisement/reduced democracy rather than trade barriers. To be clear, regardless of your political stance or your views on immigration, not giving illegal immigrants the right to vote is not the same as disenfranchisement or reduced democracy. For legal migrants, am not aware of anything showing actual attempts at disenfranchisement.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  effectively share a cross border municipality/urab environment For a moment, I thought this was a new slang word I hadn't run across yet.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    No, it's not that common in the US there are a few spots like Juarez tho. In Europe this is known as Eurodistricts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodistrict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodistrict, there are also similar things in Asia but again slightly rarer.
    - cpeterso 10y ago
      "Weird fiction" author China Miéville wrote an interesting detective novel, "The City & the City", about two cities that occupy the same geographical space and the implications that has for daily life and government operations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_%26_the_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_%26_the_City
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  I think it would be a nice change of pace to have a wealthy border city. US perceptions of Mexico are - as you mentioned - inaccurately skewed towards a disenfranchised class of Mexicans, notably absent of the privileged class that is completely content with Mexico.
gok 10y ago
"Also: No sprawl." Fitting that the article this line actually links to is titled "El Paso Is Learning That Not Everyone Hates Sprawl."
Grishnakh 10y ago
This is a stupid, stupid idea. Cities that cross borders are a problem wherever they are, because of the administrative difficulties involved: you can't have a single, consistent set of rules and laws spanning the whole city, you don't have a single government managing it, etc. We already have a LOT of problems here in the US where metro areas are comprised of multiple cities, and worse, cross state boundaries. Ask anyone who lives in one state, and drives to the other state to go to work every day, how they like doing their taxes: it's a nightmare of forms every year because there's multiple taxing authorities they have to answer to. Or look at public transit that crosses state boundaries, such as that used between New York City and New Jersey. It's a mess, because there's no single government that the transit agency has to answer to and is accountable to. Funding is always a problem because again, there's no single government that controls it, and no single electorate that government is accountable to. Even a metro area within a state, but composed of multiple cities can have problems. In the Phoenix metro area, there's confusion at traffic lights because all the cities have leading left turn arrows, except for Scottsdale which has lagging turns. This has caused many accidents because drivers get used to one or the other and then drive across one street and suddenly the standards change. There was an interesting college project back in the 70s called "The 38 States" (google it) where a class decided the current US state borders were badly drawn and led to too much inefficiency, so they came up with a new map of the US with idealized borders, taking into account local cultures and locations of metro areas. One of the prime factors in how they drew the new state borders was to make sure that no metro area spanned two states, and instead the borders were drawn, whenever possible, in rural areas between cities. This guy's idea flies entirely in the face of this. The governments in Oregon and Washington already complain a lot about people living in Vancouver (WA), where there's no income tax, and then doing all their shopping in Portland, where there's no sales tax. Doing this over a national border, between two countries as economically disparate as the USA and Mexico, is a recipe for disaster. Plus, as dogma1138 says, we already have places much like this on the border. El Paso/Cuidad Juarez is a prime example. It isn't a panacea, and last I heard, Juarez had a huge problem with brutal gang violence.
- seszett 10y ago
  It doesn't work that bad with cross-border metro areas in the EU. Or at least the ones I know. I live in one, it's perfectly good. Maybe I wish the metro could have a few stations on the Belgian side of the border, but the buses do cross it so it's still fine. Other than that I don't see a problem with the cross-border situation. (By the way, it not only spans across France and Belgium, but also across Flanders and Wallonia on the Belgian side). But there is one common metropolis authority that the transit agencies have to answer to and that coordinates what happens in the metropolis, it's like the inverse of what you're describing in the US apparently.
helthanatos 10y ago
Well, as we can see from southern Tucson, that city has become progressively worse as more non citizens have taken it over. The malls and "safe places" have moved farther north as the people keep coming. It is not safe to walk around the border without a gun. So how will creating a new city help anything? Are you trusting that if non citizens weren't categorized as illegals that they would follow more laws?
- olivercreashe 10y ago
  Please cite direct evidence of what you mean. Your opinion does not mean it generalizes as fact. It sounds like you feel safe only where rich white people live (foothills) and in malls. Visit any place in southern Tucson and you will also feel safe, although you will notice that not everyone is white and that is perhaps what bothers you. Also, there are plenty of people walking around the actual border without guns every single day living their lives. I believe you are misinformed and spreading FUD.
  - helthanatos 10y ago
    Idiot
    - sctb 10y ago
      This is just not OK on Hacker News and we're hasty to ban users that post like this.
      - helthanatos 10y ago
        Can my bad reply be deleted by more or by someone else?
  - helthanatos 10y ago
    Idiot
  - unethical_ban 10y ago
    Calling people idiot is not a good reply, helthanatos. But neither are veiled accusations of racism, olivercreashe. Where is your evidence? Your opinion is worth no more than his, though you seem to think otherwise.
mc32 10y ago
It's interesting that Mr Romero didn't decide to want to build this city on the Guatemala-Mexico border to grant Guatemalans access to the benefits of the Mexican economy. For reals though, Mexico needs better government. Dirt poor countries with a quarter the resources are beating them badly, Korea, Malaysia, Chile. They have squandered opportunity after opportunity, Venezuela is catching up though. Activists would do quite a lot more good by demanding better from their own government. I mean better management and governance. It reminds me of people saying if Trump wins they'll flee to Canada... That's the worst thing you can do, if you actually care for outcomes.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > It reminds me of people saying if Trump wins they'll flee to Canada... That's the worst thing you can do, if you actually care for outcomes. Those who say that for sure won't actually do it. In Poland, we had half of the country declaring they'll swim to Sweden if PiS (a political party) wins. They won, nobody left. Fast-forward few years, we had prominent people proclaiming they'll leave the country if PiS wins. They won again, nobody left.
  - euyyn 10y ago
    I mean, those waters must be super cold.
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    I was born there, butI said I'd leave the UK if UKIP got too many votes. Now I live in Denmark. Admittedly, I'm the only person I know who did this.
  - saosebastiao 10y ago
    I don't think this is entirely true. It's probably rhetoric for most, but Trump is the most extremist politician we've seen in the US since Andrew Jackson. It's not just that Americans want nothing to do with him...its that they want nothing to do with a nation that elects him. I'm relatively reassured that he won't win though [0]. [0] http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/ http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
xigency 10y ago
Ignoring the political significance of this design, the cubic street layout would either be great or awful based on experience with diagonal streets. Does anyone know of examples of other cities with striking diagonal layouts?
- madenine 10y ago
  DC resident here - diagonal boulevards sure looks pretty, but 5+ way intersections are always a mess. All I saw from the road-map of this city was waaaay to many 6+ way intersections of major (perimeter or axis of triangle/hexagon areas) roads. Look at the central north/south road, you've got a 6-way intersection every block. No thanks.
sverige 10y ago
Laredo / Nuevo Laredo are pretty close to this already. Just remove the border guards and build a couple more bridges.
hasbroslasher 10y ago
Good to finally see some hexagons put to use in city planning. The more-area-per-perimeter effect is a great template for a future where automobiles are less common and there are more people. Plus they just look cool.
- nashashmi 10y ago
  This is the first time I have come across hexagonal city planning. A search on Google reveals this is a well established and researched principle, but I have not really found any actual cities planned this way. I am just thinking about the the intersections of hexagonal systems. In locations where you have 4 roads intersecting, the roads are not 90 degrees. This is not ideal in intersection design. Second, at locations where you have these diagonal streets coming together, it seems like traffic bottleneck/nightmare. Currently existing intersections like this have been now simplified into roundabouts or simpler 3-way intersections. I am going to continue pondering on this subject, but these are my immediate thoughts.
  - hasbroslasher 10y ago
    I think hexagonal cities are going to require different traffic patterns. I think it would make the most sense to have cars drive in "circles" around the hexagons, and then having the left (outermost) lane available for left turning onto another hexagon. That way, it's really easy to do U-turns (just drive, uninhibited, around the hexagon) and you could build highways at varying distances that act as loops (like major metro areas already have). This sounds like an interesting problem to model computationally! I wonder what the optimal hexagon:car size ratio is? (essentially how many times longer should the side of a block be than a car) Granted, I think that it's going to become necessary at some point to have cars and pedestrians operating on different "floors" - in major metro areas, pedestrians are already massive cluster fuckers and getting around downtown SF or NY is incredibly inefficient in an automobile (at least during the day).
pacofvf 10y ago
When did HN become /r/worldnews ? > Dirt poor countries with a quarter the resources are beating them badly, Korea, Malaysia, Chile. > where the Mexican side provides cheap day labor and a "safer" platform for criminal activity due to the financial disparity. > Mexico now effectively a narco state ruled by the cartels > The solution we've pursued thus far does indeed make Mexico richer, but it also makes parts of the US poorer. > Well, as we can see from southern Tucson, that city has become progressively worse as more non citizens have taken it over.
eternalban 10y ago
> “With technology, those borders are just becoming symbolic limits” Architects say the darnest things, sometimes. Technology has not rendered the legal regiments of distinct states to mere symbolism.
ASalazarMX 10y ago
There's an annual celebration between the cities of Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Tamaulipas which could have been the precursor of this idea. It's called "Día del Charro" (Charro Day) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charro_Days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charro_Days. The two cities are in such good terms that even in the late eighties migration control was suspended one day so people could freely cross forth and back to see the parade starting in downtown Brownsville and ending in downtown Matamoros. This free crossing was discontinued due to federal laws, but the two cities remain as close as ever.
whybroke 10y ago
The Tohono O'odham people lived happily straddling the border drawn as a straight line in Washington. That is until 1980. Strange that "progress" makes a human system that worked happily for 10,000 years suddenly an unthinkable conduit to crime in some people's minds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tohono_O%27odham_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tohono_O%27odham_people
awesomerobot 10y ago
What if the wall was housing for the poor
kinkdr 10y ago
Aside from politics, the hexagon pattern looks nice, but how is he planning to manage traffic at the points of intersection? A 3-way traffic light will create terrible traffic jams.
DominikR 10y ago
How many of these centrally planned utopias have ever worked out well for the people? I'd prefer if political parties would openly state their policy and how they will change the laws instead of saying one thing and then in secret ignore existing laws to create a situation with tens of millions of illegal immigrants that is now hard to deal with humanely. Nobody is going to win a popularity contest with the policy to deport millions of people, but no one would have won a popularity contest either by importing millions of people. Now they can all shrug their shoulders and say it's not our fault, but it clearly is someones fault. It is possible to have a secure border with mostly legal immigration, other countries did it before and they do it today as well. Aside from that it isn't beneficial for Mexico that some of their brightest men and women move to the US while their drug cartels smuggle money and weapons into Mexico which they use to corrupt and slaughter their own people.
awqrre 10y ago
of course a Mexican would like that...
- sctb 10y ago
  You can't comment like this here.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
gjolund 10y ago
Aka San Diego.
gjolund 10y ago
Aka San Diego.

82 points by waqasaday 10y ago

The problem with US/Mexican "relations" isn't cultural, ideological or philosophical it's mostly due to the economic disparity between the 2 nations and a city won't change it. There are already places where the US and Mexico effectively share a cross border municipality/urab environment. Adding another one won't change anything it can either create a false state if only the richest of Mexicans move in or will result in the same state as many other border urban areas right now where the Mexican side provides cheap day labor and a "safer" platform for criminal activity due to the financial disparity.

jackcosgrove 10y ago
So how do you solve a problem like that? The best solution is to make Mexico richer, which a lot of corporations are doing by moving operations there. A city like this is proposed to speed this along, with the eventual goal of dissolving the border. I think it would succeed in its goal of increasing trade and integration. The solution we've pursued thus far does indeed make Mexico richer, but it also makes parts of the US poorer. That's a big problem as we've found out this election, and one which both political parties discounted, the Republicans moreso since apparently the nationalist faction of their coalition is larger than the labor faction of the Democrats' coalition. You can justify current policy with utilitarianism (net welfare of the planet is maximized by globalizing as fast as possible) and realpolitik (we're going to globalize as fast as we possibly can without losing elections). However whenever change occurs too quickly over the will of the people, there is a reaction and we came very close to upsetting the apple cart this election. I think the opinion makers should set about trying to ameliorate the dislocations caused by globalization rather than trying to accelerate it. The latter course smacks of indifference and hubris.
- ZoF 10y ago
  This is really well stated, completely agree.
- ihsw 10y ago
  > the Republicans moreso since apparently the nationalist faction of their coalition is larger than the labor faction of the Democrats' coalition. Trump is grabbing votes from the labor faction more than any past Republican candidate -- his stance clearly taps into the American psyche, that American exceptionalism is real and that every American company should put American workers first. Jobs, jobs, jobs! is a great platform to run on. Increasing net welfare of the planet by globalizing as fast as possible would undeniably end in failure as the resources would not at all be redistributed evenly, as can currently be seen as plain as day. Globalization is a threat to everybody as it increases instability across the board except for the very wealthy. There is value in retreating to isolationism.
  - jackcosgrove 10y ago
    > Globalization is a threat to everybody as it increases instability across the board except for the very wealthy. Globalization benefits the wealthy and global poor, the latter the most. The losers are the middle and working classes of developed countries. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/people-are-angry-about-globalization-this-chart-explains-why/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/people-are-angry-abou... See Figure 4.
    - ihsw 10y ago
      Why do we let this happen? How is it the responsibility of the American people? This is a prime example of a tragedy of commons -- we are depleting the resources of America at the expense of Americans. The return on investment just isn't there. I'm not going to deny that lifting hundreds of millions of foreigners out of poverty is noble but why does the entirety of America's middle class have to be hollowed out? Those foreigners being lifted out of poverty aren't paying taxes to the US, they don't deserve the help they're getting, and the very wealthy aren't at all paying their fair share of taxes. To say that wealth will simply be created by a burgeoning middle class through replicating the Chinese model is delusional, it implies wealth will simply trickle down and we all know how silly Reaganomics is. China achieved their current status by rabidly enforcing the consumption of Chinese products and services and now they are reaping the benefits, and we have to do the same thing. China prevented their wealth from escaping through isolationist policies, it is clear that this model is the best way to secure our future. Simply lifting people out of poverty without enforcing domestic consumption is suicide by a thousand cuts.
aaron-lebo 10y ago
> The problem with US/Mexican "relations" isn't cultural, ideological or philosophical it's mostly due to the economic disparity between the 2 nations and a city won't change it. I don't believe this is completely true. How does an economic disparity happen? Through material factors or cultural, ideological, or philosophical factors. Mexico for various reasons has had an incredibly difficult time having a stable political system. Santa Anna came back from exile and screwed his people over how many times? How many times did power violently sway back and forth between the liberals and conservatives in the early part of the 20th century? Why is Mexico now effectively a narco state ruled by the cartels and crony politicians? I'll give you a hint: it's not because of resources or good land or good people: all of which it has in plenty. Mexico should be booming due to NAFTA. So much of this development we now see in East Asia could have very easily gone right across the border if it had a working political system. No, there's clearly bigger issues. Building a new city on the border isn't going to fix that. We already have Juarez.
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  Well, land does have a lot to do with it, historically. Or rather, the people who controlled the land vs. the people who didn't control the land is the source of a lot of the historical instability in Mexico, which really ought to be a warning to people who argue that inequality and dispossession are perfectly fine and expected consequences of a good system.
  - dmix 10y ago
    > which really ought to be a warning to people who argue that inequality and dispossession are perfectly fine and expected consequences of a good system. A "good system" doesn't just mean rewarding the top contributors with more but also implies the existence a strong and fair legal system where human, business, and property rights are respected and criminal law is enforced. That is almost always a necessary prerequisite for capitalism to function (even Adam Smith wrote about this quite a bit in the 1700s) but capitalism usually gets faulted regardless - even when market economies are pigeonholed on top of a) purposefully neglectful authoritarian states or b) places with under-developed legal systems. There have been plenty of cases in Mexico where rightful owners of land were 'dispossessed' and this didn't happen as a result of a functioning free-market system (which is what I believe you were taking a swipe at). Whether the land rights were fairly distributed or respected post-colonization is also not a cause/effect result of a market economy but a result of the functions of the state/legal system. It certainly won't help either when responsibility is post-defacto shifted onto markets where the powerless poor will have even less authority than in courts or government. Stealing a bunch of stuff then shifting previously centralized authority/responsibility over to markets is a sadly common tactic in underdeveloped regions, not surprising there was such hostility towards capitalism in South/Central America in the past 60 yrs where it was rushed in without addressing underlying systemic issues (see also: Russia and parts of eastern europe in 80/90s).
yummyfajitas 10y ago
No, the problem is simply political. Mexicans and their American descendents vote D. D's want more Mexicans, R's don't want that. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with a shared economic area and huge economic disparity. Consider Bombay, Bangalore or Pune - all lovely places which bring high skill/high income folks together with low skill/low income folks looking to move up in the world. The result is beautiful modern neighborhoods like Koramangala, Bandra or Koregaon park, up and coming areas (described by westerners as "slums") like Dharavi or Baiganwadi, and free trade that benefits everyone. You have rich Parsis/Gujus moving in and working at banks, smart Tamils working in software, poor Biharis driving their Ubers, and everyone benefits. Do you think Bombay should close her borders to Bihar, or even inland Maharashtra? The only big issues are political externalities - i.e., Mexicans might vote for politicians that make the US more like Mexico. That's an issue even in the US (California refugees voting for CA-like policies in their new states), and is best solved with disenfranchisement/reduced democracy rather than trade barriers.
- hx87 10y ago
  > California refugees voting for CA-like policies in their new states That depends on which CA refugees you're talking about--the ones who fled when it was undergoing a red -> blue transition, or the ones that were priced out? The former are political refugees and tend to vote for very anti-(current)-CA policies, whereas the latter aren't exactly analogous to Mexican immigrants in the US--they love everything about CA except the price and are trying to create low-cost CAs in exile, whereas Mexicans are escaping more structural problems and are in no hurry to recreate the conditions that made them left.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  > Mexicans and their American descendents vote D. D's want more Mexicans, R's don't want that. GWB got over 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004. Mexicans tend to be very conservative. That's the truth in California as much as it is in the South. These conservative roots match the Republicans more so than the Democrats, but it's the immigration stance that has tilted Hispanics towards the Democrats, but only recently, and even that is probably a temporary thing. The notion that the Democrats have Hispanic (and especially Mexican) voters locked up isn't a reality. > The only big issues are political externalities - i.e., Mexicans might vote for politicians that make the US more like Mexico. That's an issue even in the US (California refugees voting for CA-like policies in their new states), and is best solved with disenfranchisement/reduced democracy rather than trade barriers. To be clear, regardless of your political stance or your views on immigration, not giving illegal immigrants the right to vote is not the same as disenfranchisement or reduced democracy. For legal migrants, am not aware of anything showing actual attempts at disenfranchisement.
stcredzero 10y ago
effectively share a cross border municipality/urab environment For a moment, I thought this was a new slang word I hadn't run across yet.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  No, it's not that common in the US there are a few spots like Juarez tho. In Europe this is known as Eurodistricts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodistrict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodistrict, there are also similar things in Asia but again slightly rarer.
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    "Weird fiction" author China Miéville wrote an interesting detective novel, "The City & the City", about two cities that occupy the same geographical space and the implications that has for daily life and government operations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_%26_the_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_%26_the_City
cloudjacker 10y ago
I think it would be a nice change of pace to have a wealthy border city. US perceptions of Mexico are - as you mentioned - inaccurately skewed towards a disenfranchised class of Mexicans, notably absent of the privileged class that is completely content with Mexico.

gok 10y ago

"Also: No sprawl." Fitting that the article this line actually links to is titled "El Paso Is Learning That Not Everyone Hates Sprawl."

Grishnakh 10y ago

This is a stupid, stupid idea. Cities that cross borders are a problem wherever they are, because of the administrative difficulties involved: you can't have a single, consistent set of rules and laws spanning the whole city, you don't have a single government managing it, etc. We already have a LOT of problems here in the US where metro areas are comprised of multiple cities, and worse, cross state boundaries. Ask anyone who lives in one state, and drives to the other state to go to work every day, how they like doing their taxes: it's a nightmare of forms every year because there's multiple taxing authorities they have to answer to. Or look at public transit that crosses state boundaries, such as that used between New York City and New Jersey. It's a mess, because there's no single government that the transit agency has to answer to and is accountable to. Funding is always a problem because again, there's no single government that controls it, and no single electorate that government is accountable to. Even a metro area within a state, but composed of multiple cities can have problems. In the Phoenix metro area, there's confusion at traffic lights because all the cities have leading left turn arrows, except for Scottsdale which has lagging turns. This has caused many accidents because drivers get used to one or the other and then drive across one street and suddenly the standards change. There was an interesting college project back in the 70s called "The 38 States" (google it) where a class decided the current US state borders were badly drawn and led to too much inefficiency, so they came up with a new map of the US with idealized borders, taking into account local cultures and locations of metro areas. One of the prime factors in how they drew the new state borders was to make sure that no metro area spanned two states, and instead the borders were drawn, whenever possible, in rural areas between cities. This guy's idea flies entirely in the face of this. The governments in Oregon and Washington already complain a lot about people living in Vancouver (WA), where there's no income tax, and then doing all their shopping in Portland, where there's no sales tax. Doing this over a national border, between two countries as economically disparate as the USA and Mexico, is a recipe for disaster. Plus, as dogma1138 says, we already have places much like this on the border. El Paso/Cuidad Juarez is a prime example. It isn't a panacea, and last I heard, Juarez had a huge problem with brutal gang violence.

seszett 10y ago
It doesn't work that bad with cross-border metro areas in the EU. Or at least the ones I know. I live in one, it's perfectly good. Maybe I wish the metro could have a few stations on the Belgian side of the border, but the buses do cross it so it's still fine. Other than that I don't see a problem with the cross-border situation. (By the way, it not only spans across France and Belgium, but also across Flanders and Wallonia on the Belgian side). But there is one common metropolis authority that the transit agencies have to answer to and that coordinates what happens in the metropolis, it's like the inverse of what you're describing in the US apparently.

helthanatos 10y ago

Well, as we can see from southern Tucson, that city has become progressively worse as more non citizens have taken it over. The malls and "safe places" have moved farther north as the people keep coming. It is not safe to walk around the border without a gun. So how will creating a new city help anything? Are you trusting that if non citizens weren't categorized as illegals that they would follow more laws?

olivercreashe 10y ago
Please cite direct evidence of what you mean. Your opinion does not mean it generalizes as fact. It sounds like you feel safe only where rich white people live (foothills) and in malls. Visit any place in southern Tucson and you will also feel safe, although you will notice that not everyone is white and that is perhaps what bothers you. Also, there are plenty of people walking around the actual border without guns every single day living their lives. I believe you are misinformed and spreading FUD.
- helthanatos 10y ago
  Idiot
  - sctb 10y ago
    This is just not OK on Hacker News and we're hasty to ban users that post like this.
    - helthanatos 10y ago
      Can my bad reply be deleted by more or by someone else?
- helthanatos 10y ago
  Idiot
- unethical_ban 10y ago
  Calling people idiot is not a good reply, helthanatos. But neither are veiled accusations of racism, olivercreashe. Where is your evidence? Your opinion is worth no more than his, though you seem to think otherwise.

mc32 10y ago

It's interesting that Mr Romero didn't decide to want to build this city on the Guatemala-Mexico border to grant Guatemalans access to the benefits of the Mexican economy. For reals though, Mexico needs better government. Dirt poor countries with a quarter the resources are beating them badly, Korea, Malaysia, Chile. They have squandered opportunity after opportunity, Venezuela is catching up though. Activists would do quite a lot more good by demanding better from their own government. I mean better management and governance. It reminds me of people saying if Trump wins they'll flee to Canada... That's the worst thing you can do, if you actually care for outcomes.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
> It reminds me of people saying if Trump wins they'll flee to Canada... That's the worst thing you can do, if you actually care for outcomes. Those who say that for sure won't actually do it. In Poland, we had half of the country declaring they'll swim to Sweden if PiS (a political party) wins. They won, nobody left. Fast-forward few years, we had prominent people proclaiming they'll leave the country if PiS wins. They won again, nobody left.
- euyyn 10y ago
  I mean, those waters must be super cold.
- Symbiote 10y ago
  I was born there, butI said I'd leave the UK if UKIP got too many votes. Now I live in Denmark. Admittedly, I'm the only person I know who did this.
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  I don't think this is entirely true. It's probably rhetoric for most, but Trump is the most extremist politician we've seen in the US since Andrew Jackson. It's not just that Americans want nothing to do with him...its that they want nothing to do with a nation that elects him. I'm relatively reassured that he won't win though [0]. [0] http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/ http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

xigency 10y ago

Ignoring the political significance of this design, the cubic street layout would either be great or awful based on experience with diagonal streets. Does anyone know of examples of other cities with striking diagonal layouts?

madenine 10y ago
DC resident here - diagonal boulevards sure looks pretty, but 5+ way intersections are always a mess. All I saw from the road-map of this city was waaaay to many 6+ way intersections of major (perimeter or axis of triangle/hexagon areas) roads. Look at the central north/south road, you've got a 6-way intersection every block. No thanks.

sverige 10y ago

Laredo / Nuevo Laredo are pretty close to this already. Just remove the border guards and build a couple more bridges.

hasbroslasher 10y ago

Good to finally see some hexagons put to use in city planning. The more-area-per-perimeter effect is a great template for a future where automobiles are less common and there are more people. Plus they just look cool.

nashashmi 10y ago
This is the first time I have come across hexagonal city planning. A search on Google reveals this is a well established and researched principle, but I have not really found any actual cities planned this way. I am just thinking about the the intersections of hexagonal systems. In locations where you have 4 roads intersecting, the roads are not 90 degrees. This is not ideal in intersection design. Second, at locations where you have these diagonal streets coming together, it seems like traffic bottleneck/nightmare. Currently existing intersections like this have been now simplified into roundabouts or simpler 3-way intersections. I am going to continue pondering on this subject, but these are my immediate thoughts.
- hasbroslasher 10y ago
  I think hexagonal cities are going to require different traffic patterns. I think it would make the most sense to have cars drive in "circles" around the hexagons, and then having the left (outermost) lane available for left turning onto another hexagon. That way, it's really easy to do U-turns (just drive, uninhibited, around the hexagon) and you could build highways at varying distances that act as loops (like major metro areas already have). This sounds like an interesting problem to model computationally! I wonder what the optimal hexagon:car size ratio is? (essentially how many times longer should the side of a block be than a car) Granted, I think that it's going to become necessary at some point to have cars and pedestrians operating on different "floors" - in major metro areas, pedestrians are already massive cluster fuckers and getting around downtown SF or NY is incredibly inefficient in an automobile (at least during the day).

pacofvf 10y ago

When did HN become /r/worldnews ? > Dirt poor countries with a quarter the resources are beating them badly, Korea, Malaysia, Chile. > where the Mexican side provides cheap day labor and a "safer" platform for criminal activity due to the financial disparity. > Mexico now effectively a narco state ruled by the cartels > The solution we've pursued thus far does indeed make Mexico richer, but it also makes parts of the US poorer. > Well, as we can see from southern Tucson, that city has become progressively worse as more non citizens have taken it over.

eternalban 10y ago

> “With technology, those borders are just becoming symbolic limits” Architects say the darnest things, sometimes. Technology has not rendered the legal regiments of distinct states to mere symbolism.

ASalazarMX 10y ago

There's an annual celebration between the cities of Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Tamaulipas which could have been the precursor of this idea. It's called "Día del Charro" (Charro Day) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charro_Days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charro_Days. The two cities are in such good terms that even in the late eighties migration control was suspended one day so people could freely cross forth and back to see the parade starting in downtown Brownsville and ending in downtown Matamoros. This free crossing was discontinued due to federal laws, but the two cities remain as close as ever.

whybroke 10y ago

The Tohono O'odham people lived happily straddling the border drawn as a straight line in Washington. That is until 1980. Strange that "progress" makes a human system that worked happily for 10,000 years suddenly an unthinkable conduit to crime in some people's minds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tohono_O%27odham_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tohono_O%27odham_people

awesomerobot 10y ago

What if the wall was housing for the poor

kinkdr 10y ago

Aside from politics, the hexagon pattern looks nice, but how is he planning to manage traffic at the points of intersection? A 3-way traffic light will create terrible traffic jams.

DominikR 10y ago

How many of these centrally planned utopias have ever worked out well for the people? I'd prefer if political parties would openly state their policy and how they will change the laws instead of saying one thing and then in secret ignore existing laws to create a situation with tens of millions of illegal immigrants that is now hard to deal with humanely. Nobody is going to win a popularity contest with the policy to deport millions of people, but no one would have won a popularity contest either by importing millions of people. Now they can all shrug their shoulders and say it's not our fault, but it clearly is someones fault. It is possible to have a secure border with mostly legal immigration, other countries did it before and they do it today as well. Aside from that it isn't beneficial for Mexico that some of their brightest men and women move to the US while their drug cartels smuggle money and weapons into Mexico which they use to corrupt and slaughter their own people.

awqrre 10y ago

of course a Mexican would like that...

sctb 10y ago
You can't comment like this here.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

gjolund 10y ago

Aka San Diego.

gjolund 10y ago

Aka San Diego.