Mexico and the World
Vol. 2, No 4 (Fall 1997)
http://www.profmex.org/mexicoandtheworld/volume2/4fall97/afterword.html

On Studying World Regions

and a Case Study of

'Greater Mexican Los Angeles-Tijuana (Real and Virtual)'

By James W. Wilkie  (PROFMEX and UCLA)

This article examines how cities and regions have been studied:

(1) by contributors to Integrating Cities and Regions;

(2) by others;

as well as about how other cities and regions will need to be studied in Southern California and Northern Baja California:         

(3) the “Cyber-Ports Region”;         

(4)  the Virtual Region of “Mexican Los Angeles-Tijuana”;

and other emerging areas such as        

(5) the Pacific Rim, which is a logical outgrowth of this present book.                                    

◊

         With regard to our studies, we have followed the approach that I outlined in Vancouver on September 29, 1995, at a planning meeting for this volume:     

         Our volume, Integrating Cities and Regions: North America Faces Globalization, is intended to select and define the ways in which sub-national areas capitalize on free trade and capital mobility to develop healthy regional self-identification. The benefits of the new global economy can only come if areas prosper below the national level. Thus it is our task to examine how regional and local level benefits are distributed within nations as liberalization and interdependence proceed.  As Alan Alexandroff has suggested in our planning meetings, the sub-national units selected for investigation show varied results.     

         Our findings suggest that some sub-national regions have succeeded in becoming competitive in the new global economy (Silicon Valley, Cascadia) because they have “invented” a self-image accepted by the world. Some areas face dire problems in maintaining their position in the global economy (such as New York City) because they have not kept up with infrastructural investment.       Other areas (such as San Diego-Tijuana and Arizona-Sonora) are still in the process in formulating a self-image because they have not yet won the relatively free cross-border travel that Cascadia enjoys).

         Other areas face new challenges that complicate their futures (Mexico City, Oaxaca, Newfoundland) because of reductions in central government spending funding as the national-state shrinks in importance and reduces transfers to regions.     

         Finally, all sub-national regions will face the  same challenge as the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) already faces as it seeks at the ‘city-region’ level to maintain its world-class status.  The challenge is that of accommodating, on the one hand, integration and growing interdependence of the core and its surrounding regions; and on the other hand, struggle between the surrounding areas and the core over shares in policymaking concerning tax collections  and expenditure on infrastructural  investment, transportation, education, social welfare, and public services.         

         Alexandroff's case of GTA illustrates, as he notes in his chapter above, the problem faced by all politicians as they seek to assure that the core continue to remain economically, fiscally, and culturally healthy while at the same time cede local development autonomy and identity to the surrounding places (in the GTA case to Durham, York, Peel, and Halton) that have given the entire region world-class status. The long-run problem such regions face is that the region’s name may subsume surrounding regions in it  (‘Toronto’ in the case of GTA) and each of those areas may themselves want to propagate their own fame. Toronto may well have benefited from the use of  a neutral name (as has “Cascadia”) or hyphenated names (as is being attempted by “Arizona-Sonora.”)

◊◊

         Two recent books have examined implicitly the creation of neutral names to help solve the problem of creating a dominant identity eventually resented by the parts of the whole.  The first is by Delamaide and the second is by Arroyo.

         In The New Superregions of Europe  (1994), [1] Darrell Delamaide sees Europe’s existing nation-states divided into the following 10 ‘post-national’ regions:

Delamaide theorizes that the superregions represent post-nationalism because even as the European Union gains force, it is breaking into the component parts of Europe, each of which has a history that long pre-dates the nation-state. These regions, he says, are at once pursuing the interests in a more integrated Europe even as they recombine across old national border to form these 10 superregions.

         A very different kind of work that examines in practical terms the use of neutral names of regions is that of Jesús Alejandro Arroyo, ed.,

Regiones en Transición: Ensayos sobre Integración regional de Alemania del Este y el Occidente de México  (1995). [2]   Arroyo points out that both of these cases have a one-sided dependence. The German state of Brandenburg is subsumed under the strong role of Berlin; and Western Mexico is subsumed under the leading role of Guadalajara. Thus Arroyo writes:

As a result, the rural periphery in both these macro-regions continues to diminish in population and economic importance while the congested core areas and their surroundings sprawl into the countryside, creating all manner of ecological, social, and infrastructural problems. [3] Although Berlin and Guadalajara are so overwhelming that they become the undisputed center of their region, they face the superregions of the European Union and NAFTA as follows, according to Arroyo:

Both regions are involved in consolidating a market economy. Western Mexico and Brandenburg have incomplete markets, oligopolies, and monopolies, just as they have a tradition of state economic interventionism in regional and urban planning; and both regions lack a centralized ability to take their own decisions, the problem being worse in Mexico than in Germany. The dilemma for the central government is whether to decentralize or centralize, increase or not the degree of regional autonomy and control in the context wherein the regions attempt to reach endogenous growth by capitalizing on their international comparative advantages. [4]

Both Brandenburg and Western Mexico are undergoing de-industrialization, Arroyo notes. In Germany the cause stems from the fact that East Germany’s industrial plant has been rendered obsolete by reunification of the country. In Western Mexico, the de-industrialization is caused by Mexico’s commercial opening as part of the NAFTA agreement, much small and medium-size industry being too inefficiently capitalized and organized to be able to remain in business.

         Regardless of neutrality for the regional name in these cases from East Germany and Western Mexico, the regions face tension with the superregional powers under which they live, be it the European Union or NAFTA.  Both Delamaide and Arroyo would seem to agree that the ability of new post-national regions to capitalize on new economic circumstances will depend upon the ability of regional leaders and local citizens to transcend the ideologies of national sovereignty and the hierarchical world of nation-state.

         Although at first glance analysts might assume that as archetype of centralization French leaders would be opposed to the rise of superregions that will dilute the importance of Paris, it is the leaders of France who have provided the main intellectual framework for European integration. Perhaps they realize well that as cultural capital of the European Union, French thought will influence not only the grand concept but the administrative style that will see the French regions provide active leadership in the globalization process rather than passive followership. 

◊◊◊

         Although in their analysis above Clark Reynolds, Serge Rey, and others suggest the importance of the “Ventura-Ensenada Corridor” of economic activity related to Greater Los Angeles (GLA [5] ), and they define it as the region that extends from Ventura (160 miles north of the U.S. Mexican border) to Ensenada (80 miles south of the border), they do not examine this larger region, which as yet lacks the self-identification we required for this book. (Hence their focus on the “San Diego-Tijuana Region.”)

         The “Ventura-Ensenada Region” that is yet to be, however, should attract our attention at least briefly because the area will one day become one giant urban network.  If its future leaders successfully construct an image of self-identification, they will first need to give their region a name. Ideally the name will carry an economic image that will set it apart from the rest of the world and itself help to create economic growth.

         Such a name for this area (encompassing Ensenada-Tijuana-San Diego-Los Angeles-Ventura), in my view, should be:

“Cyber-Ports Region”

which is cyber and high-tech based in two kinds of communications--sea/air and computer/multimedia industries.

         Cyber-Ports is the only area of the world that can boast four harbors: one in Los Angeles and one in Long Beach (which are the top two U.S. container ports and when combined constitute the world’s third largest container facility [6] ), one in San Diego (which is opening as the U.S. Navy downsizes), and Ensenada (which must be redredged and rebuilt once a rail line is opened to cross the U.S. border, as South Korea has proposed).

         Also, the “Cyber-Ports” region boasts four major air hubs: LAX (the second busiest airport in the USA, third in the world), Ontario International Airport, [7] San Diego International Airport, and Tijuana International Airport. (A fifth international airport may emerge in Orange County at either the John Wayne Airport or the proposed El Toro Airport at the former U.S. Marine Air Station.) By 1998 export-related jobs contribute 850 thousand jobs to the Greater Los Angeles Area, 14 percent of all jobs, including 253 thousand employed in tourism and service related exports, 200,000 manufacturing jobs related direction to exports, and 400,000 indirectly. [8]

         The “Ports” concept includes the alternative names “Tech Coast” [9] and “Multi-Media Capital of the World,” [10]   both based on the “computer port.” 

The name Tech Coast concept encompasses the 19,000 high-tech businesses, which need to create a regional identity that can compete with Silicon Valley. This Southern California region, which encompasses 41,000 sq. miles and over 400,000 technology workers, includes:

To this list we should add Tijuana and Ensenada’s “Silicon Valley South,” both of which are contributing to the maquila export-industry boom that is underway across the border from San Diego, aided by the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California.  

◊◊◊◊

         Co-existing with the above Cyber-Ports Region is what I call here “Mexican [11]   Los Angeles,” which is directly linked to Tijuana, from where many legal and illegal workers commute to work. Many Mexicans who cross the border daily have never been able to feel at ease with the “Americanist Culture” of San Diego, a culture that too often seemingly despises “illegals” and is suspicious of persons on the basis of their skin color.  San Diego’s Americanists, perhaps reinforced by the U.S. Navy mentality that requires maintenance of discipline,  has demanded that the USA control its border. Thus, some “Americanist vigilantes” patrol the U.S. side of the border to “catch illegal crossers”; others park at the U.S. line en masse and use their car headlamps to “Light Up the Border,” thus discouraging illegals from even attempting to cross. To avoid this culture, many Mexicans from Tijuana simply skirt San Diego to interact with Los Angeles.

         The important interactions that link Greater Los Angeles and Tijuana have led some scholars to see GLA as the border city to Tijuana, not San Diego. Because this region is not a geographic one in that it omits San Diego, we can call it a virtual region. This North American “region” that has yet to be fully identified and analyzed is important because it is a virtual one where in land, air, and sea bridges link Mexican Los Angeles to Tijuana. This region can be seen from the air at night as a brilliant ribbon of car lights that bridges the two cities. The unbroken 75-mile ribbon is U.S. Interstate Highway 5 which at Los Angeles links by land also to the U.S. Interstate Highway 405 connecting toward West L.A. Outside San Diego, this land bridge links also to U.S. Interstate 805 that directly connects Tijuana and Los Angeles, thus bypassing San Diego.

         Because in the above chapter on San Diego and Tijuana,  Serge Rey and others portray the mutual self-identification of those two cities based upon their complex interchange, they do not mention the fact that the U.S. 805 bypass of San Diego shows us that for much of the population in Tijuana the real border city is Los Angeles.  Hence the development of a virtual region that ignores San Diego and the border, both of which are seen as impediments to fast travel.

         The 130-mile freeway between Greater Los Angeles and Tijuana is more than a U.S. Interstate Highway, it is the corridor of international transportation for

Tijuana is important to Mexican Los Angeles for two major reasons that go well beyond the above eight examples:  First, Tijuana has become a major air transportation hub for Mexicans in Los Angeles who cannot afford to pay international air fares as they go and come from their homes throughout all Mexico. Flights from Mexico City to Tijuana often include free or inexpensive bus travel on to Los Angeles as part of the airfare.

         Second, Mexican families divided between Los Angeles and Tijuana tend to jointly hold their fiestas in Tijuana, which they see as their cultural refuge. It is at these gatherings that information is passed on that creates social networks for jobs and opportunities. Tijuana may be a “border city” but also it is a city of Mexico, its Mexican culture constantly being replenished by persons arriving from all over Mexico either enroute to crossing the border or to seek work in Tijuana’s “Klondike” atmosphere.

         Mexican Los Angeles is not so much a geographic area as much as it is a spirit that penetrates all aspects of life. It is the Mexican chef in every ethnic restaurant (be it Korean, French, Polish, “American,” or South African, as a somewhat exaggerated joke goes).  It is the three Mexican television channels, the many dozens of video-rental stores and cinemas, the nearly two dozen radio stations, and the circulation of Mexican newspapers. It is the Mexican landscapers and gardeners who tend every section of the city. It is the Mexican nannies and maids who staff the hotels and hospitals as well as the houses of the middle and upper classes throughout Los Angeles. It is the Mexican day-workers who wait for construction work on certain street corners every morning to be contracted by the day and then carried to every corner of Greater Los Angeles to do the physical work for low pay that few “Anglos” are willing to do. It is the Mexican extended family getting ahead by pooling the earnings of all. It is the Mexican mothers and grandmothers who keep alive the big chain stores in downtown Los Angeles as they buy clothes for their many children (each woman averaging 3.5 children), who are often in arms or in tow.

 

Table 1

Total Population in the Year 2000 of
Grater Los Angeles (GLA) - Tijuana (T)

and the Sub-Total for Mexican Population in the
Virtual Region of Mexican Los Angeles - Tijuana (MLA+T)

(FOR THE REVISION OF THIS TABLE BY DR OLGA M. LAZÍN, SEE THE FOLLOWING LINK) http://www.profmex.org/mexicoandtheworld/volume8/3summer03/Revising%20Wilkies%20concept.html

 

Category   Population                            Millions        Percent                        Method

A. Total Greater Los Angeles (GLA)1        16.4              89.1%
B. Total Tijuana (T) 2                             2.0              10.9%
C. Total GLA+T                                    18.0            100.0%                (C=A+B)

D. Mexican-Born Mexican in GLA3             3.2              52.5%
E. Native Born Mexican in GLA4                2.9              47.5%
F. Total Mexican Los Angeles5                 6.1            100.0%                (F=D+E)

G. Mexicans in Tijuana                           2.0                                       (B)
H. Sub-Total in MLA+T                          8.1                                       (H=F+G)
(Mexican Los Angeles-Tijuana) 

I. Mexican Share of GLA+T                                        44.0%               (I=H/C)