PROFMEX-Consorcio Mundial para la Investigación sobre México

Table 1. Average Annual Population Growth Rates, San Diego and Tijuana, 1930-1995

The perspective to be developed in this essay is that the San Diego-Tijuana region has, over time, become a relatively contiguous, interdependent urban region bisected by an international frontier. From an economic perspective, San Diego and Tijuana ar e: 1) asymmetrical in terms of size and influence on each others’ economy; 2) complementary in terms of goods and services produced and the techniques used to produce them; and 3) increasingly integrated in terms of exports/imports, t ransborder shopping, and patterns of commuter workers. We will note, however, that as political-administrative entities the two cities are simultaneously feeling the effects of both explosive and implosive forces. These are, respectively, fo rces that concurrently push the entities towards their national centers and those that pull them toward each other.

The San Diego-Tijuana region consists of the County of San Diego and the Municipality of Tijuana, located across from each other on the extreme western end of the international boundary between Mexico and the United States. The core of the region is th e urbanized binational region of metropolitan Tijuana and the City of San Diego with its adjacent cities such as Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, La Mesa, Lemon Grove, and El Cajon. The approximately 4 million people of the San Diego-Tijuana region are highly urbanized and concentrated near the coast in the valleys, terraces, and low hills inland from the coast range of mountains. Most of the region’s population is located within 15 miles of the ocean and 20 miles on either side of the international boundary.

The San Diego-Tijuana region is the binational interface of a larger region of both countries: the Ventura-Ensenada corridor. This essay explores the basic characteristics of the San Diego-Tijuana conurbation and makes some initial comments about its r elationship to the larger contiguous region. The Ventura-Ensenada corridor extends from Ensenada at some 120 kilometers south of the international boundary to Ventura at approximately 260 kilometers to the northwest of the border.

As the population and economy of the region has grown, the Mexican and U.S. portions of the transborder region have become more inextricably linked. Economic interaction, cultural ties, and shared transborder environmental, transportation, and other ur ban management problems and opportunities have all increased significantly over the past decades. This paper analyzes the extent of self identification that has emerged in the region. It also discusses current and future challenges and opportunity that th e binational region faces, and calls for a course of future action based on a shared vision of the region.

Specifically, this study recommends the formation of a border management authority to begin the complex process of better managing and planning the binational region into the 21st century. The effort initially needs to be directed towards narrow and co ncrete aspects of transborder management such as regional transportation and infrastructure planning. Once a record of positive achievements has been established, then more complex areas of activity should be addressed, including regional economic develop ment planning or transborder ecosystems management. It is important that this effort begin soon.

European settlement spread out from central Mexico shortly after the conquest, up the west coast of Mexico, and finally across the Gulf of California to the peninsula of Lower California at the end of the seventeenth century. In a push north ordered by the Spanish crown for geopolitical reasons, San Diego was established in 1769 as the first Franciscan mission in Alta California. Also the site of a military garrison, San Diego soon developed a small, but important civilian population of retired soldier s and migrants from Baja California and the west coast of Mexico. Its economy was based on cattle ranching, farming, and trade that utilized the natural harbor of San Diego Bay. With the independence of Mexico from Spain in 1821, San Diego passed to the n ewly independent republic. The missions were broken up in 1834, a stimulus to private development of ranches and farms. The region became part of the United States with the conclusion of the war between Mexico and the United States, 1846-1848, and benefit ted from commerce and trade associated with California’s gold rush of 1849.

In 1867, developer Alonzo E. Horton, purchased and laid out the present downtown area of San Diego. In 1884, San Diego became a terminus of the Santa Fe Railway, which was important in the city’s later growth. In 1919, a direct rail connection from San Diego through Tijuana and Tecate to the Imperial Valley and the Southern Pacific Railroad was established, providing a link from San Diego to the east.

From the latter part of the nineteenth century, the destinies of San Diego and the neighboring areas of Baja California were inextricably linked. San Diego became the engine of growth for the transborder region, a relationship that has persisted in a v ariety of forms for a century. The emergence of Ensenada as an urban area in the closing decades of the nineteenth century was reflective of the land booms of Southern California and San Diego as concessions were extended to an American company and then t o an English successor for development of the north Pacific region of the peninsula. During this period, the basis for the urban growth of Ensenada was laid, but more importantly, this activity stimulated the emergence of Tijuana.

Tijuana was initially established as a customs station to regulate and tax the burgeoning overland trade between San Diego and Ensenada. Tijuana’s origins as an urban place are related to the great land boom in San Diego and Southern California in the 1880s. In 1889, the first urban plan for Tijuana was created by an engineer hired by wealthy Mexican families from California to develop the site. The new town grew slowly, largely in response to economic forces from the other side of the border.

In 1898, San Diego became the site for a U.S. naval base and shortly thereafter it became a major commercial seaport. In 1908, the Mexican government permitted the establishment of gambling in Tijuana and in 1916 the first racetrack was opened.

The Prohibition era in the United States, beginning in 1919, brought enormous changes to Tijuana as gambling, horse racing, tourism, entertainment, and the availability of alcohol fueled its economy. Dependent upon San Diego and Southern California, Ti juana in the 1920s experienced rapid urban and economic growth. Significant amounts of capital, mainly from the United States, built cabarets, bars, hippodromes, casinos, and hotels, and participated in the growth of industries such as beer and wine produ ction. Many of the businesses created in Tijuana during this golden age of tourism (1919-1929) were staffed mainly by Americans, and the economic ties to San Diego and Southern California were firmly established and continue today.

Being a tourist destination was a significant component of the economic base of San Diego as early as the 1890s, and began involving Tijuana in a major way after 1919. During this period there was a heavy and continuous flow of traffic to San Diego fro m California cities to the north, primarily Los Angeles. Throughout the 1920s, and even during the 1930s, this stream provided a dynamic economic base for both San Diego and Tijuana. Following the U.S. entry into World War II and the huge build-up of mili tary personnel in and around San Diego, the visitor serving elements of the San Diego and Tijuana economies acquired a much closer and rapidly growing market. Military personnel are still vital to these local economies, and although those military personn el that are based in San Diego are not counted in the economic data as part of the San Diego visitor economy, they continue to provide substantial support for the Tijuana visitor economy.

The visitor traffic pattern that preceded the military build-up in San Diego continued to expand through the war years, and although dwarfed by military and defense related expenditures in San Diego, it continues to provide a steadily growing part of t he economic base of the San Diego and Tijuana economies. About 20 percent of visitors surveyed in San Diego regularly list Tijuana as one of the cities visited while in San Diego, and over half of these visitors list proximity to Tijuana as one of the maj or reasons for visiting San Diego.

Immigration to Tijuana from central Mexico accelerated during the decade of the 1920s, not only in response to new economic opportunities, particularly the expanding labor needs of Tijuana, San Diego, and Southern California. While the depression years saw an economic contraction in the region, Tijuana’s population actually grew as waves of Mexicans leftor were expelled from Southern California as a result of the forced repatriations. Many of these returning Mexicans settled in Tijuana’s Colonia Lib ertad, adjacent to the international boundary line.

World War II and the rise of San Diego as a major center for the armed forces and as a site for the defense industry, particularly the aircraft industry, brought another round of economic boom to the twin cities. Not only did Tijuana help meet the labo r needs of wartime San Diego, but other economic linkages emerged or were strengthened. Industries developed in Tijuana, including a small aircraft manufacturing sector that dated from 1928, and recreation and tourism boomed with the large military popula tion in San Diego.

One response to labor shortages in the United States during the war was the establishment by the two governments of the Bracero Program that allowed for short-term, contract work by Mexicans in the United States. This program, which continued in one fo rm or another until 1964, had significant impacts on San Diego and Tijuana. It provided the labor that San Diego needed not only during the war, but for the great period of urban growth in the post war years, the period of Sunbelt growth. The program also attracted migrants to Mexican border towns such as Tijuana and many of these migrants eventually settled in the northern border towns. Importantly, wages earned north of the border were often invested in Tijuana in land and houses and small businesses, c ontributing to the economic growth and geographic expansion of the city.

Both sides of the California-Baja California border region experienced periods of rapid economic expansion in the period after WWII, which attracted large numbers of people to the region. The Tijuana economy is relatively isolated from the national eco nomy of Mexico and has developed largely through its connections to the U.S. economy. The best example here is the maquiladora (or assembly) industry established in Tijuana and other Mexican border cities beginning in 1964 to create jobs for former bra ceros (temporary contract laborers in the United States from Mexico) who lost their jobs as a result of the termination of the Bracero Program. Over the past decade, the economy of Tijuana and Baja California has been stimulated by the expansion of th e maquiladora industry. With the Mexican economic crisis of the 1980s, real wages fell by as much as 50 percent, making Mexican labor rates competitive on a global scale and bringing considerable growth to the number and size of assembly operations. The Mexican economic crisis of late 1994, and the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), have combined to boost maquiladora investment. With NAFTA, the economic linkages between San Diego and Tijuana have grown and intensified.

Because of its ties to the San Diego and U.S. economy, Tijuana was to some extent protected from the Mexican economic decline of the 1980s. However, although the decade of the 1980s brought high rates of economic and demographic expansion to both sides of the border in this region, the early 1990s have yielded falling living standards and a series of related problems that constitute a crisis for both sides of the transborder region.

Throughout the century, and particularly since 1940, the San Diego-Tijuana region has been characterized by demographic dynamism. To a significant degree, domestic and international migration have accounted for the sustained high growth rates for San D iego. Tijuana’s growth rate is largely the result of internal migration, although in the last decade or so the population of non-Mexicans has been growing as vacation homes developed along the coast from Tijuana to the south.

Table 1 and Table 2 detail the demographic expansion of the San Diego-Tijuana region since 1930. Tijuana, during the decades of the 1940s and 1950s, was one of the fastest growing cities of the world and during this same period, San Diego was one of th e fastest growing cities of the United States. Generally, Tijuana has grown at twice the annual rate of its U.S. neighbor. Together, Tijuana and San Diego constitute one of the most demographically dynamic border regions of the world.

Table 1. Average Annual Population Growth Rates, San Diego and Tijuana, 1930-1995
City	1930-1940	1940-1950	1950-1960	1960-1970	1970-1980	1980-1990	1990-1995
San Diego	3.3	6.7	6.4	2.8	3.2	3.0	1.3
Tijuana	7.2	11.4	9.8	7.5	3.1	4.9	6.8

Table 2. Population Growth in San Diego and Tijuana
Year	San Diego	Tijuana
1930	210,000	11,000
1940	289,000	22,000
1950	557,000	65,000
1960	1,033,000	166,000
1970	1,358,000	341,000
1980	1,862,004	462,000
1990	2,498,000	747,000
1995	2,690,255	1,035,415

Source: For San Diego and Imperial Valley: California Statistical Abstract, 1979; California Statistical Abstract, 1994; San Diego Association of Governments (1995 data); Valley of Imperial Development Alliance (1995 data) . For Tijuana and Mexicali: Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática, XI Censo General de Población y Vivienda. Datos por Localidad, Baja California, and updates. Rosarito is included in the 1995 Tijuana data.

The reasons for the vast flows of people from central and southern Mexico to Tijuana, and across the border into San Diego and Southern California, are related to push factors in Mexico and pull factors in San Diego and Southern California. Mexican dev elopment and social policy in modern times, and especially since the 1940s, focused little attention on a more equitable distribution of income and wealth, and largely ignored services in the rural areas and small towns of Mexico. The population explosion that hit Mexico beginning in the 1940s produced at first internal migration to the cities for employment and access to services. Then the flows turned northward in search of work, following paths established by generations of Mexican migrant workers, inc luding braceros, who had worked in the United States. The boom of the war years and subsequent Sunbelt growth of San Diego and Southern California acted as a strong magnet for Mexicans for whom reasonable and adequate employment in their native regions wa s not possible. Despite some attempts to control the influx of undocumented migrants through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and other measures, it is clear that international migration will continue to impact San Diego for many years to co me. Thus, the flow of internal migrants will also continue to Tijuana for the foreseeable future.

Each year, approximately one million Mexicans enter the labor market for the first time and a portion of these migrate to the northern border in search of jobs in cities such as Tijuana or with plans to migrate illegally to the United States. In region s such as San Diego, despite efforts to the contrary, undocumented workers still readily find employmentalbeit it at entry level wagesin service industries, and to a lesser extent in agriculture.

Social and cultural factors, in some ways, have lagged behind other factors in creating crossborder linkages between San Diego and Tijuana. For much of its history, San Diego was not a border town in the sense of being an international city. The urban core was centered some twenty miles from the international boundary and although its incorporated region extended to the border, it was separated from Tijuana by other incorporated cities such as Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, and National City as well as b y significant empty spaces. At the same time, the population of Mexican origin in San Diego was smallonly 14.9 percent in 1980so there was minimal transborder family and cultural interaction. In some ways, Los Angeles, with its very large Hispanic popu lation and direct social and cultural ties to Mexico, was more of a border town than San Diego.

By 1990, however, San Diego's population had changed considerably. Strong demographic and urban growth in the southern part of the county and a rapidly growing Hispanic population had increased the city's social and cultural level connections across th e border. In 1990, over 20 percent of the city's population was Hispanic and with more economic ties to Tijuana and Mexico, more San Diego residents came to have an international focus. As historian Oscar Martínez has noted, in recent years, "power ful forces pull large numbers of borderlanders into the orbit of the neighboring country, with a resulting array of cross-boundary relationships and lifestyles."

As the percentage of the population of San Diego that is Mexican has increased, family and cultural ties have also increased between the two cities. It has been a two-way flow. Expanded business opportunities in the 1980s for San Diegans in Tijuana tha t were related to the growing maquiladora industry and new investment possibilities brought by NAFTA, led to more San Diegans crossing to Tijuana to live and work. Thus, the group of people in the region that spends a significant amount of time on the oth er side of the border has grown considerably, although its exact size is not clear. Martínez refers to these transnational citizens as borderlanders and he argues that they have the potential to facilitate the emergence of important interdep endence in many areas of regional life.

While transborder migration has tended to increase the similarities between the populations of San Diego and Tijuana, there are significant differences from one side of the border to the other in terms of population characteristics. A number of these a re detailed below.

By 1990, San Diego had a population of nearly 2.5 million people and was a culturally and racially diverse region as Table 3 illustrates.

Table 3. Race/Ethnicity in San Diego County, 1980-2000
Race/Ethnicity	Number of Persons			Percent
	1980¹	1990²	2000³	1980¹	1990²	2000³
White	1,525,410	1,633,281	1,783,400	81.93	65.38	59.08
Hispanic/ Spanish Origin	274,622⁵	510,781	763,400	14.75	20.45	25.29
Asian/Pacific Islander	95,140	185,144		5.11	7.41
Black	104,450	149,898	187,800	5.61	6.00	6.22
American Indian	16,384	15,050		.88	0.61
Other		3,362	283,800⁴		0.15	9.41
Total⁶	1,861,846	2,498,016	3,018,400		100.00	100.00

¹U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, County and City Data Book (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 10th Edition, 1983)

³ Population Projections by Race/Ethnicity for California and Its Counties, 1990-2040

⁶ The totals of Table 3 categories and of percent do not always equal the total population or 100 percent because Hispanic/Spanish Origin can be of any race and thus these individuals are sometimes included in two categories.

Many of the non-whites are recent immigrants who do not speak English. Not only does this create a series of practical problems (such as providing interpretation for social and criminal justice services, and public school instruction in the native lan guage), but has produced some social and political tensions with the larger society. Since new immigrants tend to reside near persons of similar race/ethnicity, the San Diego urban landscape is a mosaic with pockets of non-white, non-Anglo groups.

Tijuana’s population, by contrast, is relatively homogeneous. Historically, most of the internal migration to Tijuana was from north central and western Mexico and consisted of people of mixed race (mestizos) with a shared Hispanic culture. Over the pa st decade or so, migration from southern Mexico has increased and the new arrivals include non-Spanish speaking Indian groups. For example, Mixtec Indians were initially recruited as migrant agricultural laborers for export agriculture in Sonora, Sinaloa, and Baja California, particularly for the valley of San Quintín to the south of Ensenada. Many, perhaps some 15,000, have settled in Tijuana where they have concentrated in Colonia Guerrero, where they constitute a marginalized underclass. There a re a number of non-Mexican groups in Tijuana, including perhaps as many as 10,000 Americans, numerous Chinese, and a few other groups.

Between 1980 and 1990, San Diego grew by 636,000 persons, 64 percent of whom were migrants. Of the total increase, about 20 percent were foreign immigrants and Mexico was the leading source of these foreign immigrants. Some percentage of the immigrants in San Diego are undocumented immigrants. The numbers are a matter of great controversy, but it is possible that there are between 100,000 and 200,000 undocumented immigrantsmainly Mexicansin San Diego at the present time.

Migrants are also a key component of Tijuana’s population and by 1990 they comprised 58.2 percent of that municipality’s population which compares to a Baja California state percentage of 45 and a national percentage of 17.2. Since these internal migra nts are mainly of working age, they add substantially to Tijuana’s labor force.

In terms of education, 1990 census data for San Diego reveal that for persons 25 years old, 82 percent have a high school education and 25 percent are college graduates. However, only 53 percent of adult Hispanics had a high school education and only 9 percent were college graduates. Since educational attainment levels are much lower in Mexico (and a large fraction of San Diego Hispanics were born in Mexico), this figure is not surprising.

Although Tijuana ranks high relative to other areas of Mexico in terms of education levels (6.6 mean years of schooling as compared to 4.7), the contrast with San Diego is significant. In 1990, only 88 percent of the population of Tijuana between 6 an d 14 years attended school. Secondary school drop out rates in Tijuana were about 40% in 1990. Primary and secondary schools in Tijuana operate under difficult budget conditions; in 1994 in the state of Baja California some 95 percent of the budget went f or salaries with only 4 percent for operating expenses. Of the operating expenses, 70 percent was used for water and electricity for the schools, leaving little for maintenance, educational materials, and other items.

Tijuana has five universities and an undergraduate population of 10,369 students. Eight institutions offer graduate programs for a total of 1,180 students, more than half of whom are in business administration. Lack of qualified faculty is a significan t bottleneck for expansion of graduate programs in Tijuana.

Some Tijuana families send their children to public and private education institutions of all levels in San Diego. The number of students involved is not known, but the qualitative impact has been important.

In 1990, some 68 percent of all San Diego residents aged 16 or older were in the labor force, including 78 percent of males and 58 percent of females. In Tijuana, 51 percent of the working age population participates effectively in economic activity, w hich compares to 49.4 percent in Baja California and 43 percent nationally.

In Mexico, the economically active population is simply those who are working, while in the United States, the labor force is defined as those who are working and those who are actively seeking work.

In both countries unemployment rates are determined by sample surveys, but in Mexico such surveys are conducted only in urban areas and count the unemployment and underemployment in ten different ways, so that when unemployment figures are reported, th ey usually incorporate one or two of these different ways. Thus, Mexico’s unemployment rate is significantly understated and direct comparisons with employment data for the United States are difficult.

The urban growth of Tijuana over the past half century has been fairly typical of other cities of Mexico and Latin America. Earlier in the century, urban Tijuana was centered just to the south of the international border on the flat terrace on the sout h side of the Tijuana River channel. It was laid out in a typical grid pattern. The population explosion and internal rural to urban migration that commenced in a significant way in the 1940s transformed the urban growth patterns of the city. The rapid ph ysical expansion of the city became based on immigration, acquisition of housing through land invasion and self constructed homes, and then later obtaining legal land titles and the extension of basic public services such as electricity, water, sewerage, and paved roads. With the added inflow of migrants the limits of the city were extended eastward and southward, even into areas of rugged topography and unstable slopes where later extension of public services was quite expensive.

Beginning in the 1970s, a process of better planned urban development was initiated in Tijuana. The Tijuana River was channelized, opening the large area from the border crossing to the southeast. Although it was necessary to relocate squatter settleme nts and businesses such as automobile wrecking yards, the area became the center of new government offices, cultural complexes, public middle class housing, professional services, and shopping centers. The first two phases of this project have been comple ted, and the third is now being planned. With the exception of this project, Tijuana’s urban growth has been largely unplanned.

Recent growth of Tijuana has also spread west to the Pacific Ocean with middle and upper class housing, to the east of the airport with low and middle income housing, and the largest industrial park concentration. Movement to the south and the southeas t has been a dual process of squatter settlement and industrial park establishment.

The settlement pattern of Tijuana is one of high density agglomeration around the core of the city. By 1950, Tijuana’s population was highly concentrated within 3 or 4 kilometers of the central business district. For the next four decades, Tijuana expe rienced explosive growth, but still the urbanized areas extended only 12 to 14 kilometers from the city core. With all this urban expansion, the important government and business functions have remained concentrated in the center of the city and in the ri ver zone that extends to the southeast.

In 1995, Rosarito, a beach community on the coast about 15 kilometers south of the international boundary, became a separate municipality, independent of Tijuana. This new municipality not only takes part of Tijuana’s population from the Rosarito urban area, but also incorporates the expanding area of coastal tourism development.

San Diego displays a far more decentralized urban pattern than does Tijuana. The urbanized areas contiguous to the City of San Diego occupy approximately four to five times the area of Tijuana. This dispersed, low-density pattern was possible in San Di ego due to adequate transportation infrastructure, particularly the freeway system, and the ability of the region to provide other urban services such as water, sewerage, and paved streets to the outlying areas.

The extraordinarily high demographic and urban growth of San Diego and Tijuana since 1940 has physically brought the cities together to share the same contiguously settled urban space in a large metropolitan region divided by a porous international bou ndary. Physical proximity has brought a host of issues such as renegade sewage flows from Tijuana to San Diego, movement of disease, transborder air pollution, and transborder traffic and transportation problems that have made it difficult to ignore the i nternational context of these issues.

The economies of San Diego and Tijuana, their transborder linkages, and their ties with their respective national economies and the world economy are not well understood. On the U.S. side, methods of gathering basic economic data often do not easily pe rmit separating out City of San Diego-specific information. On the Mexican side, data collection is much poorer. In terms of understanding the linkages across the border, many of the flows are not measured in any meaningful way and often data collected on one side of the border are not comparable with data from the other city. Despite these difficulties, a picture of the transborder regional economy has emerged through a number of studies so that a description of the region and its components is possible with some degree of confidence. Additionally, although accurate quantification of some regional economic phenomena is not possible at the present time, anecdotal evidence provides a qualitative understanding of such areas. The following sections discuss c omponents of the San Diego and Tijuana economies as well as the linkages between the two.

With respect to annual total employment growth rates for the period 1969-1993 for San Diego County, the state of California, and the nation, the three recessions centered on 1975, 1982, and 1991 have been clearly evident in each of these economies. How ever, the extent of their impacts has varied. In the earlier recessions, San Diego's employment growth was relatively more robust than either the nation's or the state's. However, in the more recent recession of 1991, the decline was more pronounced in the region and state than that experienced by the country at large. This is attributed largely to the decline of defense related manufacturing in San Diego and in the larger Southern California region in the post-Cold War era.

A second pattern that emerges is that San Diego's employment growth has generally out paced that of the state of California throughout the 25 year period. With the exception of the recent recession, the same is true with respect to San Diego's growth r elative to the nation. Total employment in San Diego grew at an average annual rate of 3.31 percent over the 1969-1993 period, while the state and nation grew at 2.51 and 1.85 percent respectively. This employment growth served as a magnet for job seekers from the native San Diegan population, from migrants from elsewhere in the United States, and from documented and undocumented immigrants from foreign countries, especially Mexico.

It is also evident that the pattern of growth has not been constant over this longer period. Indeed, growth was stronger in each of the three economies during the first 12 years relative to the second 12 years. Moreover, the contraction of the growth rate has been more pronounced in San Diego and California than in the nation as a whole.

For Tijuana, the data are less precise on employment growth rates. The two largest employment sectors in Tijuana’s economy are in the general service sector and those associated with tourist flows, followed by the assembly plant (maquiladora) operation s. Thus, dynamism in employment is linked fairly directly to the expansion of the maquiladora industry and tourism, two activities that generally have followed economic cycles in the United States. Thus, even with the evolving structure of Tijuana’s econo my, linkages with and dependency on the adjacent San Diego and Southern California economy remains a central feature. During the 1980s, the bulk of the employment growth was in the maquiladora industry. In 1980, about 17 percent of the employed population of Tijuana was in the maquiladora industry; by 1990, some 29 percent of employment was in this sector. During that period, the maquiladora industry accounted for nearly half of all job creation in Tijuana. The growth of employment has been sufficiently r obust in Tijuana to continue to attract a significant stream of migrants from elsewhere in Mexico.

The employment structure of San Diego in 1993 relative to the structures of the California and U.S. economies is distinguished by a number of characteristics. Prime among these is the importance of numerous military installations in the San Diego regio n. Total federal government military employment accounts for 9.3 of the region's total employment compared to shares of 1.7 percent and 1.9 percent for the nation and state respectively. Other sectors that are relatively concentrated in San Diego includ e: federal civilian employment; services; finance, insurance, and real estate; and agricultural services, forestry, and fishing. Sectors that are relatively under represented in the San Diego regional economy include: mining; farming; utilities; and manu facturing.

Although the marked concentration of the military sector in San Diego is often cited as an area of regional specialization, it is important to recognize that over time this specialization has varied and in some periods has been less pronounced. For ex ample, the reduction in military personnel in the San Diego region associated with the close of the Viet Nam War was reflected in the increasing diversity of the regional economy over the years 1969-1972. From that period until roughly 1990, the regional economy reached a level of industrial diversification similar to that of the United States, while its structure was also generally more diversified than the California economy. All three economies have become less diversified over the 25 year period, la rgely due to increasing employment concentration in the service sector. However, beginning in 1990 the pace of concentration appears to have accelerated in San Diego.

From 1990 to 1993, San Diego lost just over 38,000 jobs, representing a 2.6 percent decline in total employment. The largest declines in employment occurred in construction (- 19,251) and manufacturing (- 15,198).

Application of a shift-share analysis to the employment change in San Diego over the 1990-1993 recession reveals a number of interesting findings. The increasing concentration of regional employment into the service sector was also clearly evident wit h a substantial 19,995 employment increase in that sector over this period. First, with respect to the differential shift, all but three (farm, mining, and federal military employment) of the sectors in San Diego grew at a rate that was slower than the ra te at the national level. This is largely due to the widespread nature of the recession across all sectors of the San Diego economy. Had the service sector in San Diego followed that national growth rate, employment in this sector would have been increase d by an additional 7,775 jobs above the change of 19,995. A similar pattern is found for the retail trade and state and local government sectors, which are also sensitive to the performance of the aggregate regional economy. This is a good indication of the severity of the recession in the early 1990s in San Diego.

An important feature of the San Diego economy is the evolution of real per-capita income levels for San Diego, California, and the United States for the period 1969-1993. For San Diego, this has meant that the relative growth rate of per-capita income has been lower than that of the rest of the nation. In fact, this trend has resulted in San Diego having a level of per-capita income that is now below both the national and state average. The decline in per-capita income, which is related to loss of high paid manufacturing jobs, is of major concern to regional leaders.

A somewhat similar trend is to be seen in Tijuana. Tijuana’s economy has grown at a moderately high rate since 1970 as jobs and the Gross Regional Product have increased. However, because the population of Tijuana was expanding so rapidly, per capita G RP actually fell in the 1970-1990 period by .4 percent annually. This is largely due to employment growth in areas such as the maquiladora industry and the service sector where a large labor supply and other factors assured that wages would not grow much in real terms. However, it should be noted that per capita income levels were relatively high in Tijuana when compared to the rest of Mexico. In 1990, per capita income in Tijuana was 11 percent above that of Baja California and 17 percent above that of M exico. If Tijuana were considered as a state, its per capita income would rank fourth nationally, behind Mexico City, Tabasco, and Nuevo León.

Consequently, even though Tijuana has a higher per capita income than Mexico, both Tijuana and San Diego face the challenge of raising per capita income levels and improving the standard of living in the region. These are significant challenges for the leadership of the region and success or failure has strong implications for quality of life and sustainability of the transborder area.

In the United States, the database on international trade with respect to substate regions is notoriously poor. Export data for large metropolitan areas can be obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau's Exporter Location Series. An important caveat in us ing these data is that the exports are assigned to regions based on the location of the exporter of record. However, the location from which the exports are sold is not always the same as the location where the goods were actually produced. International export performance data are available for San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, California, and the United States for two years, 1987 and 1993. San Diego's foreign exports amounted to just over $1.6 billion in 1987, which accounted for less than 1 perce nt of total national exports. Over the six year period, San Diego displayed strong growth in foreign exports, sending some $4.3 billion abroad in 1993. Despite this relatively fast growth, however, San Diego's share of total U.S. exports in 1993 (0.94 pe rcent) was still slightly less than its share of national employment (0.99 percent).

The growing dependence of San Diego’s foreign trade activities on the Mexican economy is clearly evident in the available data. Mexico accounted for 43.4 percent of the San Diego region's international exports in 1993, up from 33.9 percent in 1987. At the same time, Asian Pacific Rim exports appear to have become less important over the period 1987-1993 in San Diego. However, it is important to put these numbers in perspective, as the total exports to Mexico represent only 3.37 percent of total person al income in the San Diego region in 1993.

It is also important to consider San Diego’s international trade in light of its inter-regional trade. Inter-regional trade consists of flows between regions within the boundaries of a single country. For San Diego, international exports accounted for an estimated 22.5 percent of all exports, international and inter-regional, in 1990. From this perspective, Mexico’s 38.5 percent share of San Diego’s international exports equates to a 6.2 percent share of total San Diego exports. By way of contrast, 14 percent of San Diego’s exports went to Los Angeles County in 1990, while some 78 percent went to destinations within the United States. As is often the case for regional economies within a large domestic economy, the magnitude of interregional export trad e can dwarf international export trade and, in the case of San Diego, domestic exports were 3.5 times larger than foreign exports in 1990.

The analysis of trade data suggests that the structure of international trade can vary substantially between regions in California. San Diego appears to have less diversification in its international export markets, as three major markets (European Uni on, NAFTA, and Pacific Rim) claim roughly 85 percent of its exports. This compares to figures of less than 80 percent for the other regions of the state.

A useful measure of trade diversification is the share of international exports accounted for by each of the region's top-ten export markets. In 1993, San Diego stood out again with 80 percent of its international trade going to its 10 largest markets, compared to figures of 70 percent or less for the other regions of California and the nation as a whole. Moreover, San Diego is also unique in that Mexico is its largest export market, while for the state and other regions (Los Angeles and San Francisco) , the leading export market is Japan.

Based on a preliminary survey done in late 1995, it appears that Tijuana’s exports go almost entirely to the United States (99.4 percent) with California buying virtually all of those products. San Diego receives approximately 36 percent, while the res t of Southern California receives the remainder.

Tijuana’s export concentration is due to the central role that maquiladora operations play in the manufacturing sector within the city, accounting for approximately 45 percent of total. Some 71 percent of all exports through the Tijuana customs office originate within the city, followed by Ensenada with 15 percent.

Some 42.5 percent of Tijuana’s imports originate in San Diego and 83 percent of these are destined to the city of Tijuana and its manufacturing operations. Ensenada, as the city of final destination, accounts for 6.8 percent of imports through Tijuana, while Mexico City accounts for only 3 percent of these imports. These data highlight the existence of an import and export corridor that extends from the greater Los Angeles area to Ensenada while San Diego functions as the hub of that corridor.

The previous sections pointed out a number of strong asymmetries that characterize differences between the Tijuana and San Diego portions of the binational metropolitan region. At the same time, however, there are key similarities in the development of the twin cities over the past several decades.

Most striking is that both cities experienced high rates of economic growth and rapid urban expansion. This was driven largely by the generation of jobs on both sides of the border and the subsequent immigration in response to economic opportunity.

A number of features of the linkages between the two economies presently lack adequate data and study for a full understanding. However, it is helpful to note them here because they provide an excellent sense of the complexity of the transborder econom ic linkages.

Currently, there are about 35,000 workers who reside in Tijuana and commute on a regular basis to work in San Diego legally. Available evidence suggests that employment for these individuals is concentrated mainly in low paid, service sector, jobs. At $250 per week, a conservative estimate of their total yearly wages is $437.5 million. What is not known with any degree of certainty is where these wages are spent. For example, it is likely that automobiles, insurance, consumer electronics, housewares, a nd some foods are purchased in San Diego because of more competitive pricing and greater variety. Housing, some foods, entertainment, income transfers, and other purchases by commuter workers all take place in Tijuana and Mexico. The commuter workers like ly utilize the banking system in San Diego. Not only do San Diego banks offer greater convenience of use and safety to customers than their Mexican counterparts, but the decline of the peso relative to the dollar provides an added risk for savings in Mexi can banks.

These earnings exceed the total wages from Tijuana’s maquiladora industry with 100,000 workers at a monthly salary of approximately $150 for 12 months, or $180 million. While these commuter worker and maquiladora worker wage totals are conservative est imates, they illustrate the importance of the commuter workers to the Tijuana economy.

In addition to workers who cross the border to work legally in San Diego, there are other commuters who cross to work illegally. This group includes individuals who have border crossing visas for tourism and shopping who cross on a daily or frequent ba sis. Also, there are individuals without any visa who cross illegally on a weekly basis. The size of this group of illegal workers is not known, but it is likely to be in the thousands.

The Mexican peso devaluation of late 1994 and early 1995 had a differential impact on various sectors in Tijuana and San Diego. Commuter workers and other groups in Tijuana with income in dollars (owners and some managers of tourism businesses, and som e management personnel in the maquiladora industry) enjoyed an increase in income measured in pesos. As with other devaluations of the peso, this increase in real income in peso terms was eventually erroded by inflation in Mexico.

Effects of the devaluation and economic crisis on investment, particularly in the maquila sector, are not clear. The drop in wages in dollar terms increased production of existing maquilas and added new jobs to the sector. Mexican economic instability and concerns about political stability that were associated with the crisis probably were a disincentive with respect to bringing new investment to take advantage of the lower wages. The new investment in maquila plants that took place in Tijuana during 1 995 had most certainly been planned prior to the devaluation crisis.

In terms of effects on San Diego, the devaluation probably had a negative impact on Mexican retail purchases in San Diego, particularly in San Ysidro (adjacent to the border) and Chula Vista (in south San Diego). However, the expanding maquila producti on most certainly increased maquila spending in San Diego. That would offset the negative impacts of the devaluation on the greater regional San Diego economy, but declining sales in San Ysidro brought a shock to those retail sectors catering mainly to Me xican shoppers.

Because of its border location, many goods and services in Tijuana are denominated in dollar terms. This tendency has accelerated since the Mexican economic opening that began in the 1980s and devaluations in the 1980s and has become ubiquitous with th e most recent peso decline. For example, transactions in first class restaurants, hotels, goods originating abroad, and many residential and commercial leases and rents are now in dollars. This protects the owners of these businesses, both Mexican and Ame rican, from the negative effects of peso devaluations. However, the dollarized economy puts enormous economic pressure on salaried professionals and middle class people in Tijuana who earn pesos but pay for goods and services in dollars.

Large amounts of money move across the border between the cities and the country on the other side of the border. Wealthy Mexicans have at various times exported large amounts of capital to San Diego due to lack of confidence in the Mexican economy . These funds have been invested in real estate, bank accounts, or accounts with San Diego brokerage firms. In times of economic uncertainty, even Mexicans of modest means convert pesos into dollars. Those that can, maintain a dollar bank account in San D iego.

Remittances of wages back to Mexico by undocumented Mexican workers in San Diego are considerable. Estimates made in 1990 suggest that these may have reached a yearly total of $3.1 billion for the United States and the portion of that sent from San Die go is approximately $227 million. While some of these remittances from San Diego go to Tijuana, most are sent elsewhere in Mexico and thus are not only extracted from the San Diego economy, but from the transborder regional economy as well. The estimated impact of the leakage of these remittances from the San Diego region is on the order of 4,738 jobs.

The trafficking of illicit drugs from Tijuana into San Diego is a large enterprise that produces significant profits. Estimates of the total volume of drug sales in the region are hard to come by, but likely run in the hundreds of millions of dolla rs per year. It is not clear what the impact of narcodollars is on the regional transborder economy.

In order to circumvent efforts by U.S. authorities to prevent people from entering the United States illegally in the San Diego sector of the border, many prospective undocumented workers hire the services of a specialist. Known as polleros or coyotes, these people smugglers have operated thriving businesses along the border for years. Nearly a half million undocumented persons are detained trying to cross the border from Mexico each year in the San Diego region and it is likely that for each person detained, at least two successfully cross. If one percent of the million successful crossers pay a pollero an average of $200 per successful crossing, the total industry amounts to $2 million per year. However, the actual numbers ar e likely much larger than that.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that polleros operate as small individual entrepreneurs and also in highly organized gangs. The ultimate destination of many of the pollos is the Los Angeles area. The smugglers provide transportation and use s ophisticated methods to avoid Border Patrol checkpoints and other law enforcement activities. Many of these groups of smugglers are transborder organizations with participants in Los Angeles or San Diego and Tijuana.

An area of considerable controversy in the region relates to the ongoing debate about the costs associated with San Diego providing a series of social and governmental services to people from Tijuana and vice versa, about the benefits brought to San Di ego by documented and illegal workers from Tijuana, and about the contributions to tax revenues that people from Tijuana make to San Diego and from San Diego to Tijuana. A number of studies have sought to quantify the costs associated with providing these services to undocumented immigrants in San Diego and the findings and methodologies have been attacked vigorously. The most recent study estimated that San Diego County provided services to undocumented immigrants in the amount of $244 million in 1994 af ter the value of taxes paid to local and state government had been deducted. These studies have ignored the amount of federal taxes paid by undocumented immigrants because these taxes do not return to the local level to offset the services used. Macro lev el studies of this issue suggest that if federal taxes are factored in, undocumented immigrants do contribute more in taxes than they consume in government services.

At the same time, there has been no quantitative analysis of the impacts, either positive or negative, of a large pool of undocumented labor in San Diego. Undocumented workers are employed in the service industry in urban areas, in the construction ind ustry, and in agricultural activities. It has been pointed out that undocumented workers make these industries more competitive and lower consumer prices. In addition, many professionals employ undocumented persons as maids, house cleaners, nannies, and a s gardeners. This not only supports a higher quality of life for the employers, but supports two income families in San Diego in taking care of children and all the other work required to maintain a household.

With respect to tax payments on the San Diego side, Mexicans making retail purchases, owning property, or renting property in San Diego contribute directly and indirectly to the tax base of San Diego. A large portion of these taxes stays in the region, helping to provide for the basic service. In Tijuana, the main tax paid by visitors from San Diego is the federal value added tax that is added to most purchases of goods and services. However, of the total amount collected and sent to Mexico City, only a small portion, perhaps as little as 3 percent, returns to the Municipality of Tijuana. Thus, most visitors from San Diego do not contribute much in the way of taxes to the Municipality of Tijuana for urban services they consume. The same is true of the approximately 35,000 commuter workers who work in San Diego, but live in Tijuana. While these individuals may also pay property taxes in Mexico, these tend to be quite low. The commuter workers pay income taxes in San Diego.

In recent decades, the growth of shared elements of popular culture in the region is linked to the expansion of the Mexican-origin population in San Diego, the impact of electronic media across the border, the economic opening of Mexico, and other fact ors. In addition, important activity in the more formal aspects of culture is to be seen in the transborder community. Artists and intellectuals have shared a bicultural vision of the region for several decades, particularly during the last ten years or s o.

The San Diego-Tijuana region has a strong and evolving tradition of border literature. This genre includes poets, narrative writers, critics, translators, and performance artists whose work centers on themes related to the border. Some of the work is i n English, some is in Spanish, and some is a mixture of the two languages.

The plastic arts also have a significant tradition of crossborder linkages in the San Diego-Tijuana region. For more than a decade, artists from both sides of the border have been active in the Border Art Workshop-Taller de Arte Fronterizo, and also in Las Comadres, a group of female artists from both sides of the border. At times, these groups with a fluid membership have had strong ties with the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego or the Centro Cultural de Tijuana. The Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, beginning in the late 1980s, led a binational collaborative effort, the Two Cities/Dos Ciudades Project, with participating artists and institutions from both sides of the border. Since then the Museum has adopted a focus on the border as a continuing aspect of its activities that includes a strong emphasis on community outreach.

Residents of the two cities regularly travel to the other to enjoy and participate in cultural activities. The San Diego Opera has an outreach program in Tijuana public schools; the Centro Cultural de la Raza and the array of museums in San Diego attra ct Tijuana patrons. The Cultural Center in Tijuana draws considerable numbers of visitors from neighboring San Diego. Visiting dance companies, orchestras, musicals, and theater productions attract audiences from the transborder region.

Higher education in the San Diego-Tijuana area has played an important regional role, not only in terms of the formation of human capital for the transborder metropolis, but also in the analysis of regional issues. The products of this research eventua lly trickle down to broader society and to decision makers in the public and private sectors. The academic and public/private partnerships are increasingly becoming key to meeting the challenges of regional issues and taking advantage of binational opport unities.

Scholars have long understood important aspects of the border as a region and have developed transborder linkages. For many years, universities in San Diego have developed programs to enhance crossborder ties. In the 1970s, at San Diego State Universit y (SDSU), several units were established to enhance the university's ability to work on important regional issues and to understand and facilitate interactions with Mexican border institutions. In 1983, the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californi as was organized at SDSU to continue this effort. Since the early 1980s, ties between SDSU and Mexican border institutions have grown considerably. By 1996, SDSU and Mexican universities had implemented a transborder cooperative undergraduate degree progr am and had additional undergraduate and graduate transborder programs on the drawing board. Additionally, an ongoing series of seminars at SDSU, Californias in Transition," has brought together researchers and practitioners from both sides of the bor der since 1992.

The establishment of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) in Tijuana in the early 1980s and the emergence of the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC) as a major center of research on regional and transborder issues created a critica l mass of Mexican scholars for interaction with counterparts across the border in San Diego and elsewhere. The growth of other institutions of higher education in Tijuana with interest in crossborder collaboration, including the Universidad Iberoamericana and CETYS (Centro de Enseñanza Técnica y Superior) have brought additional players into research, teaching, and outreach activities related to the border.

On the U.S. side, SDSU was the traditional location for much of the research effort relating to the border, given the applied regional focus of much of its research and the transborder emphasis of its leadership. The University of San Diego for many ye ars has had a few scholars actively engaged in border research.The community colleges, particularly Southwestern College, have recently become more involved in activities on the Mexican side of the border. Southwestern's Small Business and International T rade Center is active in outreach, and training endeavors that relate very directly to the border context. As the maquiladora industry and North American Free Trade Agreement have emerged as significant national and international issues, the University of California, San Diego, has begun to devote more systematic attention to aspects of the border reality. The Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies has taken the lead in this area, but also important have been the Institute of the Americas, the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Rim Studies, and scholars from a variety of departments have also been important.

The universities of the San Diego-Tijuana region also play a key role in the formation of human capital in the transborder zone. As the programs of study have evolved to reflect the policy concerns of the binational region, generations of future leader s have graduated with new skills and tools with which to meet the challenges and take advantage of opportunities presented in the new global world at the transborder regional level.

The natural and built environment of the San Diego-Tijuana region are treated here as a single topic for a number of reasons. Most importantly, the environmental problems that affect the region are largely the result of deficiencies in the built enviro nment. The environmental problems of the region are directly related to problems of population and economic growth, urbanization, and shortages in the necessary urban infrastructure.

The San Diego region is characterized by very high housing costs and a relatively large number of low income people. This means that the demand for low income housing is high but the supply is very limited. Furthermore, this imbalance will grow worse i n the future as most job creation in the region is expected to be in the low-income, low-skill entry level jobs in the service sector and other areas.

In San Diego, there is a large gap between the cost of building housing and the rate of return on this housing if it were rented at rates affordable to very low and low income households. Currently, this gap is $42,000 per unit for very low income hous eholds and $24,000 for low income households. Thus, without government subsidies through tax credits, land donations, direct payments, or other means, it is impossible for the private sector to construct affordable housing in San Diego. In 1986-1987 there were 5,597 affordable units available. The construction of 43,521 affordable units during the period 1991-1996 will be required to meet the regional need for affordable housing.

There are significant legislative, legal, bureaucratic, and administrative barriers to construction of affordable housing in San Diego. Zoning and building codes often prevent, or are major bottlenecks for, construction of adequate shelter for low inco me people.

A related problem in San Diego is that of crowding in housing. Housing units are considered overcrowded when there are more than 1.01 or more persons per room. From 1980 to 1990, the overcrowded units increased from 5.5 percent to 9.4 percent of total housing units. In 1990, some 83,644 units were considered overcrowded.

There are 10,000-15,000 agricultural and day laborers living in informal camps, mainly in the northern part of San Diego county. These individuals are usually classified as homeless, which is inaccurate as most of these persons are Mexicans and Central Americans who have simply extended patterns and traditions of land invasion and spontaneous settlements to the United States. About one-half of the camp residents are undocumented immigrants, which make use of government monies for affordable housing for this population unlikely. Based on average incomes, these day laborers can only afford $40-$100 per month for rent. Some housing has been built for these workers, but there is still a large deficit.

Tijuana has many problems with housing as well. In 1986 estimates were made that Tijuana had a temporary, or "floating," population of approximately 52,000 persons. Much of this phenomenon is related to Tijuana’s position as a gateway for und ocumented migration to the United States. Thus, it is not directly equivalent to the "homeless" problem in the United States.

Substandard, crowded, and shortages of units combine to form a housing crisis in Tijuana. According to estimates made by Tijuana’s Municipal government in 1993, the city had a deficit in housing in 1992 of 36,830 units. The deficit is expected to grow to 94,794 units by 1995 and to 199,865 units by the year 2000.

Research to date has revealed significant connections between housing sectors in San Diego and Tijuana:

Both Tijuana and San Diego have basic infrastructure problems, including deteriorating infrastructure and infrastructure deficits. In both cases, these are related to the rapid demographic and economic expansion that the region has experienced since th e 1940s. Particularly problematic is what might be termed regional infrastructure, or the underpinings of regional transportation, communication, and other basic urban services. While each region’s infrastructure problems are the result of unique domesti c situations, the transborder infrastructure issues involve all levels of government on both sides of the border, particularly the two federal governments. Solutions to these transborder infrastructure problems require not only local will and initiative, but the same from the federal and also the state governments. The most significant regional infrastructure concerns that have transborder implications are briefly listed below.

While San Diego has a well-developed freeway and surface street system, its connection to the international border and crossings to Tijuana are inadequate. Of particular concern is the highway 905 approach to the Otay Mesa Port of Entry where all the c ommercial trade flows between the two cities. Currently, only a four-lane, non-divided highway connects Otay Mesa to the north-south Interstate Highways 805 and 5. This has created heavy congestion and safety concerns.

Tijuana has serious deficits in its highway and surface street system. The approaches from the various industrial parks of the city to the commercial crossing at Otay Mesa are inadequate for the volume of traffic. In addition, the bridges that cross th e channel of the Tijuana River were not designed for such heavy truck trafic, making a structural failure a distinct possibility. Such an occurance would produce severe traffic congestion in Tijuana.

While Tijuana has reasonable highway connections to the east to Tecate and Mexicali via a recently completed toll road, the cost is quite high, which forces many private and commercial users to utilize the older free route. Tijuana is also connected to Ensenada in the south by an excellent 4 lane divided toll road as well as the older and slower free road, but the city lacks an adequate approach system from the south to the border crossings. Non-commercial traffic currently can use the San Ysidro cross ing, but the approach from the south is congested and the port of entry is extremely busy with a high volume of vehicle crossings and lengthy waiting times. The approach to the Otay Mesa crossing from the south uses a beltway that crosses the busiest inte rsection in the city as well as the bridges that are substandard.

There are two border crossings in the Tijuana-San Diego region, San Ysidro and Otay Mesa. Together they constitute one of the busiest borders in the world, with about 60 million northbound crossings of persons in 1995. Also crossing the San Diego borde r in 1995 were 477,390 trucks, 92,530 busses, and 18,425,244 passenger viehcles. Of the annual crossings of persons, about 65 percent are Mexican nationals, a number that has increased slowly over the past few decades, probably reflecting the large number of commuter workers who cross daily to work in San Diego.

For many years, leaders in San Diego and Tijuana have been concerned about the excessive waiting times for non-commercial vehicles to cross into the United States. Not only can the wait be longan hour or morebut the periods of long waiting times are not easily predicted. Thus, even careful planning and adjustment of crossing schedules by individuals cannot avoid the long waits. The net result is an enormous cost in lost time to people in San Diego and Tijuana who cross the border for business, touris m and recreation, shopping, or to visit relatives.By early 1997, the waiting times for passenger vehicles to cross the border had been reduced significantly, but it is premature to determine if the improvement is permanent or merely short term.

The causes of such congestion at the border are several. First, is the management of the Port of Entry by U.S. authorities. The purpose of the inspection of individuals and vehicles is to determine that the individuals have the appropriate migratory st atus to enter the United States and also search for illegal cargo, particularly illicit narcotics. The drug interdiction efforts add considerably to the time that it takes to process each vehicle as frequently trunks are opened and numerous vehicles are s ent off to the secondary inspection area for further revision. Second, personnel at the border are both from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Customs Service and conflicts between the two often impede the optimal use of human r esources to facilitate the flow of vehicles and persons across the border. Finally, it is clear that a new border crossing is needed, one that is well served by access roads on both sides of the border.

San Diego’s international airport, Lindberg Field, located adjacent to downtown San Diego will be hard pressed to meet the regional needs into the next century, even with upgrade to the existing facility that is now underway. Rodríguez Airport, located on Otay Mesa in Tijuana, has expanded considerably, but the orientation of its runway is such that the approach glidepath is less than optimum due to mountains to the southeast. A regional solution, construction of one large facility on Otay Mesa and across the border has been proposed for many years, but for a series of complex reasons, this option has never moved forward. As Otay Mesa is gradually being built out and vacant land is disappearing, this window of opportunity for resolving the airpo rt issue is closing.

San Diego has an excellent deep water port, but its usage has been limited due to lack of a direct rail connection to the east, other than through Los Angeles to the north. There is now under way an effort supported by private sector and public sector representatives from San Diego and Tijuana (and from California and Baja California) to reopen and upgrade the rail connection through Tecate to the Imperial Valley. This project appears to be economically feasible, enjoys strong binational support, and c ould bring significant economic benefit to the region.

Tijuana’s public transportation system of buses, automobiles, vans that run fixed routes, and taxis tends to link the outlying communities with the center of the city. This not only produces significant traffic congestion in the central district, but p rovides for difficulties when moving from one outlying area to another. This is often the case for maquila workers who often live in one outlying colonia and commute to work to a maquiladora that is located in an industrial park in another outlying coloni a. Such a commute can take from one to two hours each way, and adds a significant burden to the worker.

San Diego urban transport is provided primarily by the freeway system and private vehicles. Public transportation is provided by buses that cover most areas of the city and a light rail system, the San Diego Trolley, that has expanded greatly in recent years. The connection from downtown San Diego to the border at San Ysidro is particularly significant. Not only does it provide tourists with a convenient means to visit Tijuana, but it serves many of the commuter workers who travel to San Diego on a reg ular basis. For years there have proposals to extent the trolley line into Tijuana, but transport unions have provided stiff resistance. Currently, discussions are moving forward on this project.

Energy is the lifeblood of any modern society: it fuels the transport of goods and people; it heats, cools and lights homes and office buildings and provides the power to run all computers and communication systems. The availability of reasonably-price d and secure energy supplies is crucial for the economic survival of the economy.

All the energy that fuels the San Diego and Tijuana economy comes from outside the region. This makes the binational area, in effect, and energy island. Both San Diego and Tijuana are far away from their respective energy sources and must import energy in the form of electricity, petroleum, natural gas, gasoline, diesel and liquid petroleum gas. San Diego, spends about $3 billion a year to pay for this imported energy.

Although both San Diego and Tijuana rely on extra-regional supplies of energy, the structure of their energy sectors are different. San Diego’s energy supply is more diverse than Tijuana’s. It is made up of petroleum (48 percent), natural gas (33 perce nt), purchased electricity (8 percent), nuclear (10 percent) and renewable (1 percent). Tijuana, by contrast, derives all its energy from petroleum-based products in the form of leaded and unleaded gasoline, diesel, heavy fuel oil, and liquid petroleum ga s (LPG). For the most part, these fuels come from Pemex’s Salina Cruz refinery located 1,500 miles to the south. They are carried by tanker to Rosarito, where they are off-loaded by an underwater pipeline, and distributed throughout Baja California by tru ck and pipeline.

An important fact to keep in mind when examining the energy sector in Tijuana is that the electric power grid for Baja California is not connected to the Mexican national grid system. It is, however, connected to the North American system via interconn ections with San Diego. This means that all the electricity used in Tijuana must be generated locally, or imported from the US. It also means that any excess electricity can be exported to San Diego and the US. In fact, both have occurred over the years. For the last several years Baja California has been a net exporter of electricity to San Diego. In 1991, Baja California exported 1.4 million megawatt-hours of electricity to San Diego, accounting for 10 percent of consumption in San Diego. These exports originated from the geothermal power plant south of Mexicali and earned the Commission Federal De Electricidad (CFE) about $100 million. In 1992, exports to the California accounted for 25 percent of CFE revenues in Baja California.

Electricity use in Tijuana is concentrated in the industrial sector, whereas in San Diego the commercial and residential sectors are the largest users of electricity. This reflects the high concentration of maquilas in Tijuana, which tend to be large c onsumers of electricity. The rates of growth in electric consumption are much higher in Baja California than in San Diego. For the ten year period 1982-1992, Baja California experienced an 8 percent annual growth rate in electric consumption, well above t he Mexican national average of 5 percent, and far above growth rates in San Diego or California. The period 1990-1992, however, saw a significant reduction relative to the previous periods, to less than 4 percent. This was due to the economic downturn in Mexico. Although growth rates have been higher in Baja California and Tijuana than in San Diego, per capita electric consumption is considerably higher in San Diego than across the border. One can see that whereas per capita electric consumption is decrea sing for San Diego, it is increasing for Baja California. Projections made by SANDAG and CFE indicate this trend will continue over the next ten years.

The demand for increased supplies of electricity in Tijuana could provide an opportunity for greater energy sharing between San Diego and Tijuana. Current Mexican plans call for more than doubling the capacity of the main power plant located at Rosarit o, located just 15 miles south of the border.

If these plans are carried to completion, the Rosarito power plant will be the largest thermal power plant on the west coast of North America. Clearly, such a development would have a major impact on the air quality both in Tijuana and San Diego.

Currently, the Rosarito plant burns heavy fuel oil and is the principal point source of air pollution in the Tijuana area. Because natural gas burns cleaner than oil, particularly with respect to sulfur oxides, it would be preferable as a power plant f uel from the environmental perspective. Unfortunately, natural gas is not available in Baja California or Tijuana, despite the fact that Mexico produces large quantities of natural gas. This is one more manifestation of Tijuana and Baja California not bei ng integrated into the Mexican energy system.

Several plans have been put forward to bring natural gas to the Tijuana region. It is by no means clear, however, that a mutually agreeable arrangement can be worked out between all the parties to allow the construction of a major gas pipeline in north ern Baja California, estimated to cost between $50 and $100 million.

The energy sectors of San Diego and Tijuana are likely to become more closely linked in the future. Because valuable energy resources, i.e., natural gas, petroleum products, geothermal, solar, and wind, are located on both sides of the border, a binati onal regional energy market will probably develop in the California-Baja California border region.

Although San Diego and Tijuana are increasingly integrated in many ways, a significant barrier and bottleneck to the transborder flow of information are the telecommunications sector and the mail systems. Voice and data transmissions across the border through the telephone networks of both countries are slow, fraught with technical difficulties, and very expensive, particularly for residents of Tijuana. In addition, poor and costly transborder phone connections have made it extremely difficult for mid dle class residents of Tijuana to take advantage of the benefits of connection to the Internet system.

Transborder postage connections are equally problematic. The postage system does not function in a reliable fashion in Tijuana, so invitations, letters, bill payments, and other correspondence generally has to be hand delivered. Mail sent to Tijuana fr om San Diego sometimes does not arrive. When it does reach its destination, it may have taken two weeks or more.

Poor telecommunications and mail within the transborder region not only adds significant cost to doing business for companies and individuals on both sides of the borders, but places firms located in Tijuana at a competitive disadvantage relative to U. S. firms. In order to overcome these disadvantages, many Tijuana businesses, agencies, and individuals are forced to maintain post office boxes in San Diego in order to take advantage of the more efficient U.S. postal service. This means that they must da ily cross the border to San Ysidro or Chula Vista to collect mail and to send letters and parcels. Not only does this imply significant costs, but the frequent trips add to congestion at the border crossings in the region. Many Tijuana residents even cros s the border in order to use public telephones in San Diego.

A number of transborder environmental issues are of concern in the Tijuana-San Diego region. Some of these problems are the result of rapid population growth and urbanization in the region without accompanying adequate physical infrastructure. At the s ame time, some of the problems are related to inadequate regulation, enforcement, and compliance.

The California-Baja California border is an arid region. In a typical year, San Diego imports 90 percent of its water from northern California and the Colorado River and Tijuana imports an increasingly large percentage of its water from the Colorado Ri ver as well. There are no major new sources of water available for use in the region as the 1944 Treaty between the two countries fully allocated all surface waters in the border, with the larger portion going to the United States and a smaller amount to Mexico. Given the intense competition for water in the U.S. states of the Colorado Basin and the many decades of litigation, it is very unlikely that the allocation of water between the two countries could be renegotiated.

Quality of water is also a particular concern for Mexico. In addition to high levels of suspended solids (including salts) in the Colorado River water as it reaches the Mexican border, there are also elevated levels of fecal coliformsindicator bacteri a for contamination by human wasteand pesticide residues. Thus, Tijuana not only faces severe problems with water supply but with the declining quality of water.

Although the San Diego-Tijuana border region depends upon imported water for urban and agricultural uses, there is adequate water available in the larger region for the foreseeable future. For example, in California a transfer of a small percentage (as little as 5 percent) of the state’s water from agricultural to urban uses would provide sufficient water for the future. Thus, deregulation of sale and transfer of water and the emergence of water markets in California would enable San Diego to assure it s water supply into the future. It has also been suggested that development of an international water market along the California-Baja California border would help resolve the water supply problem in Tijuana. There are also current discussions between the San Diego County Water Authority and the Metropolitan Water District for direct transfer of Colorado River water from the Imperial Valley to San Diego.

The San Diego region depends upon an inadequate storage system and a system of aqueducts from the north that is vulnerable to natural hazards such as earthquakes. In order to expand the supply of local water, in recent years there has been significant effort to enhance water reclamation in the region. The cost of providing infrastructure for water reuse is high and the energy cost for reclamation and distribution of reclaimed water is significant, which has financial as well as pollution considerations . Currently, and for the near future, water reuse offers only limited possibilities for supplementing the regional supply and the most economical alternative is the development of water markets for transfer of water from agricultural to urban uses. There is, at present, limited capacity for water reuse in the region. There is a small water reuse facility in Tijuana known as Ecoparque, as well as reclamation projects in Escondido and Del Mar. The costs of capital and energy make many of the reclamation pro jects using traditional technology impractical, given the alternatives presently available.

In the San Diego-Tijuana border region, not only is there a shortage of water sources, but existing surface streams and aquifers are threatened due to raw sewage dumping, agricultural runoff, and industrial and hazardous waste pollution. Such contamina tion reduces the supply of water for human use and has other serious consequences for plants, animals, and human health. The most important water pollution problems in the San Diego-Tijuana border region are discussed below.

San Diego has failed to upgrade and maintain its wastewater treatment system. For many years San Diego has been involved in litigation with the federal government for its failure to meet statutory sewage treatment standards. San Diego’s response has be en to seek a waiver from federal standards on the theory that sewage treated at a lesser standard can be safely discharged into the ocean. Available scientific research, although somewhat limited, seems to support San Diego’s position, although some Mexic an research raised concerns about contamination in the Tijuana to Ensenada coastal area caused by San Diego’s sewage effluent ocean outfall. In 1995, San Diego did obtain a waiver through federal legislation.

San Diego’s sewage collector and treatment system is old and in poor repair. Frequent breakdowns result in numerous discharges of untreated sewage into streams and bays and onto beaches along the ocean. This produces a continuing threat to human health and results in closure of prime recreation areas for varying periods of time.

Within the San Diego region, there have fierce debates regarding solutions to San Diego’s sewage treatment problems. On the one hand, various environmental groups have argued that the solution lies in reducing the per capita consumption of water in San Diego through conservation efforts and in the expansion of water reclamation projects and the use of low cost alternative treatment technologies. Others argue that the best alternative is significant capital investment and upgrading and expanding the tra ditional technologies. The supply, distribution, and treatment of San Diego water and wastewater is critical for the future growth and quality of life in the region, yet litigation by the opposing sides and lack of decisive political leadership have frust rated solutions.

For 50 years, Tijuana has struggled to provide sewage collection and treatment facilities for the exploding urban population and the flow of untreated sewage across the international boundary into San Diego has been a significant issue on the bilateral policy agenda. United States concerns regarding the sewage flows have been several. First, the flow of untreated sewage down the Tijuana River channel and down the side canyons from Tijuana colonias into the river valley has contaminated the valley, maki ng farmland unsuitable for production of food crops and reducing the quality of groundwater resources. Second, the flow of sewage into the ocean has resulted in chronic contamination of the waters adjacent to the beach and continuing closure of prime recr eation areas. The ocean from Imperial Beach to Rosarito Beach is simply unsafe for human contact. Finally, the flow of the Tijuana River has been altered by urbanization from a stream with a seasonal flow during the rainy season to a permanent flow of app roximately 15 million gallons per day. This has had significant negative effects on the Tijuana National Estuarine Reserve, an important salt water marsh ecosystem at the mouth of the river that is home to many rare and endangered plant and animal species .

The United States has opposed proposals by Mexico to install sewage treatment facilities upriver in the Tijuana basin because the treated discharge would add to the impacts on the Estuarine Reserve. Instead, in 1987, Tijuana built a 25 million gallon p er day capacity waste water treatment plant near the coast some 5.6 miles south of the international border. This plant quickly reached capacity and discharges sewage that is minimally treated into the surf to the north of Rosarito Beach, adding to the ne ar shore marine pollution problem along the beach.

After intense political pressure by activists on both sides of the border, particularly those from Imperial Beach and the Tijuana River Valley, the two federal governments agreed to build an international joint sewage treatment plant to handle Tijuana’ s sewage. In early 1996, construction is under way at this plant that is scheduled to come into service in 1997. Although this is a significant step, unresolved issues remain. These include protection and restoration of the wetlands, construction of an oc ean discharge, and concern by environmental groups that no adequate water reuse program has been developed for the plant.

Marine pollution has been a persistent problem in the San Diego-Tijuana border region, but one that has largely been ignored in public discussions of transborder environmental issues. Urban runoff from San Diego and Tijuana transports various hazardous materials into the near shore marine environment where they enter the marine food web and offer the potential for negative human health effects. Most marine species in San Diego Bay, for example, are unsafe for human consumption. Monitoring programs have detected a growing problem with heavy metals, pesticides, and other chemical contaminants from San Diego to Ensenada. And this problem is growing with increased industrialization and population in the region. Biological contamination is likewise serious along the coast, making shellfish unfit for human consumption, and water contact unadvisable for humans.

With growth of urban populations and domestic manufacturing and associated activities, and with the expansion of the maquiladora industry, there has been a great increase in industrial waste and pollutants in the border region. Mexican domestic industr ies and businesses in Tecate and Tijuana, ranging from automobile repair shops, to small furniture manufacturers, or to large chemical plants, produce significant pollution, both non-point source and point source. Only a portion of this waste is disposed of properlythe rest is discarded into the sewer systems, solid waste dumps, or simply dumped on the ground in canyons or other areas. This type of pollution is picked up from the flushing action of rains or the normal operation of the sewage system. It is then transported by rivers and washes into the Pacific Ocean or Salton Sea. The pollution from urban runoff is also a significant problem in San Diego on the U.S. side of the boundary.

Maquiladoras also produce some industrial and hazardous waste in Mexico’s border cities that has important transborder effects. While many of Tijuana’s 500 or so maquilas produce no significant waste, certain sectors such as those involved in electroni cs, plating operations, and so forth, do generate important quantities of hazardous waste. While, according to Mexican regulations, some portion of the waste generated is returned to the country of originusually the United Statesthe rest is being stored (often improperly), dumped in municipal landfills, or discharged into the wastewater collector system. Solvents used in the electronics industry and heavy metals associated with metal finishing operations seem to be the most common problems.

This chemical pollution of surface waters and groundwater has potentially serious consequences for the region's water supply, particularly in Tijuana where wells supply an important part of the water for urban use. The Otay Valley Water District is mov ing forward with plans to develop groundwater resources on the U.S. portion of the Tijuana River Valley and pollution could compromise the quality of these resources. Reclamation is made impossible or prohibitively expensive when the water to be reclaimed has significant chemical pollution. Cleaning up polluted aquifers is particularly problematic and expensive.

Another problem related to hazardous and industrial waste is that of illegal dumping. Given the high costs to properly dispose of some hazardous wastes, there is a long history of illegal dumping in the border region. Smuggling of hazardous wastes into Mexico is a potentially lucrative criminal activity and has been a sporadic problem.

Continued problems with hazardous and industrial waste are related to lack of adequate infrastructure in San Diego and Tijuana, the high cost of proper disposal, and the lack of enforcement of existing regulations by Mexican authorities. Collaborative binational efforts to track the movement of hazardous waste across the international boundary have been only partially successful as a computerized tracking system has been slow to come on line and has significant limitations. While there has been progres s, it will be some time before illegal movement of hazardous materials in the region is curtailed.

While there is some evidence of agricultural chemicals and pesticides entering surface streams and the ocean in the Tijuana-San Diego area through the sewage systems and through urban run-off, the problems are relatively minor.

There are significant occupational health and safety problems in some Tijuana border manufacturing plants. This is due in part to lax enforcement of existing codes, cost savings on the by management, and lack of training for workers regarding proper pr ocedures and use of safety devices. There are a few cases of plants relocating from the United States to Tijuana because of lax environmental enforcement in Mexico. Generally, there is little solid data regarding health and safety issues in Tijuana plants .

In the San Diego-Tijuana border region, municipal and solid waste disposal is an important concern. Both sides of the border have inadequate landfill space for the future and Baja California has additional problems related to the design of landfills an d control of what goes into them, endangering aquifers that contribute to the region’s scarce water supply. Municipal landfills produce quantities of greenhouse gasses as part of the decomposition of organic matter of waste materials. No San Diego-Tijuana landfills are using these gasses for electric power generation.

A combination of capital investment and reduction of the amount and kind of materials that go into the landfills is being used to address regional landfill problems. Although there are domestic and industrial recycling programs in much of San Diego and to a lesser extent in Tijuana, a bottleneck for these efforts is the lack of well developed markets for recyclable materials. The City of San Diego and the Municipality of Tijuana currently have underway a pilot project to develop regional, transborder m arkets for recycled materials both to stimulate more recycling activities, and to create jobs in the region using reclaimed materials. Another benefit of this program will be reduction of amounts of solid waste entering the landfills of the region.

Air pollution is a growing problem for the San Diego-Tijuana border region. Air pollution comes from different sources, but ultimately is linked to growing human populations in the region. The exact transborder linkages of air pollution are not well u nderstood. It is not clear to what extent San Diego’s air quality is affected by pollutants transported from Tijuana sources and vice versa. Also, air pollution sources from outside the region are important. It has been documented that a significant part of the failure of San Diego to meet minimum air quality regulations for a certain number of days each year is caused by the transport of pollutants by winds and air currents from the Los Angeles basin. This may also affect Tijuana.

Major sources of pollution include point source and non-point source. In terms of point source pollution, the major contributors are permanent installations such as electricity generating plants and large industrial plants such as cement plants. The ma jor point source for air pollution in the region is the Rosarito power plant, which uses fuel oil to generate electricity for use in Baja California. Similar plants on the San Diego side of the region were converted to cleaner burning natural gas some yea rs ago.

Rapid growth of number of vehicles in the border area has been the largest contributor to air pollution problems in the region. Currently, the vehicle fleet for San Diego County numbers 1,894,567 (September 1995), that for Imperial County is 112,523 (S eptember 1995), and that for Tijuana is 166,661. Although there are fewer vehicles in Tijuana than in San Diego County, the vehicle fleet is characterized by poor maintenance and by older vehicles as well as by use of leaded gasoline. Consequently, the M exican vehicles contribute a disproportionately large share of the total pollution in the region.

Management of the ports of entry in the Tijuana-San Diego border exacerbates the air pollution problem by creating excessive waiting times for vehicles to cross. The long lines of idling vehicles produce significantly more pollution than vehicles trave ling along the highways.

A growing source of air pollution in the region is the increasing number of diesel heavy duty vehicles that transport cargo across the border. This fleet has expanded considerably with the growth of the maquiladora industry and the implementation of NA FTA. Although hard data are not available regarding the precise amounts of pollution produced by these vehicles, it is likely an important part of the regional air pollution picture.

Uncontrolled burning and the burning of scrap materials has been reduced, but remains a problem in Tijuana. Unpaved streets in Tijuana also contribute small particles of matter, known as PM10, to the pollution load of the region.

There are a number of endangered species and ecosystems in the San Diego-Tijuana border region and there is a need to have binational cooperation for their conservation and protection. Examples include the coastal chaparral complex of plants and animal s along the Pacific Coast, the Tijuana National Estuarine Reserve, the Baja California salt water estuaries, the Cleveland National Forest, and the Sierra de Juárez. Because of greater growth along the U.S. side of border, there is often a greater presence of undisturbed habitats and ecosystems on the Mexican side. The San Diego region is attempting to protect key habitats through the Multi-Species Conservation Plan, which would protect vital corridors and would maintain large enough habitat areas for survival of important species. The plan is under attack by land developers and their allies because of the restrictions that this conservation approach puts on private property. Ironically, U.S. developers have argued that it is fine to eliminate coas tal chaparral in Southern California because the ecosystem and associated plant and animal communities extends well into Baja California. The implication is that a less developed country should be forced to eventually forgo development to protect these na tural resources.

The Tijuana National Estuarine Reserve is located in the United States at the mouth of the Tijuana River that drains a basin of 175,000 acres, two-thirds in Mexico and one-third in the United States. The basin is home to approximately one million perso ns and the human impacts have significantly altered features of the natural environment of the region. For example, due to water importation, urban runoff, and other factors, the Tijuana River has been changed from an intermittent stream with a significan t flow only in the winter rainy season, to a year round flow of approximately 15 million gallons per day.

Two very different political systems meet at the border, which makes cooperation on mutual problems much more complicated. Mexico is highly centralized. Political power flows from the presidency, as do economic resources. Thus, municipal governments ar e relatively weak in Mexico. Traditionally, Mexican municipalities have had no secure and adequate source of funding so they have relied on transfer payments from state and federal governments. There is no civil service in Mexico, so with each new municip al president, governor, or president, there is massive turnover in administrative staff. This makes continuity in programs difficult and works against continuity in transboundary cooperation. This is particularly a problem in the case of Tijuana where ne w municipal administrations take office every three years.

There are few direct governmental and administrative direct counterparts across the border. Areas that are local responsibilities on the U.S. side are often state or federal responsibilities in Baja California. California local governments are able to raise financing for infrastructure through bonding and taxing mechanisms, but these options are extremely limited in Baja California and Mexico. Only recently, has local government in Tijuana embarked upon a serious effort to develop secure and sustained increased revenue levels.

Although local government in San Diego, under its more decentralized political system, is seemingly more empowered to take independent action on border and regional issues than the Municipality of Tijuana, there are limiting factors. Most important is the extreme fractioning of local government within San Diego County. Currently, in San Diego County there is a county government, 18 city governments, 200 special assessment districts, 43 elementary/secondary school districts, 5 community college distric ts, and numerous regional agencies or quasi governmental service providing agencies. Thus, despite a regional planning organizationthe San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG)coordination for any regional initiative is very difficult.

A second complicating factor is that transborder cooperation has generally not been a high priority of local governments in San Diego and Imperial Counties. For example, in 1993, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors abolished the very successful D epartment of Transborder Affairs, even though binational issues were increasingly impacting the region and economic linkages with Mexico were growing rapidly.

The juxtaposition at the border of the highly centralized Mexican political system with the decentralized federal U.S. political system has broad implications for the daily lives of border residents. The differences in the two political systems histori cally have hindered bilateral cooperation on transborder issues of importance to border residents. While the foreign relations departments (the U.S. Department of State and the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores [SRE]) are technically in charge of developing and implementing foreign policy, the Mexican SRE is much more successful than its U.S. counterpart in controlling, supervising, and limiting transborder contacts and relations between Mexican government agencies at the state, local, and federa l levels and their counterparts in the United States. Due to the federal system of the United States, many different government agencies make decisions with foreign implications; in effect, they are making foreign policy. Thus, at the federal level, the U .S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Commerce, and many others regularly implement decisions that have concrete impacts on the transborder regio n. Agencies from the U.S. border states and from the city and county local governments likewise initiate policies that have importance for Mexico and its border region. While the U.S. State Department tries to monitor these actions, it does not attempt to enforce absolute control. However, in Mexico, policy tends to emanate mainly from, and is more tightly controlled by, SRE.

Historically, the San Diego-Tijuana border region was neglected by both federal governments. Far removed geographically from the national capital, the region did not have large and important political constituencies. In the Mexican case, the traditiona l forces of regionalism meant that Mexico City viewed Tijuana and the northern border with suspicion. The border region typically has been a pawn in the relations between the two countries. Often federal decisions that affected the border region were made for reasons unrelated to the border. For example, at various times, the U.S. government has ordered increased inspections of incoming pedestrians and vehicles at the ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexican border to discourage the southward movement of touris ts, causing great economic hardship in the tourist dependent Mexican border communities. The real purpose of these actions was to pressure the Mexican government to improve its cooperation on drug trafficking matters. Typically, policies and decisions mad e in the national capitals had a big impact on the border yet residents of San Diego and Tijuana had little input in these decisions.

Differences in the political and administrative structures often make local transborder cooperation difficult. Direct administrative counterparts often do not exist in each of the twin cities. Usually, local government agencies in San Diego are able to initiate projects independently and develop financing. Tijuana agencies usually are constrained not only by restricted mandates for independent action, but have extremely limited financial and technical resources and trained human capital.

The great disparity in resources available to local governments on opposite sides of the border is not adequately appreciated in discussions of transborder cooperation. The following table illustrates this significant financial asymmetry.

Table 4. Local Government Budgets, 1992-1996
Year	County of San Diego (fiscal year, July 1-June 30)	City of San Diego (fiscal year, July 1-June 30)	Municipality of Tijuana (pesos) (fiscal year, March 1-end of February)	Municipality of Tijuana (dollars)* (fiscal year, March 1-end of February)
1992	1,171,000,000	1,160,785,595	190,106,829	61,523,245
1993	1,932,000,000	1,350,000,000	240,096,754	76,172,828
1994	1,950,000,000	1,273,000,000	270,458,184	90,152,728
1995	2,091,000,000	1,272,251,515	405,000,000	54,000,000
1996	2,197,000,000	1,176,970,208	401,000,000	53,466,667

Source: County of San Diego, City of San Diego, and annual Informes of the Municipality of Tijuana.

From these figures, which do not take into account the budgets for the other 19 incorporated cities within the County of San Diego, it is clear why Tijuana has so much difficulties in meeting the basic urban services needs of its rapidly growing popula tion, and why it is often difficult for the Municipality to participate in activities with counterparts in the United States.

Another difference in the political and public administration systems across the border is the nature of public service and office holding. In San Diego, the majority of local, state, and federal government employees fall under various sorts of civil s ervice systems. This assures that the professional staffs most responsible for the day-to-day running of agencies will remain in place even when there is a change in the elected officials. In Tijuana, the situation is quite different. There, with the chan ge of administrations, whether federal, state, or local, government employees at all levels are replaced by new political appointments. Hence, continuity and institutional memory are much more fragmented in public administration on the Mexican side of the border. An additional element is that in Mexico, upward career movement often means jumping from agency to agency through a series of political appointments. While this produces individuals with significant experience in many areas of government, it tend s to work against the most capable people staying in one agency to provide leadership and continuing expertise. Bureaucrats in the United States tend to advance careers through promotion within the same agency, continually upgrading their knowledge and sk ills in that one particular area. Thus, all of these factors constitute bottlenecks for effective binational governmental cooperation.

Local governments have long had some involvement with their counterparts in Tijuana and these efforts were often the result of the vision and motivation of one or two individuals. At times, the enhanced interactions with Mexico grew out of the interest s of staff persons at the department level; frequently the interaction grew out of the need to deal with a real problem such as renegade sewage flows, a public health emergency, or shared emergency services. In other cases, they were the result of decisio ns by elected leaders who recognized that over the medium and long term, San Diego would have to maintain a closer working relationship in order to adequately deal with a range of San Diego problems with a border component. The late 1970s saw a significan t increase in San Diego local government transborder efforts, a trend that continued through the 1980s.

In 1986, the City Council of the City of San Diego voted to establish a Department of Binational Affairs. Based partly on the successful work since 1983 of Remigia Bermudez as the Assistant to the Mayor on Binational Border Development and Latino Commu nity Issues/Relations, the department was created as a central point for coordination of issues with transborder implications. Initially it was staffed by bilingual professionals with significant Mexico-related experience, Francisco R. Herrera as director and Elsa R. Saxod as assistant director. The department, within a short time, had become involved in a range of issues including economic development, tourism, disaster preparedness, and border sanitation, and had arranged meetings between the mayors of San Diego and Tijuana as well as a joint meeting of the two city councils. By 1988, however, the Mayor of San Diego, Maureen O'Connor, had succeeded in bringing the department under the control of her office where it became largely a protocol office with little opportunity for proactive action on important binational issues. Revitalized somewhat under O'Connor's successor, Susan Golding, the office embraced the key concern of international trade as well as the protocol and diplomatic tasks of the City's m ore intense interaction with Tijuana. Despite good intentions, the budgetary restraints of the early 1990s meant that the City's binational activities remained under funded and unable to fully take advantage of growing opportunities.

In August of 1987, the County of San Diego also took steps to enhance its ability to work on binational border issues with the establishment of the Department of Transborder Affairs. Under the direction of Augie Bareño, an experienced profession al in local government, the professional staff included individuals with backgrounds in local government, regional planning, and economic development. All were bilingual and brought with them significant networks of contacts from both sides of the border. Over the course of the next six years, the department and its advisory board were very active in facilitating the interaction of county departments with Mexican agencies and in producing a series of analytical reports on key transborder issues including the costs and benefits of undocumented immigrants in San Diego County, regional public health and health care issues, border crossing alternatives, and others. The department also took a lead role in establishing a program to return juvenile criminal offe nders to Mexico for disposition of their cases, in development of a binational emergency response capability, and concrete projects in many different areas.

Despite the valuable service that it has rendered, the Department of Transborder Affairs has also encountered difficult political problems. In 1993, the composition of the Board of Supervisors had changed and two new members, Diane Jacob and Pam Slater , represented conservative, Anglo, and middle class districts. Part of Jacob's agenda, ostensibly as a cost saving measure in times of fiscal difficulties for the county, was the elimination of the Department of Transborder Affairs. Many observers, howeve r, viewed Jacob's position as reflective of the growing anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant attitudes in San Diego County as a result of the prolonged economic recession and the increasingly accurate data available regarding the cost to county government of p roviding services to undocumented immigrants.

In the same year that the Department of Transborder Affairs disappeared, a formal agreement between the two cities was signed, providing for ongoing consultation and planning coordination in ten functional areas ranging from economic development to dis aster preparedness. This vehicle brings together key division heads from both sides of the border on a monthly basis and the two mayors on a quarterly basis. While it is certainly an historic agreementthe first formal agreement of its kind on the U.S.-Me xican borderboth sides are still learning how to adjust their administrative structures to the new cross-border dimension.

While the need for enhanced transborder linkages has grown and more agencies and individuals at the local level have recognized that reality, the Mexico connection still remains an issue subject to the vicissitudes of politics. Anti-immigrant, anti-Mex ican, and other currents still have a strong impact in the region and under the right conditions can substantively influence the policies of local government. It is quite clear that within the general population of the San Diego region, border relations a nd Mexico relations are not widely accepted as a priority. An important part of San Diego's population, perhaps 40 percent, migrated to the region from elsewhere in the United States. Attracted by the climate and the amenities of living in Southern Califo rnia, most of these individuals carry traditional values from their places of origin in the Midwest and elsewhere and are simply not interested in the border and Mexico per se. Unlike populations that have grown up in the border region, these immigrants f rom the United States need to pass through a long acculturation and education process to understand the symbiotic nature of the border.

Throughout the post World War II period, neither city has been able to manage the rapid economic and demographic growth that overwhelmed local planning efforts. Consequently, living standards have stagnated, the physical infrastructure of the region ha s become inadequate, negative environmental impacts have become more acute, and many aspects of quality of life have deteriorated.

Part of the failure of the growth management in the region is also seen in the failure to adequately manage the increasingly complex binational connections. At the most basic levels, border crossing infrastructure remains insufficient for the growing c ommerce, there was little articulation of land use planning across the border, and binational cooperation on environmental issues such as the health of the wetlands at the mouth of the Tijuana River was minimal.

Both San Diego and Tijuana are now at a crossroads regarding their future paths of development. For the San Diego region the basic economic challenge is to overcome the negative effects of defense downsizing, budget cuts, and corporate reductions on th e region’s aerospace manufacturing industries in an environment of increased global competition. Public-private efforts to grapple with these issues have, for the last few years, revolved around a concept called "cluster analysis."

Clusters are usually defined as concentrations of interdependent, related industries, including suppliers and supporting companies such as legal and financial entities that provide specialized services. Together, these comprise the region’s economic ba se. The cluster process involves identifying the region’s specific industry clusters and then helping firms in those clusters to organize themselves in order to identify specific initiatives essential to the region’s development.

Several specific issues widely regarded to San Diego’s future development, including creating a more business friendly regulatory system in San Diego specifically and in California generally; assuring an ample and reliable water supply; expanding and i mproving the transportation infrastructure (a new airport, a revived rail system from Imperial County, and modern border crossing infrastructure and highway links); creating a low-level hazardous waste dump; providing education-training for the region’s g rowing ethnically diverse labor force; and, most recently, creating a seamless delivery system of economic development services. Clearly all of these issues must be addressed in order to raise prosperity levels in San Diego and in order to achieve cost ef fective solutions, these must be addressed in a concerted manner.

For Tijuana, the issues for the future are somewhat different. There, the principal challenge for the immediate future is to consolidate the rapid economic growth of the past and to set the city on a course for more broad based social and economic deve lopment. And, of course, this is unfolding within the context of new investment in the region stimulated by NAFTA and the national economic crisis that began in late 1994 and continued through 1995.

In the economic realm, Tijuana faces a number of challenges. Perhaps the greatest concern is to provide jobs for the growing number of persons entering the job market each year. Related questions are how to raise wages and how to diversify the economy to include enhanced labor productivity and more value added activity associated with the maquiladora industry.

With respect to transborder collaboration and planning, there are many perspectives on the kind of relationship that the two cities should aspire to develop. One is that San Diego and Tijuana are on independent development paths and therefore should co llaborate only to the extent necessary to keep out of each other’s way and facilitatethrough the provision of infrastructurenormal intercourse between the neighboring cities. This we might call the peaceful coexistence option.

Another view, however, holds that the two cities must develop a close partnership by forging a joint vision of the future of the region with a plan and appropriate transborder institutions for achieving it. This vision must not be clouded by wishful th inking and inaccurate information about the region, or by narrow and elitist agendas. Rather, it must be based on solid and reliable data, a realistic recognition of the significant differences and asymmetries from one side of the border to the other, and participation of all sectors of the transborder region in the processes of self definition and planning. This will provide the basis for this process to move forward effectively into the future.

Irrespective of one’s view regarding a transborder policy, it is clear that close, on-going collaboration is essential to managing the many spillover environmental and health problems as well as developing the infrastructure needed to facilitate the re gion’s increasing integration. The only question at this crucial juncture in the region’s history is what kinds of transborder institutions can be both effective and politically acceptable.

The increasing self-identification of San Diego-Tijuana as a linked binational region along with growing economic integration, social and familial transborder linkages, and cooperation and collaboration in higher education, local government, environmen tal protection, public health, infrastructure planning, and other areas, suggests that the region is now prepared to move forward with the development of more rational mechanisms for coordination and management of the region. Specifically, a transborder m anagement authority should now be established to begin the slow and complex process of better managing and planning the binational region into the 21st century. Initially, the effort needs to be directed towards narrow, specific aspects of transborder man agement; regional transportation planning is a good example. Once successful working partnerships have developed and a record of positive achievements has been established, then the efforts should be expanded to encompass more complex tasks such as region al economic development planning, or transborder ecosystems management.