From article in Herald Tribune 13/3/06

As Tijuana has expanded into the hilly terrain to the east, squatters have fashioned an elaborate system of retaining walls out of used tires packed with earth. The houses jostling on the incline are constructed out of concrete blocks, sheets of corrugated metal, used garage doors and discarded packing crates - much of it brought down by local contractors and wholesalers from across the border (slideshow in NY Times).Once such a settlement is completed, it is protected from demolition under Mexican law - and the government is eventually obliged to provide plumbing, electricity and roads to serve it. In Cruz’s view, the process is in some ways a far more flexible and democratic form of urban development than is the norm elsewhere.Yet he takes a special delight in places where free-spirited forms and conventional ones overlap. One of the strangest sights in Tijuana is a row of vintage California bungalows resting atop a hollow one-story steel frame. Once destined for demolition across the border, they were loaded on trucks and brought south by developers who have sold them to local residents.To squeeze them into tight lots, many homeowners mount them on frames so they can use the space underneath for shops, car repair and the like. On one site, a pretty pink bungalow straddles a narrow driveway between two existing houses, as if a child were casually stacking toy houses.Driving farther into the hills, we passed through the gates of a sprawling subdivision from the late 1990s that has become its own sort of hybrid. Originally it was conceived as a sprawl of identical beige houses, each no bigger than a two-car garage, arranged behind tidy little lawns in a grim version of the American dream.Only a few years later, the lawns are now cluttered with car repair shops, grocery stores and taco stands. New floors have been added, single-family homes have been joined together to house extended families, and many of the beige facades have been repainted in bright colors. Cruz sees the mix as a richer, more vibrant landscape - a spirited answer to the alienation that many of us associate with conventional American suburbs.It’s not that he romanticizes poverty; he recognizes the filth and clutter, the lack of light and air, that were the main targets of Modernism nearly a century ago. But by approaching Tijuana’s shantytowns with an open mind, he can extract a viable strategy for development that is rooted in local traditions.The fruits are visible in Cruz’s peculiar architectural vision. For years now he has been refining a design for a 12- unit housing proposal in San Ysidro, an immigrant community in suburban San Diego, in cooperation with a local advocacy group known as Casa Familiar. The design is conceived as a frame for future development, with a blocklong semipublic loggia as its centerpiece.The loggia will function as a shared communal space for markets, festivals and other social events. Its concrete frame, partly inspired by Donald Judd’s sculptural cubes, is intentionally purer and more formal than anything in Tijuana, but that rigorous framework houses an informal and flexible social organism.A row of delicate wood housing units on top of the frame will heighten the contrast between private and public zones. Each unit is conceived as a series of interlocking rooms that can be broken down into two one-bedroom units or pieced together for large families. And the entire site will be bisected by a semipublic garden that connects West Hall Street to an alley that serves as a thoroughfare for immigrants on their way to work.A second phase calls for parallel rows of housing for the elderly interspersed with semipublic gardens. The single-story blocks are covered by long uniform roofs that tip up at certain points to create space for what Cruz calls “prodigal apartments” - single units where extended family members can stay. A full-time day care center is also part of the elderly phase, since many immigrant children are being raised by their grandparents.To proceed with the project, Cruz opened a full-scale campaign to change San Diego’s zoning laws. Working with Casa Familiar, he has sought to open the way for the denser mixed-use communities that are so typical of Mexico - an urban fabric in which structures bleed freely into one another, allowing for the shifting realities of immigrant families. The group’s offices will serve as a makeshift city hall, arranging loans and reconfiguring the units.The San Diego City Council approved the development plan last year, and Cruz expects the zoning changes to go through this autumn. Planners hope to begin construction next year.