Compairing Airports

"Smart Border" border crossing

I found some boards and presentation materials for the "smart border" project that was due to begin mid 2009. These boards are just the border crossing part of the entire project, which also includes an expansion to the General Abelardo L. Rodríguez International Airport, located just east of the current San Ysidro border crossing. The construction of the new border crossing, outlined in these figures, will go over the current crossing, increasing the lanes of traffic to and from mexico with the goal of decreasing the average wait time between borders to less than 15 minutes.

Green Parking lots

http://www.re-burbia.com/2009/08/06/bumper-crop/

This link shows an excellent way to offset the wasted space in outdoor parking lots, of the sort airports have so many of.

Chapter 1: Problems and Issues

Map of San Diego/Tijuana area

Map of the area, shown in circles are all cities or designated areas above 25,000 people, the darker red areas being the cities of San Diego and Tijuana. All airports shown including military or privite, but only The Tijuana International airport (on the border) and the one just north of the San Diego bay proper, Lindberg field, are international airports. Also included are state county lines and city borders, shown in grey.

Problem

San Diego and Tijuana, when combined, make up one of the largest metropolitan areas in the Americas, with a total of just over 5 million residents reported in 2009, also being the largest bi-national metropolitan area shared between the United States and Mexico. As it currently stands, the border crossing between these sister cities is the most-trafficked in the world, in 2005 accounting for 17 million vehicles and 50 million people entered the United States at the San Ysidro port of entry in one year alone. Regions along the Mexico/United States are among the fastest growing urban and rural settings in the country, which precipitates into needing more services and infrastructure in these areas, including transportation hubs and airports, the former and latter of which is sorely needed on both sides of the San Diego/Tijuana border.

In a growing urban and sociological world, communication and cooperation are becoming ever more important in order to maintain a positive and civil level of interaction among neighboring cities, especially ones which are as closely tied together as the cities of San Diego and Tijuana. The current state of communication and interaction and perception between these two cities however, is not quite the positive-reinforcing, open communication and cooperation that one would expect from two cities which are so intertwined in culture, economy, and populace. The manner of communication and cooperation need to be increased in order to insure positive urban growth.

First Post

So here's the basic gist of the subject at hand (From my proposal):

San Diego and Tijuana are two different sides of the same piece, a twin city separated by a political and social border. The construction of civic buildings, or other buildings that are used by the public, would, therefore be beneficial for both sides of a border, not only from a monetary perspective due to the shared space, but from a social advancement and communication perspective. Such a project would increase the quality of communication between the two sides, and help to further progress the elements necessary in or to continue a healthy inter-border relationship.

All this said, the project's main focus is on a international airport to be placed on the border of Tijuana and Mexico, somewhere which would promote the importance of transportation connections, as well as be close enough to the urban centers to not become an island, cut off from everything else.

The San Diego side leaves plenty of room open for reclaiming for an airport, as the border is pretty much shunned from this side. The problem then comes from the other side; Tijuana is quite built up against the border with all manner of different structures through the whole valley until you hit the mountains as you move closer to Tecate, making reclaiming land for an airport quite difficult without demolition.

One of the options is to improve upon the current Tijuana airport, expanding it with land obtained from the other side of the border in order to create the site for the new airport, this would be a good choice to represent the direct-recycling mentality of Tijuana.

This is the current site I'm planning on, more updates as it progresses.