The Heads on Fire Community

300,000 people crossing the border between San Diego and Tijuana every day

The Tijuana River (Río Tijuana) is an intermittent river, 195 km (121 mi) long

The International Boundary Wastewater Treatment Plant (IWTP) currently treats 25 million gallons per day (mgd) directly pumped across the border from the central collection point in Mexico. When there is any flow in the river, the river diverter kicks in and diverts up to about 12-13 mgd to the IWTP

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/back/28_BeardsleyWe...

Tijuana is a city of 1.5 million people. 13.5 % of Tijuana's population lives in informal settlements. The informal settlements are 10 % of Tijuana's area.

Casa Familiar is an organization in an old church in San Ysidro that has immigrants and wants to renovate the old church into a place to support them and provide housing and they want Estudio Teddy Cruz to help them on getting this job done. Teddy Cruz only thinks that this idea is just injecting some of Tijuana chaos into The United States. He also thinks that San Diego's Manufactured Sites proposal could possibly inject some organization into Tijuana. He came up with a plan to develop a prototype for a prefabricated aluminum building frame that could facilitate the construction of new settlements in Tijuana. Cruz thinks that foreign owned maquiladoras would only take advantage of the cheap labor. So his idea was to contact a Tijuana company called IMPLAN to manufacture the aluminum structures and San Diego would raise money for it and funnel it to Tijuana.

Tijuana growth has resulted from structural differences between Mexico and the United States particularly the differences in their distribution of income and their gathering of wealth

These factors make the economy better for Mexican border cities such as Tijuana

Three factors that help Tijuana's economy: 1) Foreign investments in search for lower wages in the manufacturing sector (maquiladoras) 2) Growth occurring in the cross border commuters (those who live in Tijuana and work in the U.S. who are looking for higher wages). These higher wages that these commuters get inject more money into the city. 3) The decline of Mexico's Economy causes increased unemployment and lower wages and border cities are the ones that offer employment so a lot of people migrate to them. WHEN MEXICO DOES BAD, TIJUANA DOES GOOD and expands.

Maquiladoras are factories that create all different types of materials and sells them for cheap prices. Factory that imports materials and equipment on a duty-free(do not apply local or national taxes and duties) and tariff-free (tax imposed on goods when they are moved across a political boundary) basis for assembly or manufacturing and then re-exports the assembled product, usually back to the originating country.

35 % of the working population of Tijuana is in the manufacturing sector. 8 % of the working population is cross border commuters.

Each time structural differences between the countries deepen, the trans border flows increase and the border cities grow

Tijuana's unemployment rate is at 1.3 % which is low in Latin America.