Urban Humanities in the Borderlands: Engaged Scholarship from Mexico City to Los Angeles

The Pacific Rim is a geographic construct that offers an imaginary shore of continental connections. From the perspective of Los Angeles, it suggests affinities to the south and to the west, productively shifting traditional scholarly apparatus away from Europe toward Latin America and Asia. Our massive sister cities include Tokyo, Shanghai, and Seoul, but none is so familiar as Mexico City. Our nations share contested borders, histories, migrations, economies, architectures, and cultures. Particularly in Southern California, once Mexico and still Mexican, continuities can overwhelm the tropes of comparative urbanism based on difference. Perhaps it is most illuminating to consider Los Angeles and Mexico City as neither same nor different, but as intimately interconnected in particular ways.

Editor: Jonathan Crisman

Assistant Editors: Jonathan Banfill, Angélica Becerra, Jeannette Mundy

Designers: Dante Carlos, River Jukes-Hudson, Stephen Serrato

Students: UHI 2015-16 Cohort

Collaborators: Laboratorio Para La Ciudad, Casa Gallina, LIGA Espacio para Arquitectura