Project by: Jennie J. Zhou, Eric C. Lin, Junbo Chen, Jiayi Dai
In the rapidly expanding city of Tijuana, over 50% of residents were born outside of Baja-California. Drawn by the maquiladora industry, migrants settle in self-built peripheral neighborhoods that grow faster than municipal planning decisions: leaving communities underserved, underrepresented, and lacking formal public space. These conditions make it difficult for residents to build community and a sense of belonging.
Our project envisions football fields, existing sites of shared passion and joy, as opportunities to strengthen the public realm by transforming monofunctional spaces into vibrant, multifunctional neighborhood hubs with two functions: 1) Community centers for gathering, organizing, and mobilizing residents; 2) Network nodes within a city-wide constellation of communities participating in knowledge and resource exchange to co-create solutions for shared environmental and economic challenges.
