Material and Mental Cartographies

The city goes soft; it awaits the imprint of an identity. For better or worse, it invites you to remake it, to consolidate it into a shape you can live in…Decide who you are, and the city will again assume a fixed form around you. Decide what it is, and your own identity will be revealed. Jonathan Raban

Hence, our account of a postborder condition must also, of necessity, deal with the material physicality of border landscapes as well as the mental maps of its inhabitants. Our investigation must confront the hard edges of the fence between countries, as well as dreams of crossing the line. Michael Dear and Gustavo Leclerc, Postborder City.

Making Material and Mental Geographies.

What are some mental and material geographies characteristic of the San Diego U.S./Mex. Border?

Material & Mental Geographies.

• Militarized boarder

• Military basis

• Urban development

• Consumerism

• Maquiladoras

• Drug cartels

• Poverty

• Affluence

• Discrimination

• How do different people come to represent these material borders ?

• In this veneer-like zone where the soft and hard cities converge, the process of creativity begins.

Vladimir Herzog