The geography of interests: Urban regime theory and the construction of a bi-national urban regime in the United States/Mexico border region (1980-1999)

Abstract

This dissertation uses the urban regime theory to study the influence of bi-national public-private coalitions over the land development patterns of the US/Mexico border cities. In the El Paso del Norte region, the development of the bi-national land market has been contingent on the presence of land investors with local roots and on the concentration of urban land in a few investors. In this region, local groups become dominant and influential by accumulating land properties. On the Mexican Paso del Norte, there are two types of partisan public-private coalitions influencing the process of land development. On the US Paso del Norte, the limited vacant land to promote large urban projects in Texas has consolidated the emergence of a dominant public-private coalition in Sundland Park, New Mexico. Evidences in this dissertation show that bi-national cooperation is not attainable by the majority of local public and private actors. However, the San Geronimo - Santa Teresa case study shows that public-private cooperation among the most powerful local landholders has transcended national political boundaries to promote industrial development. Bi-national urban regimes exhibit the informal integration of various scales of governments and local urban regimes to produce simultaneous outcomes from policies implemented in two different and contiguous land markets. In the El Paso del Norte region, the economic and political inter-dependency of the Mexican and American urban contexts has created the conditions to move urban regime theory into a more global scope in explaining the processes of transboundary public-private cooperation and policy elaboration.