This summit builds, on the one hand, on Urban Future Lab research at the UTSA College of Architecture, Construction, and Planning. Projects like the “Puro” symposium in 2016; my collaboration with Vincent Valdez, participating at the 2018 Venice Biennale with a contribution to the US Pavilion, Dimensions of Citizenship; the San Antonio Southside Pilot Project we recently concluded; and the 1 Million Trees for Equality project we will begin campaigning in a few weeks, set the foundation to better understand local particularities. But it is also my work as founding editor of the Harvard GSD publication New Geographies, my book, titled, “The Mediterranean: Worlds, Regions, Cities, and Architectures,” and the dialogues with my colleagues at the Mexican Cultural Institute in San Antonio, CENTRO, Hemisfair, and Cityflag that exposed new regional imaginaries for a city that sits on the edge of future. In one way or the other, all of us are concerned with the future of San Antonio, the region, and the culture that makes and shapes it. To expand our conversations into a dialogue about broader issues concerning San Antonio in relation to the Rio Grande Valley, the border, and North Mexico, we have invited speakers from a broad range of backgrounds to discover potentials and help explore whether San Antonio can follow the call to lead into the future. The region begs to be looked at from both sides of the border, and connecting, rather than separating previously hidden, yet geographically logical relationships. The objective of the summit is to enlarge the field of vision for a new spatial contract with “South”, a Southern Ethos, Southside San Antonio, South Texas, South of the border, and the Southern Hemisphere. The idea is to bring attention to regional sensibilities that can spark projective thinking and geographic imaginaries in the production of new narratives for the future of the city.
Seeing the city as part of a global narrative set the framework when in 1968, the Hemisfair World’s Fair reconceptualized San Antonio’s location, shifting the focus from a city at the frontiers towards a narrative that placed it into the geographic center of the Americas. Themed, “Confluence of Civilizations in the Americas,” Hemisfair had the ambition to recast San Antonio as a cultural and economic focal point in the Western Hemisphere. The objective was to not only overcome the stigma of the North-South and frontier-crossroads disparities, but I argue, the confluence idea elicited optimisms and courage for the city, not despite the disparities, but to instead embrace a new future due to its geographic location, history, and culture. For many reasons, however, the fair failed to accomplish its vision of being a catalyst to develop mechanisms, inspire people, and create a framework for San Antonio to play a major role in the Americas.
Although we perceive the environment concentrically and we are aware of what is around us, proximity is not necessarily a matter of nearness, but it can also be seen as a matter of distance. In Geographies of Ignorance, Marco D’Eramo argues how the communications revolution, “both material (low-cost airlines) and immaterial (radio, tv, cellphones, the internet)” has changed our perception of space. The faraway has been brought closer, whereas the nearby has become more distant. For most of us this is true because, how much do we really know about our neighbors or “Southsides” of our cities, while being very familiar with places like New York, Chicago, or even cities abroad. For Hemisfair the manifestation of proximity was essential for it to thrive in San Antonio. The way it unfolded, however, brought the distant and far into the near, changing the city’s urban fabric (forever) in the process of making room for the fairgrounds. The city and its people not only lost more than 1,300 homes but the ramifications of this intervention are still palpable and far more reaching. Hemisfair Park Area Redevelopment CEO Andres Andujar and, on a different level, CENTRO CEO Matt Brown are doing courageous work to reinstate (cultural) proximity, while also healing the physical, human, and political environments, setting frameworks for new futures.
Consistent economic growth and the fact that more than 500 people per week begin a new life in the city––making it the fastest growing in the nation––have placed San Antonio into the national eye. While many of the city’s historic events were pivotal in determining the future, San Antonio’s current transformations lead many to believe the city cannot only transcend history, but it will also play a decisive role in changing the future. Lawrence Wright from The New Yorker contends the future of Texas closely intertwines with the nation’s future. In his article, “America’s Future is Texas” he argues, “Texas represents so much of modern America—the South, the West, the plains, the border, the Latino community, the divide between rural areas and cities—what happens here tends to disproportionately affect the rest of the nation.”
It comes to no surprise that in this difficult political climate, the region is collectively resisting morally catalyzed frontiers. Instead of compressing the entire geography into a border wall, the region sees proximity as a result that binds rather than separates. Shakespeare once said, “I am my own maker.” And this couldn’t be more true about the way kinship unfolds in the region, and revealing an ethos not shaken by progress, like many argue it has shaken Austin. At stake are current political, cultural, economic, and ecological inflections the world is undergoing, and how it manifests in the form of performance and legibility in San Antonio. This, however, is not about how global systems are transforming San Antonio. Instead, it is about deciphering and extracting meaning from the cacophonous sound of an emerging metropolis and its hinterland to activate inactive assets with an own flavor.
For the past 70 years, “legibility” has been the main object of development for global economies and one of the primary signifiers of growth. Research, however, shows growth as a metric is not a viable means to measure success any longer. Since 1980, the global economy has grown exponentially while the number of people living in poverty has increased by more than 1 billion. “Growth” is in contention. The Prime Minister of Iceland, Scotland, and New Zealand are calling for a future based of “inclusive growth” instead of obsessing about “economic growth.”
For San Antonio the difference is essential as it will determine the perspective from which to tackle the future. The city has deeply rooted issues of entrenched inequalities that have created generations of culturally impoverished residents on the city’s South, East, and West sides. While the majority of San Antonio’s new developments are facing North, linking the city to a thriving megaregion of over 18 million, the South is underdeveloped. Dallas-Fort Worth ($71,250), Houston ($70,441) and Austin ($70,000) lead the per capita economic output in the Texas Triangle, whereas San Antonio’s output ($55,833) is significantly lower. The situation changes radically once you pass Highway 90 looking South. Not only is the city struggling with the nation’s second-highest poverty rate but the way it manifests in Highway 90 signifies a dividing line between the North of the country and its credit-based economic system versus a cash-centric economy that extends from San Antonio’s Southside to the Mexican border.
Income segregation, uneven economic and urban growth have led to disparities between the North and South. But there is also inequality within the Southside. Remarkably, this part of town is home to the largest density of Spanish missions and also houses Toyota, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and TJ Maxx. Paradoxically, these major economic entities are next to some of the most impoverished communities in the nation. Consequently, legibility is also a matter of proximity. For example, the Quintana Rd. community with a 37% poverty rate, is next-door neighbor with the Port San Antonio with a regional economic impact of $5.3 billion. This raises important questions, why these economic entities are not activating the environment?
At stake, however, are not the questions we are asking, or how to break free from them, as we should not continue to float between new definitions of known problems, but rather we propose to focus on determining the scope of solutions. If we contextualize the Port and Quintana it is easy to lose sight, getting caught in the way this large-scale entity overpowers this impoverished community. The Port measures success by the standards of economic growth. Whereas Quintana’s “economy” is rather one dimensional, monotonous, and illegible considering economic standards and growth metrics. But here is the crux, we cannot continue to apply the same metrics, standards, and rules, when the basis of these economies is built around inclusive growth. We have to turn the page and revise our perspectives, then we may see that Quintana for example, is full of start-ups and an entrepreneurial spirit, exemplifying resiliency of a region in which legibility is not a way out of “South,” but instead the path that begins to unfold imaginaries, making “South” more lucid without apologizing for it.
We chose Confluence Park as a symbolic location to hold this summit. This is not only about reminiscing about the “Confluence of the Americas” idea, but the location and the spirit of this park exemplifies the deeply rooted ethos of “South”, and I argue, ultimately, San Antonio as a whole. The park is about making, in a reimagined way, as much as it is about the hyperlocal environment. One could argue, the park is out of place. But the work of the River Foundation in collaboration with the community stand symbolically for new beginnings but also old traditions. The park and the architecture tell the story of San Antonio from the perspective of making, craft, art, and the tale of its makers that is traceable to “South,” North Mexico, and the rest of the world. On a local scale this is exemplified by craft and craft manufacturing companies like Southside Craft Soda that have embraced the flavors of the region. Whereas on a global scale, the Southside is not only home to Toyota, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin, investing in making, but Port San Antonio is currently undergoing radical transformations with the goal to position San Antonio as one of the global centers to reimagine the making and manufacturing of the 21st century.
“South” draws its very own flavor from living in the “hyphen between Mexican and American” with peculiar landscapes, food, culture, people, and the omnipresence of Spanish. However, the scope of inquiry of the summit, and the research that follows, hopes to expand our views beyond the search for potentials of San Antonio by looking at the region as a mirror of social norms, economic interests, and cultural convictions. We need to ask, “what does the processes of making concrete things reveal to us about ourselves?” Is this about regional particularities that are appropriately developed, rather than appropriated? Or do we discuss the potentials of “South” as a place of makers, making, and the stories surrounding the makers?
— Antonio Petrov
