The Mexican border cities: landscape anatomy and place personality

The book examines 18 Mexican cities that line the international border with the USA, chronicling the cities' growth, comparing their urban structure and analysing them in terms of tourist districts, commercial landscapes, residential areas, and industrial and transportation quarters. The authors attempt to understand the settlements as a type of urban form, and they contend that despite their proximity to the US the border cities are fundamentally Mexican towns. They also demonstrate their common elements of form and character, regardless of size, which they argue defines them as a distinctive urban subsystem within Mexico. -M.Amos