The last half of the 20th century was defined by the divided city. Jerusalem, Berlin, Sarajevo, Nicosia and most recently Mitrovica, split between Kosovo's Albanians and Serbs. We will see more divided cities in the future, but I have a prediction. In the next 50 years, in this era of globalisation, a new urban phenomenon will emerge: the "fusion city."
I don't know if they are called fusion cities and I expect that geographers already have some fancy name for them. But the term will do for me. Obviously they are the opposite of cities divided by conflict-they are different cities in different countries growing together into one urban unit. Thus the two halves of the old divided Berlin don't count, but Danish Copenhagen and Swedish Malm? and so, in an exuberant and radically different way, do San Diego in southern California and Tijuana in Mexico.
How can this be? After all, the city fathers of conservative and rather antiseptic San Diego would be horrified if their town centre began to resemble Avenida Revoluci?in Tijuana, where tourists have their photos taken on zebra-drawn carriages. And likewise the Swedish army would probably be called in if dirty looking middle-aged dope peddlers set up stalls selling chocolate bar sized slices of hash, as they do on Pusher Street in Christiania in the middle of Copenhagen. But believe me, Copenhagen and Malm?d San Diego and Tijuana are gradually fusing into two big, dynamic and forward-looking cities.
Say Copenhagen and, if you haven't been there, the first thing that comes to mind is that silly little statue, the Little Mermaid. Let me tell you, it is as disappointing as that daft Manneken Pis in Brussels. But if you really want to see what modern Copenhagen is made of, take a drive through and over the ?esund Fixed Link, which connects the Danish capital to Malm?er the busy Baltic waters which divide them.
The name "?esund Fixed Link" does not sound thrilling. Actually, it is stupendous. When, as a child, I first saw San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge I was impressed. My children do not bat an eyelid at the Golden Gate but they were impressed by the ?esund Fixed Link and gazed in amazement at ocean going ships far, far below.
Opened to traffic and trains on 1st July last year, the Fixed Link consists of 16 kilometres of bridge, tunnel and man-made island. From city centre to city centre it takes 35 minutes-the equivalent of travelling five tube stops in London. But consider this too: in London you could always walk. From Malm?r anywhere in Sweden, Norway or Finland you haven't been able to walk to Copenhagen or any place else in mainland western Europe since the Ice Age-unless you went the long way round via Russia.
Naturally there are no passport controls between these urbane and sophisticated cities and as increasing numbers commute between the two, to work, study and have fun, they are slowly but surely becoming one. Earlier this year the ports of the two cities actually did become one single business. Interestingly, since our Eurosceptics take succour from their Danish counterparts, nobody in Denmark or Sweden seems to be objecting to the fact that the ?esund "cross-border region" is actually being aggressively marketed as such. And who can blame them? The wider Copenhagen-Malm?gion is home to 3.5m highly educated people whose economic and high-tech powerhouse is targeting not only its traditional markets in the rest of Scandinavia but the emerging business centres of Berlin and Poland also.
Malm?d Copenhagen look and feel so similar already that if you didn't know which one you were in, it might take you a minute or two to work it out. You would never have the same problem in elegant but dull San Diego and raucous Tijuana. The centres of these cities are some 20 miles apart but both have been growing so rapidly for so long now that they actually touch. Or they would do but for the bulldozed US-Mexican border area which divides them and prevents the majority of Mexicans who can't get a US visa from coming north-legally at least. Still, there's no doubt about it; these cities are fusing.
The Tijuana border is one of the busiest in the world. Every day thousands of Mexicans pour northwards to work in San Diego and thousands of Americans pour southwards to shop. Almost every other shop in the centre of Tijuana appears to be a chemist. That's because it is. Americans flock there to buy bags full of prescription drugs for a fraction of what they cost back home. And not only that. Clinics of all sorts abound, as do marriage and divorce lawyers and car repair shops-all charging a fraction of the American price. American students also go south in their tens of thousands for mega-binges (you have to be 21 to drink in California but only 18 in Mexico). Americans increasingly live there too, commuting northwards in the mornings, leaving their servants to make their beds. Academics already have a name for these Mexican and American commuters: borderlanders.
While tourism is a mainstay of Tijuana's economy much of the big money, apart from narcotics and people smuggling, comes from the maquiladora factories. So many televisions are put together here for the US market that it is sometimes called TVjuana. All manner of electronic and other goods are made here for export northwards because the workers get paid barely $60 a week.
The fusing of cities might seem untenable if you consider that people on one side of the border make perhaps just 10 per cent of what people on the north side do. But the fact is that there is no unemployment in third world Tijuana and its population is exploding as Mexicans flock here from the rest of the vast country looking for, and finding work. Is that a benefit of Nafta and globalisation, or a curse?
Without one another Tijuana and San Diego would both be poorer. Hundreds of millions of dollars flow from north to south every year and lots of money goes back north again as at least half of Tijuana's imports come from San Diego. And it's not just money and people that flow back and forth. The heavily policed international frontier cannot stop Tijuana's sewage seeping north, much to the annoyance of the San Diegans.
"We are so poor here," said Angel, my taxi driver, as he drove me around the city. Then he volunteered the information that he earned $500 a week, that he owned his own house, that his wife did not work-out of choice-and that he paid no taxes. And without San Diego, he would be back in his home village tending the bulls his father raises for bullfights.
If you look at a map you will find many more quietly fusing border cities, especially in Europe-in the French, Belgian, Dutch, German and Swiss borderlands. In some cases it may be a city on one side coming together with a smaller town on the other.
Fusion cities will give the fans and foes of globalisation plenty to argue about. I say fusion is better than division, though a bit of fusion green belt wouldn't go amiss either.
