Speed and Space within a NAFTA Corridor

Abstract

At present there is a resurgence of interest in the city as nexus and metaphor within conceptualizations of globalization. Debates concern the city, community, and neighborhood as units of study and the use of such terms to link spaces to race or ethnicity and then to social conditions. Within the United States there is an additional propensity by some to view certain cities as entirely distinct from others within the country and from those outside of it. However, this author is among those who consider urban-suburban units to be less helpful in representing current relations among groups of people than linkages among possibly distant sprawls and business districts. Speed of contact from this viewpoint alters configurations and expands an interest in the exchanges that cross borders, time zones, and hemispheres. Within the Americas in particular, deregulated north-south connections entrench certain avenues and cause new ones to be built for increased transactions and speed. This article is a condensed expression of some of the issues in identity and power that may be reconfigured along one such corridor, Interstate Highway 35, as it passes between northern Mexico and southern and central Texas.