The Mexican Border Cities: Landscape Anatomy and Place Personality Daniel D. Arreola and James R. Curtis Tucson and London: University of Arizona Press, 1993 (Second printing) xix and 258 pp., paper Foreword by Oscar J. Martinez Reviewed by L ela nd R. P ederson Department of Geography and Regional Development University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 T O THE BURGEONING LITERATURE dealing with the United States-Mexico border and border region, Arreola and Curtis have contributed a welcome volume. The Mexican Border Cities: Land scape Anatomy and Place Personality focuses on eighteen Mexican cities immediately adjacent to the boundary—the true Mexican bor der towns. Their 1990 populations range from fewer than 5,000 (Naco) to some 800,000 (Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana), and collectively ex ceed 3.5 million; some have been among Mexico’s most rapidly growing settlements in recent decades. All are interactive with a paired settlement—usually somewhat smaller to much smaller—on the United States side of the border. Most have some measure of tourist activity, and many have experienced industrial development in the form of assembly plants (maquiladoras) under Mexico’s Border In dustrial Program, initiated in 1965. 181 182 APCG YEARBOOK • VOLUME 56 • 1994 The subtitle of the book suggests the authors’ principal empha ses. “Landscape anatomy” involves both urban layout and build (buildings), while the more elusive and subjective “place personal ity” seems to involve some set of attributes recognized by residents and outside observers alike as distinctive to and characteristic of the individual settlement or region—or, in this case, of the Mexican bor der cities in general. Since this personality is said to be visible in the urban landscape and its internal geography (p. 9), the need for obser vation, description, analysis, and interpretation of all aspects of the visible landscape becomes apparent. Architectural styles, colors, fences and enclosures, urban layout, plazas, and industrial parks are among the many landscape features said to reflect the culture and personalities of places, and the authors show considerable insight in delineating and distinguishing between Mexican border cities and their United States counterparts, on the one hand, and cities of inte rior Mexico, on the other. Arreola and Curtis have carefully studied their set of border cities and drawn the general conclusion that, while they are basically Mexican in morphology and personality, they have been modified by their border position and transborder interaction into a hybrid in which the individual cities resemble one another more strongly than they resemble non-border Mexican cities, which they resemble much more closely than they resemble United States cities. Separate chapters are devoted to founding and growth, the urban structure (layout), and four major land uses that the authors desig nate as landscapes or townscapes: tourist (including zones of prostitution), commercial, residential, and industrial (including tran sit). Each chapter is a neat package of observations about individual settlements, a set of generalizations that characterize tourist districts or industrial zones (and landscapes) in the border cities, and an ex tended description of one particular town as a case study. Most readers probably will accept the authors’ general conclu sions and interpretations, but even those who don’t will find the PEDERSON: Review of The Mexican Border Cities 183 volume a rich source of information about Mexican border towns and a genuine stimulus to thought and study. Arreola and Curtis re port their own observations in considerable detail, and theyjudiciously incorporate material from a large literature with which they are obvi ously familiar. It is surprising, then, that despite their reference to Antonio Bermudez as a major force in the transformation of border cities under the Programa Nacional Fronterizo (PRONAF) of the 1960s (p. 194), they fail to list his book, El rescate del mercado fronterizo: una obra al servicio de México (México: Ediciones Entasa, 1966) in their extensive bibliography. The book is attractive and generally well edited. Street names on a few of the maps are nearly illegible (p. 72, for example), but most maps and photographs are clear and well chosen; some of the photo graphs (pp. 196 and 210, for example) are outstanding. There are few typographical errors, but it seems quite probable that...