ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the theme of global tourism development for the San Diego-Tijuana international border region. This sprawling trans-frontier urban region of some five million inhabitants is the largest metropolis in the rapidly urbanizing development corridor running along the Mexico-United States border. It explains the evolution of San Diego-Tijuana as a tourism metropolis and discusses both the separate dynamics of tourism and urban space on each side of the border, as well as the emerging shift toward cross-border tourism development. San Diego-Tijuana thus offers an important case study of twenty-first-century tourism development and urban restructuring for several reasons. Clearly, two scenarios define the San Diego-Tijuana metropolitan area as a center of tourism development: the evolution of separate, distinct tourism economies and the more recent trend toward a binational, cross-border tourism project. The chapter presents the political actors who make decisions about tourism development are increasingly external to the region and at odds with the host populations.
