The NY times has put up a pretty good travel article about Tijuana. As expected, it focuses mostly on the newer art spots and trendy eateries. But it also goes a little further to talk about the city as a whole, the good and the bad. I’d bet the focus will continue to stoke the fires of change.
It’s Hot. It’s Hip. It’s Tijuana?
This is a Tijuana you don’t know. Most Mexicans, who don’t cut Tijuana much slack — dismissing it as a provincial backwater, a border badlands — don’t know it either. But Tijuana is Mexico’s fastest-growing city (a population of 750,000 in 1990, 1.2 million in 2000 and projected to be 2.2 million by 2010). And it is changing. Cosmopolitan by default because of its proximity to the United States — 60 million people cross the border there each year — Tijuana is developing a new identity that is bringing it out of the shadows of its own reputation. Its fabled lawlessness has become a kind of freedom and license for social mobility and entrepreneurship that has attracted artists and musicians, chefs and restaurateurs, and professionals from Mexico and elsewhere.
Bonus link – Ask San Diego Blog: Tijuana 101