Design students draft solutions for migrant communities

For School of Design students Sahar Moin and Stephanie Ulrich, possibilities for urban development extend beyond the city limits of Philadelphia or New York.

Out of more than 350 participants, Moin and Ulrich formed one of five teams to advance to the finals in the 2009 “Urban SOS: Distressed Cities, Creative Responses” international student-design competition, which invited students to submit ideas about stabilizing urban communities.

Moin and Ulrich received an award of High Commendation for their joint proposal, which explored possibilities for developing “las colonias” — migrant farming communities — in the border towns of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Such communities are generally located at the outskirts of cities along the United States-Mexico border and lack adequate infrastructures, according to Ulrich.

“We chose to look at these communities in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez because they’re the largest border-town cities in the world,” she said, noting their combined population of 2.3 million.

However, their populations fluctuate constantly depending on the season because of the movement of migrant farm workers between the two cities.

Moin added that the team’s proposal aimed to “stabilize” the cities’ populations by establishing nurseries that will cultivate plants native to the region, including honey mesquite trees and different types of succulent plants.

These will complement El Paso’s ongoing “Cash for Grass” initiative, which pays residents $1 per square foot of grass replaced with native plants requiring little water.

Ulrich added that the proposal also examines the issue of waste disposal.

“Because the colonias lack infrastructure, they must dump waste into irrigation channels which feed into the Rio Grande,” she said.

The proposal advocated the creation of a new waste disposal system by enabling efficient filtration.

Moin and Ulrich also proposed providing structured spaces for recreation in the two cities, which would not only “connect disparate neighborhoods” but also establish “a home or heart” in each community, Moin said.

While she and Ulrich were unable to visit El Paso or Ciudad Juarez due to time and budget constraints, they conducted extensive research on both cities with Penn professors Karen M’Closkey and Keith VanDerSys, both experts in landscape architecture.

Beginning work on the proposal this May, Moin and Ulrich spent September and October augmenting and revising it after learning they had been selected as finalists.

In November, the pair traveled to Barcelona to present their proposal in front of a jury of international architects.

M’Closkey emphasized that the importance of these projects lies in their “looking at landscape in a broad context — politically, economically and socially.”

“[Las colonias] are an example of third-world living conditions within our own borders,” Moin said. “They represent an integral part of our economy that gets ignored.”

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