In a sweeping account of life along the United States-Mexican border, Michael Dear traces the border zone’s long history of interaction and mutual support. Today, the well-being of this vibrant zone of continuity and connection is threatened by unprecedented US policies on immigration, drugs and homeland security – epitomized by the new walls separating the two nations. Through a series of evocative portraits of the contemporary border, Dear explains why walls won’t work, and why strengthening connectivity in the ”˜third nation’ that exists between the two countries is vital to our joint future.

Michael Dear is Professor of City and Regional Planning in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley; and Honorary Professor in the Bartlett School of Planning at University College, London (England). Over the past decade, he has travelled along the entire length of the US-Mexico border in both countries. His latest book, Why Walls Won’t Work: Repairing the US-Mexico Divide, was published by Oxford University Press earlier this year. His most recent creative work was as co-curator of the exhibition ”˜Trazando la Línea / Tracing the Line,’ which opened in 2012 at the Centro Estatal de las Artes in Mexicali, the capital of Baja California, Mexico.

Professor Dear is a charter member of the Los Angeles School of urbanism. His latest edited volume, entitled Geohumanties: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place (2011), focused on transdisciplinary work in geography and the humanities. He has been a Guggenheim Fellowship holder, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Fulbright Specialist, and Fellow at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy. He has received many awards in recognition of his work, including the highest honors for creativity and excellence in research from the Association of American Geographers, as well as numerous undergraduate teaching and graduate student mentoring awards.