Urban Border
bordering practice with reference to the way
PAOLA JIRÓN
University of Chile, Chile
The study of borders is so diverse, in terms of
geographic and spatial scales (Newman 2003)
(ranging from the global to the local, and
from the state to the urban neighborhood to
the body) and in terms of the type of borders
studied (from the hard geographic to the
social and cultural, and from the concrete
visible boundaries to the perceived, experi-
enced, and imagined) that it would not be
possible to simply categorize it. Moreover,
there are various disciplines that participate
in the study of borders, from political science,
international relations, geopolitics, human
and cultural geography, anthropology and
sociology, cultural, literary, and media studies
(Brambilla 2015) as well as urban planning
and architecture, among others.
Border studies have a long history and
have evolved in complexity over the years.
The first understandings of borders involved
a fixed territorial delimitation with demarca-
tions implying limits in space. In the 1990s,
a processual shift from borders to bordering
was developed, recognizing that borders are
institutions, as contrasted to simply lines in
the sand or on the map (Paasi 1998). “The
transition from the concept of border to that
of bordering, at the centre of the processual
shift in border studies, allowed borders to
be viewed as dynamic social processes and
practices of spatial differentiation” (Brambilla
2015, 15). In recent years, there has been
a need to critically question fixed ways of
thinking about borders and ways of looking
at borderscapes have been developed. This
way of thinking about borders calls for a shift
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies. Edited by Anthony Orum.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0354
from the concept of the border to the notion of
borders are performed (Brambilla 2015). This
evolution has theoretical as well as method-
ological implications and involves the various
ways of becoming and being in space.
In urban studies, as notions of space and
spatiality have evolved, so have contempo-
rary borders. Massey (2005) explains that the
conformation of space is based on practices,
discourses, and affects, establishing three
central ideas to understand space: first, that
space is the product of interrelations and is
constituted by interactions which range from
the global to the intimate; second, space is
composed of a sphere of possibilities with
multiplicity and coexistence of heterogeneous
trajectories; third, space is always in construc-
tion, based on the production of a series of
spatial relations that take place and are always
in construction, never finished. Massey’s
spatiality, as a process, allows for the concep-
tualization and production of space from the
perspective of dynamic and articulated social
interactions in time and space, and these pro-
cesses do not have limits bounding them. This
implies observing the conformation of places
as relational spaces that go beyond a deter-
mined location, and as the extension of rela-
tions produced by inhabitants (Massey 1994).
In this context, borders can be charac-
terized as being dynamic, changing and in
constant motion, in the sense that notions
about their delimitation are often in dispute
and in constant transformation. The way bor-
ders are set up as well as crossed or trespassed
generate various impacts including differ-
ence, and often conflict and inequality, and
these impacts are often linked to power rela-
tions. There are also different types of borders,
some might be territorial, with visible
2 U R BA N B OR DE R
demarcations that can separate land on maps;
physical, where spaces or people are separated
by walls, fences, roads; social, where social
differences, including gender, class, or educa-
tion, and so on, act as boundaries that limit
access; cultural, based on differences includ-
ing, for instance, the cultural differences that
migration can involve and their implications;
economic, where access is limited by the
cost of crossing a boundary; environmental,
including ecological belts or access to water
or waste disposal in many cities in the world.
Another type of border can be a technological
divide, where those with better or cheaper
technology or technological knowledge can
speed connection or separation. Borders also
operate at various scales, ranging from bodily
borders, housing, neighborhood, city, region,
nations, to global. Borders also have various
functions, the main ones being as separators,
connectors, articulators, or safety providers.
Borders have been central to urban plan-
ning and urban studies in general, particularly
in terms of understanding the structure of the
city. Various city structure models have been
developed in order to understand spatial
arrangements in the city; these include the
concentric ring model (Burgess 1924), sector
model (Hoyt 1939), multinuclei model (Har-
ris and Ullman 1945), or urban realms model
(Hartshorn 1992). All these models attempt
to determine the ways the city functions and
attempt to help urban planning to make deci-
sions in terms of urban interventions, land
use, zoning, and urban norms in general.
One of the main tools used by urban
planning is the city limits or urban border,
aiming at controlling growth of cities as well
as decentralizing cities’ activities as a way of
integrating them. Here, urban borders act
as a scenario of control and integration, and
urban planning has the potential to shift these
limits, thus creating new dynamics.
Various terms, including periphery, urban-
rural interface, border, among others, are
commonly used to reference those areas that
are not classified as urban expansion areas
and that are undergoing processes of urban-
ization toward the outside of the city or, in
some cases, inside the city, invading places of
urban or environmental interest. A constant
definition is urban border, periphery, or inter-
face as a belt of land that denotes a transition
from predominant urban aspects: occupation
density, morphology, urban use, sociocul-
tural dynamics, toward natural or rural land
use. This interface can generate interactions
between rural–urban areas, city–city, or other
scales. Thus, understanding the complexity
of a border and its diverse aspects implies
studying its historic development, its role
in urban models, and sociocultural aspects.
(Allen et al. 2000; Bazant 2001; Toro, Velasco,
and Niño 2005). The different notions refer to
the same portion of land that surrounds, cir-
cumscribes, or conforms the margins of the
complex organization of cities. Each urban
organization manifests different dynamics in
this space of multiple contacts, according to
the characteristics of the region or country
where they are located.
The urban limit is crucial in urban planning
practice and norm application, particularly
in relation to traditional planning practice,
including master planning. Issues of land
speculation have become crucial as city limits
have the potential of shifting, with large
parcels of land being purchased as rural land,
at considerably lower cost in comparison to
urban land, and resold at substantial profit
once the rural condition is changed to urban,
thus creating the possibility of urbanizing
new land.
Another way in which urban borders have
been conceived is in terms of urban planning
or urban design ideas, linked to Kevin Lynch
(1961), for whom borders are one of the
crucial elements of the city for its whole func-
tioning and perception. This urban planner
defines five critical aspects of the image of

the city, including paths (streets, sidewalks,
trails, channels through which people move);
districts/neighborhoods (sections of a city
that have aspects with a common character);
nodes (focal points or intersections in a city
that are the focus of traffic); landmarks (read-
ily identifiable objects that serve as reference
points); and edges or borders (perceived
boundaries between two places). For Lynch,
urban borders refer to lineal elements that
act as boundaries between two phases or
lineal ruptures of continuity, these include
shorelines, railway crossings, development
borders, and walls, among many others. They
are lateral references, not coordination axes,
and include more or less penetrable fences
that separate one region from another, or
sutures, lines that link or relate two regions.
Borders that may appear stronger are those
that are visually prominent, continuous, and
impenetrable to transversal movement. In
these cases, continuity and visibility are more
important than impenetrability. They can be
simultaneously paths in which the image of
circulation is predominant, as in a path with
a border-like characteristic.
At a different scale, much work has been
carried out in terms of the current ways in
which urban residents live along the borders
of contemporary urban life. This is related to
the notions of urban segregation that exist in
the city. The discussion of borders in urban
studies has been greatly influenced by the
discussion on inequality and particularly seg-
regation and the borders that allow for this
segregation, inclusion, and exclusion to take
place. In The Weight of the World, Bourdieu
(1999) identified confined places as those
spaces where people with financial, cultural,
and social capital tend to self-segregate, while
those with scarce resources are confined to
places they often do not choose. Under a
mobility lens, a double sort of exclusion can
be detected for those with limited capital:
spatial fixation in vulnerable areas combined
U R BA N B OR DE R 3
with limited urban access possibilities (Jiron
2010). Kenyon calls this “poverty access,” a
“dearth of services in a locality and both the
lack of and the presence of obstacles to phys-
ical access” (Kenyon 2006, 104). In terms of
spatial configuration, this situation may lead
to parallel cities within cities, where people
overlap, but seldom meet, separated by social,
cultural, economic, and physical boundaries,
which define the routes, speeds, times, forms,
means, and destinations by which people
can circulate and socialize. Visually it can
be imagined as a city made up of horizontal
tunnels, with increasingly fewer vertical or
diagonal intersections.
These types of borders are social, eco-
nomic, cultural, and particularly physical, for
instance, by building walls around properties.
Caldeira’s City of Walls (2001), became a
seminal work in understanding how gated
communities in Brazil are emerging as an
important phenomenon of segregation. This
literature became profuse at the start of the
twenty-first century, with much research on
gated communities and the way real estate
developers have tapped into the demand for
safe living conditions and the need to isolate
oneself from others living in the city. These
forms of exclusion can also be seen as forms
of boundary-making.
The boundaries referred to here may
involve physical obstacles, including visible
natural or manmade walls or infrastructure
that limits access. However, these obstacles
may also be economic, social, or cultural and
may act as impediments to spatial access in
a city. Generally, fixed boundaries can define
who belongs to a place and who is to be
excluded, as well as the location or site of the
experience (McDowell 1999) of exclusion.
Borders, on the other hand, and in line with
current discussion on border studies, may
be understood as permeable physical, social,
economic, or cultural separations, which
have the possibility of being transgressed
4 U R BA N B OR DE R
and overcome. Borders are constantly in
question; incessant struggles may cause them
to be persistently shifting, transforming. This
transformation creates the possibility of elim-
inating, diminishing, or reinforcing them
even further. This possibility is particularly
sensitive under current mobility practices.
Despite the divide that some borders may
generate, what is relevant to look at is how
these borders are inhabited on a daily basis,
how inequality and segregation are experi-
enced, as people do not remain isolated by
boundaries, they are constantly transgress-
ing them; it is thus the border in itself that
becomes a relevant aspect to observe.
In her book Borderlands/La Frontera,
Anzaldua (2007) discusses the meaning
of borders in the context of the Mexican-
American border and the conflicts and dif-
ficulties of being “border people” living in
“borderland.” For her, being “border people”
involves knowing where you come from
and choosing to integrate, assimilate, or be
border people or isolationist, an “elective”
form of belonging in Savage, Bagnall, and
Longhurst’s (2005) terms. Borders can split
or fragment people, but they can also join
them, and people can become bridges or
connectors themselves. These people-bridges
can connect people from one world to the
next and generate access to other worlds.
The space of a border can be uncomfortable
because it is a space of transformation; it can
be a space of conflict or uneasiness, a space of
encounter and negotiation with the other. As
such, borders can become spaces of meaning
and significance, or “places.”
The ways various types of urban bor-
ders are experienced today is an interesting
prospect in urban studies. Not only are urban
peripheries in cities a relevant way to observe
how the urban border is lived, but there are
other forms of borders that exist in urban
areas that require scrutiny. It is precisely here
that urban studies can gain great relevance to
other border studies that look at international,
transborder, and global migration processes.
This intersection of urban and migration
studies would involve looking at transbound-
ary movement, not just in terms of crossing
boundaries, but in terms of living in the
border, or living liminally, in a border-like
manner, in terms of language, nationality,
food, space, virtuality, in urban areas. Urban
studies would greatly benefit from under-
standing the border condition as one that is
increasingly characteristic of urban living.
SEE ALSO: Border Cities; Border Regions;
Borderland; Migration, Gender, Cities;
Migration and Urban Flows; Mobilities; Urban
Migration
REFERENCES
Allen, A., et al. 2000. Guidelines for Strategic Envi-
ronmental Planning and Management of the
Peri-Urban Interface, vol. 1. London: Develop-
ment Planning Unit (DPU), University College
London.
Anzaldua, G. 2007. Borderlands ∕ La Frontera:
The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute
Books.
Bazant, J. 2001. Periferias urbanas, expasión urbana
incontrolada de bajos ingresos y su impacto en el
medio ambiente. Mexico City: Editorial Trillas de
Mexico.
Bourdieu, P. 1999. The Weight of the World: Social
Suffering in Contemporary Society. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Brambilla, C. 2015. “Exploring the Critical Poten-
tial of the Borderscapes Concept.” Geopolitics,
20(1): 14–34.
Burgess, E. W. 1924. “The Growth of the City:
An Introduction to a Research Project.” Publi-
cations of the American Sociological Society, 18:
85–97.
Caldeira, T. 2001. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation,
and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press.
Harris, C., and E. Ullman 1945. “The Nature of
Cities.” Annals of the American Academy of Polit-
ical and Social Science, 242: 7–17.
Hartshorn, T. 1992. Interpreting the City. An Urban
Geography. New York, NY: Wiley.

Hoyt, H. 1939. The Structure and Growth of Resi-
dential Neighborhoods in American Cities. Wash-
ington, DC: Federal Housing Administration.
Jiron, P. 2010. “Mobile Borders in Urban Daily
Mobility Practices in Santiago de Chile.” Inter-
national Political Sociology, 4: 66–79.
Kenyon, S. 2006. “Reshaping Patterns of Mobility
and Exclusion? The Impact of Virtual Mobility
upon Accessibility, Mobility and Social Exclu-
sion.” In Mobile Technologies of the City, edited
by M. Sheller and J. Urry, 102–120. Abingdon:
Routledge.
Lynch, K. 1960. The Image of the City. Boston, MA:
MIT Press.
Massey, D. 1994. Space, Place and Gender. Cam-
bridge: Polity Press.
Massey, D. 2005. For Space. London: SAGE.
McDowell, L. 1999. Gender, Identity and Place:
Understanding Feminist Geographies. Cam-
bridge: Polity Press.
Newman, D. 2003. “On Borders and Power: A
Theoretical Framework.” Journal of Borderlands
Studies, 18(1): 13–25.
U R BA N B OR DE R 5
Paasi, A. 1998. “Boundaries as Social Processes:
Territoriality in the World of Flows.” Geopolitics,
3(1): 69–88.
Savage, M., G. Bagnall, and B. Longhurst. 2005.
Globalisation and Belonging. London: SAGE.
Toro, C., V. Velasco and A. Niño. 2005. “El borde
como espacio articulador de la ciudad actual y
su entorno.” Revista Ingenierías Universidad de
Medellín, 4(70): 55–65.
FURTHER READING
Chávez, S. 2016. Border Lives: Fronterizos, Transna-
tional Migrants, and Commuters in Tijuana. New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Gellner, D. 2013. Borderland Lives in Northern
South Asia. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Irazabal, C. 2013. Transbordering Latin Americas:
Liminal Places, Cultures, and Powers (T)Here.
New York, NY: Routledge.
Miraftab, F. 2016. Global Heartland: Displaced
Labor, Transnational Lives, and Local Placemak-
ing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.