The Cross-Border Metropolis in a Global Age: A Conceptual Model and Empirical Evidence from the US–Mexico and European Border Regions

Globalisation in the twenty first century is leading to new forms of spatial relations, including the emerging prototype of the “global city.”1 The gradual acceleration of transnational banking, offshore manufacturing, multination trade blocs, global communications, digital technology and the international division of labour have all shaped a profound “internationalisation” of urban space. No longer are cities merely artefacts shaped by local stakeholders; urban centres have become containers increasingly developed and transformed by international actors, from corporate investors and transnational financial interests to transborder marketing entities and cross-national governmental organisations. To accommodate the forces of globalisation, the city has been forced to reinvent itself; sprawling “edge cities” and dense,

high-tech corporate business districts are just two recent responses to the globalisation of the metropolis. Globalisation has also shifted urban populations towards international

boundaries, leading to the need for a discourse on these new globalising urban spaces, or what one might term “transfrontier metropolises.”2 Following the rise of the nation-state in the nineteenth century, cities usually evolved in locations entirely inside (and often distant from) the boundaries of sovereign nations. Yet during the late twentieth century, this pattern began to loosen in some regions across the planet, as population, economic resources and infrastructure migrated towards the edges of nations, leading to the formation of city regions that sprawl across international boundaries, notably in Europe and North America.