author: Fernando Romero

name: Steev

average rating: 3.62

book published: 2007

rating: 4

read at: 2011/02/24

date added: 2011/02/25

shelves: politics, border

review:
This is a really well-done, comprehensive volume, and it's beautifully designed, having been created by a Mexican architect and his architectural firm. Despite its creative and arty appearance, the book is also packed with statistics and background information on every topic one could imagine that relates to immigration and the border, from climate change to urban sewage, trade policy and drug violence. In fact, the read can be somewhat dry and academic at times, but the factual material is broken up by a variety of capsule future scenarios relevant to each topic area and the hyperborder. These range from the dramatic, such as Phoenix getting nuked by terrorists to the banal, like bi-national health insurance cards or increased elderly gringo retirement to Mexico.

It certainly provokes the imagination while also providing valuable reference data for anyone interested in border-related trends, although those who have already been studying and thinking about this stuff may find it to be a lot of review; but one important thing I noticed as I finished up the book after nearly a year of being half-done with it is that it definitely shows its publishing date, which is 2008, just before the worldwide financial crash of that year. Many of the future scenarios and their dates seem no longer as plausible now that we've seen a massive global economic partial-collapse and are much more aware of what a house of cards the global economy is, as well the other 2 looming global catastrophes, peak oil and global climate change chaos. In light of these gloomy storms ahead, some predictions are hard to swallow, at least without modifying their dates to be much sooner (for instance, 2025: "Mexico becomes major exporter of carbon credits"; 2040: "As more countries change their reserves to Yuan, the ultra-rich device ways to open bank accounts in China"). Others seem quite on-target (2015: "Bikes in short supply as gas reaches $10 per gallon"). Of course future history is always a tricky business, but it's nice to see somebody tackling these ideas, especially with lots of hard, reality-based numbers to provide background for the predictions.