The
small pueblos that splinter the US-Mexico border are hot spots for drug
traffickers and coyotes but one adventurous professor and several of
his students have designed new plans that will offer the people of
Fronteras, Mexico a town they can proudly call home.
The tiny pueblo of Fronteras rests 40 miles south of Douglas, Ariz.,
along Highway 80 and across from old railroad tracks. The town of modest homes and a few struggling shops sits on a riverbed surrounded by acres of lush, green farmland.
Fronteras has been plagued by a declining economy and corrupt politics, prompting business owners, Alice and Roberto Valenzuela, to contact Mark Frederickson, a professor in the School of Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona, to help design a renovation plan for the floundering community.I knew the town needed a lot of work so I started sending out e-mails trying to find someone who could help us create a plan, said Alice Valenzuela who owns a recycling factory with her husband in Fronteras.
Frederickson and eight of his students who refer to themselves as the Tejido group, embraced the task of designing plans to renovate the humble town to attract tourists, while preserving its history and taking advantage of the land that is available.“We have been developing a master conceptual master plan and giving ideas for what the town could be,” said Olivia Alicea, a second-year landscape architect student. “We wanted to create a place where people will come into the town, stay in the town and invigorate their [economic] situation,” Alicea said.
Alicea is referring to the town’s grave economic situation, which Frederickson and his team hope to counter by designing more of a pedestrian-friendly atmosphere with sidewalks and pagodas so the town can host markets and festivals and eventually build restaurants to attract tourist.
The Valenzuelas hope to apply for grant money with the new design plans to help make the Tejido group’s vision a reality.
“If you have a plan, you can propose it and get funding,” Alice Valenzuela said.
The new plans also include ideas for an agriculture research facility and aim to promote better waste and water management.
“In our business,” Frederickson said. “Where poop goes is always important.”
One of the things we did is go around the town looking at the appropriate locations for [trash] and drainage patterns, said Matt Bossler, a landscape architecture graduate student.
Although everyone on the team would agree the town is in dire need of a facelift, the most important thing is to stimulate job opportunities so families don’t have to be separated.
“If you want dad around, you have to create jobs,” Frederickson said. “We’re working on diversifying the economy so dad can come home.”
The team hopes to provide the people and the town of Fronteras with the tools they need to create opportunities for themselves.
“Socially we think in a simplistic way…if we put in a Holiday Inn then all the money goes to Memphis,” Frederickson said, “but if we can get them to generate a system of bed and breakfast places, then the whole family benefits.”
He has made a career out of helping struggling, small towns prosper by utilizing natural resources and adding a few simple solutions. But he admits it’s rare that he ever sees his plans come to full fruition.
“In this business you’re lucky if 10 to 20 percent of your work gets done,” he says. “I have to tell my students, ‘look guys we’re just opening the doors for possibilities.’”
In early May the project will come to a close when Frederickson and his students present Alice and Roberto Valenzuela with a book of all the potential renovations. The responsibility will then fall on the people of Fronteras to use the plans and create a better future for the town.
“It’s going to go somewhere,” Valenzuela said. “Tejido group is just one piece.”
