Urban and Regional Planning and Design Research Works

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Browsing Urban and Regional Planning and Design Research Works by Author "Gomez-Barris, Macarena"

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    Bounded Tourism: Immigrant Politics, Consumption, and Traditions at Plaza Mexico
    (Taylor & Francis, 2007) Irazabal, Clara; Gomez-Barris, Macarena
    Conceived and owned by Korean investors, the shopping mall Plaza Mexico in Southern California embodies a unique case of invention and commodification of traditions for locally-bound immigrants and US citizens of Mexican descent, showing the force of the contemporary processes of deterritorialisation and reterritorilisation of identities and the recreations of imagined conceptions of homeland. The Plaza is a unique architectural recreation of Mexican regional and national icons that make its patrons feel ‘as if you were in Mexico’. Plaza Mexico produces a space of diasporic, bounded tourism, whereby venture capitalists opportunistically reinvent tradition within a structural context of constrained immigrant mobility. While most of the contemporary theory of tourism, travel and place emphasise the erosion of national boundaries and the fluidity of territories, the case of Plaza Mexico brings us to appreciate this phenomenon and its opposite as well – the strengthening of national borders and their impact on the (in)mobility of millions of individuals.
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    Bounded Tourism: Plaza Mexico in California
    (Planner's Network, 2008) Irazabal, Clara; Gomez-Barris, Macarena
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    Transnational meanings of La Virgen de Guadalupe: Religiosity, space and culture at Plaza Mexico
    (Taylor & Francis, 2009) Gomez-Barris, Macarena; Irazabal, Clara
    In this paper, we examine Plaza Mexico in Lynwood, California, a magnet for Latino communities from throughout the greater Los Angeles region, to show immigrants’ use of space to produce transnational communities as coherent. One of the key ways that immigrant identity is formed in this space is through cultural religiosity. Despite the fact that Plaza Mexico is a shopping mall, the place gathers participation from Mexican immigrants and Latinos of other national origins at key times of religious expression during the year. Following what Holloway calls ‘enchanted space’, we analyse the Day of the Dead celebration (2 November) and the Virgen de Guadalupe celebration (during and after 12 December) to discuss the transformation of the mall into a multidimensional place that encompasses secular, religious, cultural and political expressions. We show how Plaza Mexico provides a rich location from which to understand transnational cultural connections and familial transmissions of culture between different generations of immigrants which we term ‘affective connectivity’.