Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Kyriakos Kyriakou
The paper explores the architectural landscape of San Diego, Texas, a small, predominantly Hispanic town located on the edge of the Eagle Ford Shale oil field. Without a booming industry to fuel its growth, the town finds itself in a precarious position, threatened with losing its place within the planetary urbanization network, which exploits the countryside in favor of urban centers. Recent literature has sought to shift the focus away from the metropolis toward the hinterland, aiming to highlight environmental damage and to understand the world as an interconnected system. By zooming in on the small town and following the theories of planetary urbanization articulated by Henri Lefebvre and Neil Brenner, the study highlights the effects of these interconnections through a hidden archaeology of modernity. Aligned with the conference theme of repair, particularly the concept of “appreciation for the value inherent in what exists,” the paper explores the resilience of life within a declining built environment. San Diego serves as a case study for examining small-town America’s struggle to maintain relevance amidst economic and infrastructural shifts. Despite prolonged neglect, many of the town’s historic buildings, such as the Hoffman Block and the Levy Building, remain functional, existing in an intermediate state between ruin and active use. These early 20th-century commercial structures have undergone significant transformations, embodying modest yet radical acts of architectural adaptation in response to precarious conditions. By analyzing these buildings and other sites, this paper critiques the mechanisms of erasure embedded in the networks of urbanization while celebrating the persistence of architectural form. It considers the potential of small-town architecture to act as an archipelago of hope, highlighting unpretentious creativity and resilience as key to reimagining the future of marginalized communities within the planetary urban framework.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.113.18
Volume Editors
Sara Jensen Carr & Rubén García Rubio
ISBN
978-1-944214-48-7
