The Vast, Rich, Profoundly Unequal Megalopolis Called LASANTI:  Can Leaders Take the Southern California-Baja Region to its Next Stage? (Policy Paper)

The more than 24 million people who live in urbanized Southern California and metropolitan Tijuana share one of the largest and most productive spaces on earth. The Civil Rights Project calls this region LASANTI,1 more than 200 miles of continuous urbanization in what has become a great coastal megalopolis, a place of powerful contact between two large and important countries which share a great deal but are divided by walls, politics and language. The endless streams of cars and trucks crossing the border in both directions reflect the needs and complementary economies of the two nations. LASANTI by itself is now the 11th largest economy in the world and critically important to the economies of California, the U.S. and Mexico. We are each other’s most important trading partner and we are interdependent in many ways. We are at a cusp of large changes that could be transformative if there were strong leadership.