2024 World Design Capital Award Goes to San Diego and Tijuana for Their Human-Centered Design

This week, San Diego-Tijuana (USA/Mexico) has been designated the 2024 World Design Capital due to its dedication to human-centered design and history of cross-border cooperation to improve the area’s built and natural ecosystems.

Every two years, a different city in the world is selected to be the focus of the World Design Capital project, which aims to raise awareness of the design industry on a global scale. Cities that employ design to promote positive societal, cultural, and environmental change and enhance the quality of life for their residents are being honored as part of a new project.

San Diego’s Skyline ©Adobe Stock Photo

2024 World Design Capital

The two coastal cities of San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico, are only minutes apart. Each day, more than 150,000 people and vehicles cross the border between the two neighboring cities, which are bounded on the east by the mountains and the west by the Pacific Ocean. Despite the U.S. border, the two cities form a unified environment, a central transportation hub with a vast potential for design-based initiatives, breakthroughs, and authorizations.

©Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

Tijuana ©Barbara Zandoval / Unsplash

San Diego’s Salk Institute and Geisel Library and Tijuana’s CECUT Cultural Center are examples of notable architecture. Both cities plan to use their status as 2024 World Design Capital to advance a series of conclusive prosecutions into issues affecting their respective built environments under the HOME2024 emblem.

Also Read: 10 Tips for Designing Successful Public Spaces

San Diego’s Salk Institute ©mavink.com

Tijuana’s CECUT Cultural Center ©Deviantart

Despite their harsh surroundings, these cities are at the vanguard of responding to the world’s current environmental crisis and global political developments. These two cities have a lengthy history of cooperating on shared goals, values, and difficulties despite their differences.

As the 2024 World Design Capital, both cities aspire to activate networks of change in all of the world’s cities by redefining the narratives of border communities through urban policies of revitalization and transformation and by using design to create new systems and portals in line with these values.

©I Love A Clean San Diego

Both cities have numerous activities scheduled for 2023 in anticipation of being named the 2024 World Design Capital. A yearlong program of public forums, congresses, policy seminars, and workshops will inspire meaningful engagement and compelling discussions.

Community-led seminars and educational events to encourage participation in this cross-border endeavor will be hosted by numerous leaders in their fields during the following months. A signing ceremonial and global street celebration will showcase the region and advance the project’s main work as the cities prepare to take over design duties in 2024.

Montserrat Caballero, mayor of Tijuana, remarked finally, “Our recognition as 2024 World Design Capital is a chance for us to demonstrate to the world the unique interconnection of our region and share the story of seven million people who live, work, and cooperate in extraordinary ways.”