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The paper uses primary and secondary sources to analyse the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez binational monorail project from 1964 to 1976 within the overall context of the growth of the cities as urban centres and the development of cross-border public transit links. The most significant of the earlier ties was the international streetcar line, which functioned for over 90 years and was a predecessor to the monorail project. The paper examines the complexities of negotiating and building an international transport project of this nature as well as the principal business and political directors of the El Paso International Monorail Corporation (IMC) and its Juárez counterpart, Monorriel Internacional (MI). It concludes with an assessment of the current outlook for cross-border mass transit projects in the light of the notable increment in USA border security and inspection controls of recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sister cities of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua form one of the largest manufacturing complexes in the world, and provide a unique context in which to examine transnational patterns of environmental injustice. In this paper, we explore residential patterns of environmental injustice related to the location of industrial facilities (ie maquiladoras and facilities regulated by the Toxics Release Inventory) in the El Paso - Juárez metropolis, taking a comparative approach. Our results indicate a striking injustice in the raw level of industrial hazard confronted by residents on the Mexican side of the border compared with those on the US side—a direct result of location within the global economy. In terms of multivariate spatial regression results, patterns of exposure to residential hazards diverged between the two cities. In Mexico, generally marginal neighborhoods (based on low social class and higher proportions of migrants to the city) were located farther away from industry, whereas they were located closer in the US. We explain these findings on the basis of sociospatial differences in urbanization, social marginality, and industrial development between El Paso and Juárez, which reflect the two cities' juxtaposition vis-à-vis global political-economic dynamics. Future research is needed to test relationships between social marginality and industrial hazards in transnational and Southern contexts to determine if similar or divergent patterns exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]