Tijuana

Tijuana is the largest city of both Baja California State and the Baja California Peninsula. It is part of the San Diego–Tijuana transborder urban agglomeration and the larger Southern California megalopolis.

As the 6th-largest city in Mexico and center of the 6th-largest metro area in Mexico, Tijuana exerts a strong influence in education and politics – across Mexico, in transportation, culture and art – across all three Californias (the U.S. state of California, Baja California and Baja California Sur).

Tijuana is located on the Pacific coast of Baja California, and is the municipal seat and the cultural and commercial center of Tijuana Municipality (Mexican states are divided into municipalities, rather than counties as in the U.S.). Tijuana covers 70% of the territory of the municipality and contains 80% of its population.

Tijuana is the most visited border city in the world; sharing a border of about 24 km (15 mi) with its sister city San Diego. More than fifty million people cross the border between these two cities every year. This metropolitan crossing makes the San Ysidro Port of Entry the fourth busiest land-border crossing in the world. It is estimated that the two border crossing stations between the cities proper of San Diego and Tijuana account for 300,000 daily border crossings alone.

Tijuana has a diverse cosmopolitan population which includes migrants from other parts of Mexico and from all over the world. Tijuana has one of Mexico's largest Asian populations, predominantly consisting of Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese immigrants. Tijuana also has a large and rapidly growing population of United States citizens, mostly from Southern California. Many Latin Americans, notably Cubans, and Guatemalans, have made Tijuana their home. The city also has many Lebanese, Italian, French, Spanish citizens. Recently, the city has received a large influx of Haitian immigrants.

The Tijuana skyline is the fifth largest skyline in Mexico and is located in the Zona Rio and to a smaller extent, Playas de Tijuana. In the Zona Rio the buildings are concentrated on the Tijuana River, lined parallel to the river; and on the edges of the Tijuana Country Club. In Playas the high rises are currently focused on the coast.

CLIMATE

Tijuana's climate is a semi-arid with about 231 mm (9.09 in) of annual precipitation, and generally mild to warm weather year-round. It has characteristics of the Mediterranean climate found to the immediate north, with most of the annual precipitation falling in the winter, between the months of November and March.

TOURISM

Tijuana also relies on tourism for a major part of its revenue. About 300,000 visitors cross by foot or car from the San Ysidro point of entry in the United States every day. Restaurants and taco stands, pharmacies, bars and dance clubs, and shops and stalls selling Mexican crafts and souvenirs are part of the draw for the city's tourists, many located within walking distance of the border.

The city's tourist centers include Downtown Tijuana including the nightlife hot spots around La Sexta, Avenida Revolucion, souvenir shopping at the Mercado de Artesanías and Plaza Viva Tijuana, Tijuana's Cultural Center (CECUT) and neighboring Plaza Río Tijuana shopping center, and the city's best known vices, in the form of its legal Red Light District and gambling (Agua Caliente).

Mexico's drinking age of 18 (vs. 21 in the United States) makes it a common weekend destination for many high school and college aged Southern Californians who tend to stay on Avenida Revolución.

Tourists are sometimes robbed by municipal police.

Locals and regular tourists avoid hassles by visiting the clubs at Plaza Fiesta or other areas of the Zona Río without the crowds, heavy marketing, and occasional tourist misbehavior or outright lawbreaking common on the Revolución strip.

However, Avenida Revolución has been known for its proliferation of nightclub shows, primarily catering to casual tourists. While still an entertaining town with an enjoyable atmosphere, some locals and tourists feel it has lost an "anything goes" atmosphere, that was dangerous to locals, tourists, and the tourism industry.

ARTS & CULTURE

As Tijuana matured from a tourist-oriented border town into one of Mexico's largest cities, the 1982 opening of the Tijuana Cultural Center (CECUT) marked a milestone. CECUT's mission was to strengthening Tijuana's image, both to US visitors and to Mexicans, as a destination for culture and not only shopping and vice. The center includes an OMNIMAX cinema showing IMAX films, the Museum of the Californias, contemporary art exhibition halls, a restaurant, café, bookstore, and other cultural facilities.

La Casa de la Cultura cultural center comprises a school, a theater, and a public library, and teaches dance, painting, music, plastic arts, photography and languages.

Other cultural venues include the Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura (Municipal Institute of Art and Culture), the Tijuana Wax Museum, the Museo El Trompo (Trompo Museum), and El Foro, the former Jai Alai Palace, that is now a concert venue. Concerts are also held at the Estadio Caliente stadium, Hipódromo Agua Caliente Racetrack, and at the "Audiorama" at the Museo El Trompo children's museum of science and technology.

PARKS & RECREATION

Parque Morelos has a small zoo and park space; Parque de la Amistad in Otay Centenario has a small pond, and a running and dirt-bike track. Parque Teniente Guerrero is a downtown park with a public library and weekend entertainment by clowns.

ROADS & HIGHWAYS

Two important Mexican federal highway corridors start in Tijuana, one of them is Fed 1, which runs south through the Baja California Peninsula through Rosarito Beach, Baja Mar, and Ensenada before ending in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur. From Tijuana to Ensenada, most travelers take Fed 1D (scenic road), a four-lane, limited access toll road that runs by the coast starting at Playas de Tijuana. Fed 2 runs east for 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) near the international border, as far as Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.

Just north of the San Ysidro border crossing, Interstate 5 and Interstate 805 head northbound to San Diego and beyond. From the Otay Mesa border crossing, Interstate 905 takes drivers west to connect with both I-805 and I-5.

BUSES

The city's main bus station is in its eastern borough. A small terminal downtown serves a few Mexican bus lines, and U.S.-based Greyhound Lines and Crucero USA. Another bus station near the border provides frequent service to Ensenada, and other major cities—including Mazatlán, Culiacán, Hermosillo, and Guadalajara.

There are as many bus lines and routes as fixed-route taxi ones or calafias, and new routes for buses, taxis or calafias are frequently created, due to high demand of public transportation. Public transportation service is inexpensive. Fixed-route taxis are somewhat more expensive, depending on the taxi route.

A bus rapid transit system SITT operates one route from Downtown Tijuana and Garita Puerto Mexico near the San Ysidro Port of Entry, southeasterly along the Tijuana River to Terminal Insurgentes in the southeast of the city. It is part of a planned system of main and feeder lines to replace other buses and minibuses.

AIRPORTS

The Tijuana International Airport (General Abelardo L. Rodríguez IA) is the city's main airport, one of the busiest in Mexico, and serves eleven airlines with destinations across Mexico and Shanghai, China.

Tijuana Airport is also a second main airport for the San Diego area for passengers heading south into Mexico and Latin America, who may use the airport's Cross Border Xpress terminal located on the U.S. side of the border in Otay Mesa and connected to the rest of the airport on the Mexican side by a pedestrian toll bridge. U.S. and Canadian destinations can be reached via the San Diego International Airport, located about 35 kilometers (22 mi) north of the international border.