Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman is a research-based urban and architectural design practice. Based at UC San Diego, less than 30 miles from the US–Mexico border crossing to Tijuana, the practice engages with the international metropolitan area as a microcosm of the challenges facing the urbanizing world, investigating migration, housing provision, informal settlement, and climate change. The practice’s UCSD Community Stations are the field centers of this research, sited in low-income neighborhoods across the San Diego–Tijuana border region. Conceived as a network of public spaces, the stations aim to create spaces where researchers, students, and communities can engage in dialog and collaborate on design and build projects, enabling new modes of teaching and learning. Beyond providing essential social infrastructures, the stations offer an alternative model of urban development, where the wealth and resources vested in universities can be mobilized to support the needs of vulnerable local communities. With four field stations so far—two each in San Diego and Tijuana—the practice hopes to support a civic culture that transgresses national borders, founded in the social and ecological interdependence of the communities on either side of the border wall.