The border as an urban and infrastructural system: A line between Nicaragua and Costa Rica

A border is a political territorial line that marks the boundary between two nations. Some of these are conflict zones that present different levels of risk. The relevance of addressing them has led different disciplines to concentrate research programs to understand and resolve their socioeconomic, political, natural, and spatial pathologies. This research seeks to interpret and approach the border, understanding it as a zone that functions as an urban system or a set of them, within a network of relationships and exchanges that, due to their natural, geographic, territorial, and infrastructural connections, can be addressed through architecture and urban planning at its scale. The border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, despite being a conflict zone, presents the pertinent territorial, geographic, social, natural, and infrastructural conditions that, due to its location, make it the ideal case for this research, approached through a cartographic drawing analysis. The border represents a complex and contemporary disciplinary issue that demands to be investigated according to its spatial dynamics and from its own scale. The Central American border under study offers a platform of spatial conditions sufficiently complex to be subjected to this study, based on an interpretation of its conditions as urban systems, and the development of intervention strategies exclusive to these spaces.