International District in Albuquerque, NM

The International District occupies the part of southeast Albuquerque bounded by San Mateo Boulevard on the west, Lomas Boulevard on the north, Wyoming Boulevard on the east and Gibson Boulevard on the south. Little of it existed before World War II; the grid filled in between 1940 and 1960, as work at Kirtland Air Force Base and Sandia National Laboratories drove the city's postwar growth. Historic Route 66 crosses the middle as Central Avenue, carrying the ART bus line and its stations at San Mateo, San Pedro, Louisiana and Wyoming. Expo New Mexico, the state fairgrounds, lies within the boundary, and the International District Library anchors the Central corridor.

The district carried the nickname War Zone through the late 1980s. In 2009 residents pressed the city to adopt a name reflecting the cultures along Central instead, and International District became the official designation.

Several smaller neighborhoods sit inside the boundary. Trumbull Village is the one tracked separately here; Fair West, La Mesa, South San Pedro, Elder Homestead and Siesta Hills fill out the rest.

Public money has been moving in. The city and the Albuquerque Housing Authority won a HUD Choice Neighborhoods planning grant to rebuild the Wainwright Manor, Grove and Pennsylvania apartment properties as mixed-income housing. A vacant lot at Kathryn and San Mateo reopened in 2023 as the Harvest Market Place, a flexible space for micro-businesses and community events, and the parks department has designed a library park with a turf field, a food forest and a stage on the former Caravan East site.