San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for City Planning

Carlsbad Mayor Spins Results of City’s Public Opinion Survey

by

Land Use Plans Don’t Match Community Vision

At the California Coastal Commission’s May 11 meeting Carlsbad Mayor Matt Hall testified that the city’s General Plan, updated last September, reflects the community’s vision for its future. But the responses to Carlsbad’s 2009 Public Opinion Visioning Survey Report paint a different picture.

Hall claimed the plan “provides a policy framework that will ensure we live up to our community vision and ensure an excellent quality of life for all who live, work, and visit our coastal city. In fact, values like small town beach community character, access to recreation and open space and multi-modal transportation are top of mind for our residents and given high priority in our General Plan.”

But when you find the General Plan’s land use changes allow mixed use commercial/residential development and high-density shopping malls to be built near the Agua Hedionda Lagoon and on property where the Encina Power Plant now stands, you begin to see the disconnect with the community’s actual vision.   [Read more…]

Will the Balboa Park Make-Over Include Rockscaping for the Homeless?

by

What kind of a city is it that entertains funding a new stadium, a convention center expansion, a major events arena, gondolas, and a parks make-over, but can’t figure out a short term solution to homelessness other than criminalizing it?

That would be San Diego.

Yes, I know it’s apples and oranges–different pots of money are involved, some are subject to voter approval and others will only be indirectly supported by the taxpayer…

But… where there’s a will, there’s a way.   [Read more…]

Overpassing the Value of Public Space

by

By Howard M. Blackson III / SanDiego.UrbDeZine.com

“Caltrans does not restrict the right of free speech with handheld banners, but attaching flags or banners is not allowed,” a Caltrans-Spokesman told the San Jose Mercury News. He added, “We are concerned that people waving handheld banners could cause driver distraction — putting their safety or that of the motoring public at risk.”

Today, we have prioritized the ‘motoring public’ over all other aspects of public life.

Our failure to cultivate the value and quality of our public spaces and public life is found in this picture of protesters and political advocates on a freeway overpass. Our cities are made up of public buildings, streets, squares and private lots, blocks and buildings. But when people want to be heard, seen, and get their message out to as many people as possible, they now gather on freeway bridge overpasses… for it’s on the freeways where everyone else can be found today, and not on our public street corners and squares.   [Read more…]

The San Diego U-T Looks at Short Term Vacation Rentals – and Still Misses Major Point

by

By Frank Gormlie

The San Diego Union-Tribune had veteran reporter Lori Weisberg write an extended piece on short term vacation rentals in Sunday’s “SD In Depth” entitled “Opportunity or Nuisance” (June 12, 2016). Weisberg looked at the impact of short term rentals on San Diego’s housing market and wrote – based on her research – who exactly was profiting “from the rise of the home sharing.”

Two of the immediate take-aways from her article are that more and more commercial rental agencies are dominating the short term market and that the available housing stock in San Diego is being negatively affected – even if only “gradually”.

Yet, despite all the articles that Weisberg has written on this issue and the debate that has been raging within San Diego for nearly two years – while the City Council has still not made a decision on laws regulating short term rentals – , she still has not focused on one of the key long-term effects of the short term vacation rental industry: the loss of community.   [Read more…]

Architects Pan Charger Football Stadium Proposal

by

Costs and Environmental Risks Create Risks for Taxpayers, Says Local AIA Chapter

American Institute of Architects San Diego / UrbDeZine

At first glance, the recent East Village Convadium proposal has many appealing qualities: it is an attractive, modern complex with many interesting features. However, the Charger’s owners hope to capitalize on the recent trend in California and use the ballot initiative process to “expedite” California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review, and for good reason. The flash and hype of the ballot initiative covers many significant, unanswered questions about potential cost overruns and environmental impacts that may cost San Diego taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Like many San Diegans, the American Institute of Architects San Diego (AIASD) would like to see a NFL franchise remain in San Diego. However, our 900 member organization is dedicated to advancing good urban planning and design in San Diego, and we have many concerns about the current Convadium proposal. We also feel it is critical to remind San Diegans there are better alternatives.   [Read more…]

McMansion Coming to Ocean Beach: The Froude Project

by

The Saga of the Controversial Froude Project at the San Diego Planning Commission

By Tom and Judy Parry / OB Rag

The decision by the San Diego Planning Commission was pretty clear: Five votes to allow a McMansion to go forward on our quiet Ocean Beach block of Froude Street, one vote to stop it.

Amid our disappointment, we’re allowing the lessons we learned to sink in. The one most frightening is that it can happen on any O.B. street with similar zoning, even if no McMansions are present, even if the entire block is dead set against it.   [Read more…]

Homelessness and Housing by the Numbers – A San Diego Shell Game

by

The San Diego Point-In-Time Count is a federally mandated annual report that identifies the number of homeless individuals and families in the county on one particular day. The 2016 report, which was released at the end of April, showed less than a one percent decrease from the previous year in the number of homeless people in San Diego County.
  [Read more…]

Gardening Builds Community in the Tijuana River Valley

by

By Barbara Zaragoza / South Bay Compass

The Tijuana River Valley (TRV) was once filled with vegetable farms, dairies and ranches. As a matter of fact, the famous horses Trigger and Seabiscuit were boarded here. Today, many ranches still pepper the TRV. You can take horse rides out to the beach or buy vegetables at Suzie’s farm stand on weekends. Along the road in this sleepy area, the Tijuana River Valley Community Garden also rents plots to local residents. It’s goal is simple: to promote healthy and fresh grown produce in a diverse community environment.

The community garden is extremely popular and the good news is that open land lies adjacent to the garden that could be used for further expansion. The bad news: expansion costs money and the RCD would need at least $50,000 to install the water system and fencing needed to create the new plots. So far, monies aren’t available for that.   [Read more…]

City Attorney Candidate Forum and San Diego’s Fault Line

by

Land use, wealth and the smart city

The League of Women Voters and community radio station KNSJ hosted a city attorney candidate forum at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in downtown San Diego on Saturday May 14. I had been asked to participate as a media representative on the panel asking questions of the candidates.

The 94 freeway exit that my husband and I took downtown to the event dumps cars on a surface street on the fringe of East Village. We drove through a convulsed urban landscape created by CalTrans engineering, deteriorating Victorian era houses, new apartments and temporarily re-purposed vacant lots. This entry point reflects how San Diego’s decision makers have approached land use and development in the area over many decades and to wildly different effect.

  [Read more…]

Is Affordable Housing In the City of San Diego an Oxymoron? Part 4

by

Section 8 Rental Assistance is a Cruel Joke

By Katheryn Rhodes and John Lawrence

Approximately 46,000 households in San Diego are on a waiting list to obtain a federal Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8). The average wait time to obtain a housing voucher is 8 to 10 years.

Nobody’s housing needs remain constant over a period of time that long. Many people on the waiting list will have died before they are called for their Section 8 rental assistance voucher. Cruel irony.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Crisis of Compassion: Scorn, Indifference Don’t Solve Homelessness

by

It doesn’t take the recently released Point in Time Count report to know that the number of unsheltered people in downtown San Diego is exploding. Seeing every vacant lot encircled with blue tent and tarp encampments propped against chain-link fencing, has ceased to evoke alarm. It’s now the norm.

Last week, homeless advocates, including myself, confronted the mayor for authorizing installation of a $57,000 rock bed under an overpass where homeless people frequently camped. On social media, we were accused of being bleeding hearts who were giving aid and comfort to creatures who don’t deserve our concern. They called the ugly barrier that was built without a shred of effort to be attractive, a “rock garden”! When one of our group spoke at City Council about the inhumanity of using pest-control tactics to repel human beings, two councilpersons actually giggled!

When did we get to be so heartless and mean? When did it become acceptable to scorn those who are less fortunate and mock those who are compassionate?   [Read more…]

The Millenia Project: San Diego County’s New Downtown

by

By Barbara Zaragoza

Last week, I spent a lot of time explaining the vast expansion taking place in eastern Chula Vista. Eleven villages total mean about 60,000 new residents will move into the area within the next twenty years. So far, villages 1, 5 and 7 are built out. Village 2 is underway. That leaves villages 3, 4, 8, 9 and 10 still under development.

According to the Otay Ranch General Development Plan, the idea of the village was to “provide a sense of community and social cohesion in a “small town” way, and reduce dependence on the automobile for local trips.” (pg. 10)

Today, I want to go over the heart of the development called “Millenia.” This will become the center piece of Otay Ranch plan, a new downtown with an office & retail district.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry