San Diego

Pop-Up Pandemic Plazas and Parklets

Innovation Districts, Public Space, San Diego, Urban Design, Urban Planning

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Three Types of Open Air Spaces

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Pop Up Parklet

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Pop Up Plaza

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Pop Up San Diego Scenario

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Pop Up Spaces Defined

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Pop Up Plaza, Parklet and Full Block Plaza

These illustrations and site plans are intended to assist our cities in enabling open-air markets in streets and rights-of-way. A follow up to the Podcast interview I had with Andrew Keatts this week (click here), the math shows that a full block provides the most area to enable more dining and shopping to be located in neighborhood centers located every half-mile or so apart. These ‘streateries’ would be managed and operated by local Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) and Main Street organizations in order to be equitable across the city without it being shop by shop and coordinate efforts and resources (money) to enable us to have a safe place to go to dine in/out, shop in/out, and communicate with others.

San Diego simply doesn’t have enough local parks and plazas to handle the excess space needed to bring small businesses back to our neighborhoods. These places are intended to help small businesses reopen, as well as provide more public space to safely re-emerge from our homes and back into our neighborhoods. These standards would mitigate for social distancing while allowing the local shops to expand their capacity with the biggest issues to be planned for are conflicts between cars and people and maintaining socializing distancing.

The state is beginning to allow shops and restaurants to reopen at 50% capacity and still offer take out service. These plazas are intended to provide that other 50% capacity to help these businesses. In these standard 3-feet by 5-feet ‘safe zones,’ surrounded by a 6-feet social distancing area, are able to comfortably provide a table with two chairs, or a merchandise display, clothing racks, and a place to sit and wait for food while enjoying beverages in the summer time. They’re a safe relief value from the past 3 months of quarantine.

Importantly, American Disabilities Act standards are maintained. Stormwater runoff at the curb is maintained. And, a 15-foot clear fire access lane is maintained through the center of the streetscape as these spaces are marked off by tape and paint. The traffic barriers and reflective tape/paint costs money by the BIDs and local municipalities. The maintenance, cleaning, and daily operation will be a public-private partnership with local shops being active participants in managing these new public spaces. The shops that front onto the space, as well as in the immediate surrounding area, are able to benefit from this extra area and enhance the experience with lighting, signage, shade, seating, and sounds.

The National Association of City Transportation Officials (@NACTO) has recently shared its open Streets for Pandemic Recovery design guidelines here. And, a favorite colleague,  Mike Lydon of @Streetplans, is leading a national Open Streets effort, which can be heard/seen here.

We rarely go out shopping and dining to stimulate the economy. The quality of these dining or shopping experiences will entice us to spend time and money because we go places for the experience. Opening streets to businesses involves a plan and design outcome that makes being there worth the time spent. I hope these are useful in starting that plan and beginning the design of our brave new world… outdoors!

Conservation of Culture Conversation

Public Space, San Diego, Urban Design

In the past, our culture (music, socializing, celebrations, food, worshipping) had secure foundations in public buildings, streets, squares and plazas (church, concert hall, theater, pub, halls, and markets), and in the private home.

Our parents added television, cars, the highway, and suburbia to these public and private places (drive-in theaters, drive-thru diners, freeway overpass protests, tv movies, tv evangelist, tv news, home theaters, homes cafes, home entertainment, backyard pools), shifting our culture towards a more private life.

Today, we are adding smart phone technology to these public and private spaces while shifting away from insular private suburban culture and towards a more balanced public and private life. These smart phones are our 21st century version of urban renewal, allowing us to re-inhabit and re-animate public buildings, streets, squares, and plazas cheaper, faster, and with more friends and family.

Within a century, everything has changed with how we share music, socialize, celebrate, eat, worship, and share our selfies with smartphone technology in our daily lives/culture. And, with this pandemic… it’s dramatically changing again. See you on the other side!

In reference to Roger Scruton’s article, https://www.futuresymphony.org/why-musicians-need-philosophy/

How to Enable Social Housing in San Diego

San Diego, Urban Planning

The Trouble with California’s Constitution Article 34

We Californians added a state constitutional requirement in 1950 for voter approval before the building of any public housing. Article 34 was passed then because the real estate industry argued that public housing is publicly funded infrastructure similar to schools or roads, and that taxpayers should have a right to vote on low-income housing projects. At that time, the campaign also stoked racist fears about integrating neighborhoods along with the McCarthy-era rhetoric about the need to combat socialism (sounds terribly familiar to our health care and higher education dialog today).

The Supreme Court of the United States upheld Article 34 in the early 1970s. And today, State Senator Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) has introduced legislation to repeal the Article on the 2020 statewide ballot. San Diego is experiencing an acute housing crisis. The State is instructing cities to lower regulatory barriers to building Affordable Housing (AH), and San Diego has complied with some parking reductions, an AH incentive program, and other tools to assist private and non-profit developers to build more AH housing. However, all are encumbered by high land and labor costs with the majority of the savings on the cost of newly constructed buildings found in permitting and processing, which is a low percentage of the cost of housing.

Public housing built on public land is provides the cheapest delivery mechanism to build cheaper housing for people who cannot afford market rate housing. Bottom line, the land is the cheapest, the labor is well-negotiated, the outcomes are more predictable than using subsidies, waivers, and other regulatory tools to subsidize new construction. The City of San Diego needs to build 12,000 new units annually to keep up with demand (we might build half that on a good year), and we’re trying to double our production with one hand tied behind our back by only relying on private development transactions. We’re in a crisis and it’s time to untie the other hand.

HousingProductionSanDiego

The following are my recommendations for how our region’s cities, and City and County of San Diego can begin to build public housing:

  • Build local state governance representative support for Senator Allen’s bill to repeal Article 34 via Honorable Toni Atkins and Hon. Lorena Gonzalez. Because this will need political will from the Democratic/Labor left, public housing offers the incentive of more construction and management jobs and housing opportunities for trade workers.
  • Take the lead in proposing a statewide ballot proposition to repeal Article 34 by obtaining signatures from 8% of the registered voters who voted (12,464,235 total votes) in the most recent election for governor. This is impossible as we’d need 997,139 of signatures @ $6.20 per signature = $6,182,260.00!
  • Lead a local ballot measure to ask for a majority public vote on allowing the county and cities to build Low-Income (Subsidized) housing on City, County, Agency, and State lands. Initiated by either a petition signed by registered voters or via State Legislature such as Ms Gonzalez or Ms. Atkins, which again needs political will from the Democratic/Labor left, offering more trade jobs and housing opportunities for trade workers is the incentive for their support.
  • Build Middle Income, non-subsidized “Essential Workers” housing that is above the subsidized state-defined Moderate-Income Affordable Housing program, which is >120% AMI. Average Median Income (AMI) for all counties established by HUD is $64,800 for 2019, which is $77,760. San Diego’s annual median income is $76,662. Start building Median Income Housing for rent on City and County lands today betting that Article 34 will be repealed and you’ll have future AH housing stock available – This could be done in conjunction with a non-profit education platform to help local citizens strengthen their neighborhoods through small-scale real estate projects. The Incremental Development Workshop trains small-scaled developers to build capacity and value for locals to be education on how to use San Diego’s inherent land values (as owner/developers or trades/labor) to invest in their own neighborhoods, retain their stake in a neighborhoods, and raise values lot-by-lot without displacement. Importantly, this could be financed by allowing local municipalities to borrow against their assets and rental income in the same way as registered providers and the private sector.

A common fear over this method of delivering AH is the possibility of skewing the housing construction market’s ability to fill any new market demands/needs. Our construction costs today are going through the roof (and has historically) as the ability to attract and retain construction workers in an expensive housing market makes workers scarce. So, the concern about the potential pressure on the existing skilled labor force is very real and illustrates the need for cheaper housing in our region.

In other places with skill shortages, such as the UK and middle-America, they are turning to establishing factories to create homes using modern modular methods of construction.
The rise and fall of our housing market influences the amount of Inclusionary Housing fees collected, which exacerbates the one-hand-tied-behind-our-back conundrum. And to build a significant amount of AH, we need new housing starts funded by developers’ contributions and any reduction in these contributions has a considerable effect on the  availability of AH. As a capitalist society there are always uncertainties in the market related to finance, labor force to construct housing, professional skills and shifts in the proportions of dwellings in each of the 10 housing market types.

Here are the ten (10) types of housing markets in San Diego (and who is responsible for building each type):

  1. Low/Mid-Rise New Construction Housing for Sale (National, Regional, Local developers/builders);
  2. Low/Mid-Rise New Construction Housing for Rent (National, Regional, Local developers/builders);
  3. High-Rise New Construction Housing for Sale (National, Regional, Local developers/builders, Trades);
  4. High-Rise New Construction Housing for Rent (National, Regional, Local developers/builders, Trades);
  5. New Affordable Housing for Rent (Housing Commissions + Non-Profit AH Developers, Trades);
  6. New Special Needs/Workforce Housing (Housing Commissions + AH Non-Profit developers, Trades)
  7. Existing Special Needs/Workforce housing (Housing Commissions + AH Non-Profit developers, Trades)
  8. Existing Housing Stock for Sale (Investors/Homeowners);
  9. Existing Housing Stock for Rent (Investors/Homeowners)
  10. New Custom and Self-Built Housing (Investors/Homeowners).

There are two (2) additional types of housing missing in San Diego that are available to other human beings in other parts of the world:

  1. Social Housing for Sale (Agencies, Housing Commissions + Trades);
  2. Social Housing for Rent (Agencies, Housing Commissions + Trades).

A hard truth is that our well-trained construction trades limit worker availability capacity (scarcity) that drives up construction costs. Another hard truth is that cheaper labor doesn’t offer the same level of quality . Affordable Housing built in private low to mid-rise development mostly excludes Trades Labor. And, Trades are used for all high-rise development, for rent or for sale, because of the expert skills needed to construction tall buildings. And, the trades-only construction scenario for AH/Special needs housing is detrimental to the cost of construction but imperative to the political will to build it. In my opinion, this illustrated clearly the failure of capitalism.

The need for more construction workers is real. The need for housing to house new construction workers to live in is a chicken/egg conundrum San Diego has had to deal with for a century. And, it is a common insistence from the development industry that the nation is suffering from a labor shortage.

So, the best solution is to cultivate a local construction trade industry, rather than hope to poach workers from other cities. San Diego City College has a trade apprenticeship program that a national developer is working with to building their own General Contracting company to build a new project in San Diego. This is the future of construction.

These are my recommendations to deal with the labor market via private corporate leadership (Chamber, Trades, Economic Development Corporation’s role):

  • Build up skills to support housing delivery including labor trades, capital program accountants, legal and structural engineers as well planners and surveyors;
  • Assume that some housing will need to be provided with direct involvement of local municipality;
  • Recognize that corporate leadership is central to success in housing delivery;
  • Recognize the role of local industrial strategies in supporting local housing needs for a full range of dwelling types that can house people who can support the local and regional economy.

These are my recommendations to enable social housing in local municipalities:

  • Understand the Cities, County, and Agencies have different buckets of money to access and land taxation rules than neighboring cities;
  • Recognize in housing finance policy that the number and mix of homes required in San Diego over the next forty years cannot be provided entirely by private sector funding;
  • Consider the role of the municipality as a patient investor in its area;
  • Consider providing all 12 types of housing that might be required for local needs if this is not being met by other providers;
  • Establish a housing and planning delivery team to manage the implementation of all housing plans regardless of public or private proponent;
  • Establish a housing delivery board to monitor progress and delivery;
  • Establish a housing delivery forum of all providers in the area to meet regularly to discuss progress and problems;
  • Establish a housing intervention fund to help overcome issues on individual sites (funding can be made as a grant, a loan or in return for development equity);
  • Promote how housing supports the local economic objectives (e.g. retention of younger professionals and graduates living in and moving to the area);
  • Assess all sites in municipality ownership for housing suitability;
  • Include more detailed housing delivery outcomes in SANDAG’s annual monitoring report;
  • Consider purchasing land for housing as an investment for the longer term;
  • Work in conjunction with non-profit education platforms, such as local Labor/Trades Unions, LISC, and NeighborWorks, to trains locals construction trades and how to be small-scaled developers to build capacity and value for locals to be education on how to use San Diego’s inherent land values (as owner/developers or trades/labor) to invest in their own neighborhood through small-scale real estate projects. The Incremental Development Workshops encourages locals to retain their stake in a neighborhoods, and raise values lot-by-lot without displacement or outside forced gentrification, and;
  • Establish a funding subsidy program through grants for local authority direct delivery of housing and other mechanisms such as by bonding or the general fund.

I have in my hand a list of 135 known socialized housing projects throughout Vienna that prove this is a viable tool to addressing San Diego’s housing crisis. Thanks to Voice of San Diego and Unsplash for the graphics, and political consultant Andy Kopp for the inspiration.

Innovation Districts… in San Diego?

Innovation Districts, San Diego, Urban Design, Urban Planning

Innovation Districts are a contemporary economic development model focused on geographic areas where medical institutions (Med), research universities (Ed), and technology industry companies (Ted) are purposely clustered and connected with entrepreneurs, start-ups, accelerators, and incubators. These new era economic generators are a market shift from previously isolated suburban research parks towards mixed-use, walkable, amenity-rich places. These Med-Ed-Ted hubs, innovation districts, are useful tools to provide a competitive advantage for large swaths of a city over a single, isolated, private development project.

A question is when is an Innovation Districts more of a big picture policy/vision organizing and fundraising tool or a more refined geographical place defined by its regulatory structure?

THE IDEA DISTRICT – East Village, San Diego

In downtown San Diego, California, Local developers, David Malmuth and Peter Garcia of IDEA1, have identified and marketed their project in East Village as an Innovation District as an ‘education corridor’ from Balboa Park to Petco Park. These types of districts are well documented by urban scholar Bruce Katz here in 2016 and 2019. And a great model of success is found in San Francisco’s Mission Bay, one of the 20 or so of successful innovation districts across the nation.

Innovation District success is found, as Mr. Katz has written, “… in their complexity and integration of what was previously separated and ‘siloed’— people, quality of place, and innovation.” One of San Francisco’s Mission Bay accomplishments is found in its governance, which is evolving from the alignment of strategies and tenants to more sophisticated interventions around place-making. Another of its successes is found in attracting anchor companies, such as Dropbox in Mission Bay, as well as Quicken Loans in Detroit, Comcast in Philadelphia, and Amazon in Seattle’s South Lake Union.

Important urban design elements listed by Mr. Katz include providing a platform for various activities. This means its jobs and work, R&D and education, the arts and transportation. This variety provides the necessary critical mass to support each other. Scientist and creatives, teachers and residents, artists and employees, entrepreneurs and students. The scale and intensity cultivate an ‘eco-system’ that grows innovation and creativity that competes from the local to national scales. These plug into the existing economic infrastructure and governance, which infuse it with civic champions, business entrepreneurs, and leadership. And, finally, Mr. Katz says these big moves led to many small wonders that creates interest and complexity to what is replacing the conventional Class A Business Park model.

While the education anchors (City College and UCSD International Studies) are found in San Diego’s East Village today, it lacks a few of the key ingredients listed above to form a successful Innovation District. Importantly, an important portion of downtown’s governance is transitioning from Civic San Diego to the City of San Diego Development Services Department (DSD) with Civic San Diego still retaining some its economic development functions, such as Tax Credits, but losing its planning, permitting, and parking district oversight.

While a very real shift with intended and unintended consequences, this change appears to be an opportunity to better align the city’s planning/permitting of private property with its traffic, transportation and parks duties. Historically, these services have been ‘siloed’ and this shift might be an opportunity to better align the implementation of the Downtown Mobility Plan with new projects being entitled in East Village to craft a distinctive Innovation District to strategically attract anchor company tenants.

The City of San Diego’s Economic Development Department, and local Non-Government Organizations, the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) and Downtown Partnership, provide incentive programs for new businesses to locate downtown. And, this may be an opportune time to advocate for a dedicated Innovative District with additional incentives and municipal services available to private development, possibly via a Joint Power Authority consisting of a combination of City of San Diego Economic Development Department (Christina Bibler), EDC (Mark Cafferty), Civic San Diego (Andrew Phillips), SD City College (Ricky Shabazz), UC San Diego (Mary Walshok), and California State University (Adam Day) agencies, or some other enabling tool post-redevelopment to purposely provide a competitive advantage for East Village over San Diego’s rival innovation hubs across the US West and beyond.

Why Design (still) Matters!

San Diego, Urban Design

I have running dialog (troll) with a pessimistic friend about the value of our jobs and which of us is cumbersome to this world (yes, I’m listening to Rock Hits ’96 on iTunes… it’s Friday afternoon). And, I had been on the losing end of the troll on the value of urban design in the midst of our coastal cities long-standing housing crisis. His contemporary point is that designing for highest and best use raises existing land values and because everything is already too expensive good design is framed today as an agent of gentrification, and something to avoid.

Times have changed. My past assumptions are regularly challenged in this early 21-century new socio-political context. And, in my circle (social class) of friends and colleagues, I see increasing anxiety as we feel left behind economically and ‘good design’ is only valued by the wealthy to create investor opportunities. See, I was losing!

Searching, I found this terrific article on What makes a beautiful place, by Tristan Cleveland, a researcher at Happy City. And his point on the value of beauty beautifully translated to my points on the value of urban design, which I’ve restated from Mr. Cleveland’s brilliant prose with the following turn:

At the human scale: Design makes a difference in our lives by helping us feel safe and comfortable while walking and socializing in our neighborhoods, which helps us feel happier and experience a deeper sense of belonging to places and people.

And,

At the city scale: Design makes a difference in enabling cities to more easily attract and retain residents and businesses with inviting public streets, civic spaces, and interesting places. Well-designed places are a practical and essential way to bring vitality and dignity to city living.

I think I’m winning… what do you think?

A Better Transit Network in San Diego

Climate Action Plan, San Diego, Transit, Urban Design

(Original Post: https://sandiego.urbdezine.com/2019/01/26/walkable-transit-san-diego/)

At last week’s State of the City address, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer enthusiastically stated, “I want to radically overhaul the system itself. The bureaucracy has been set up to empower anti-housing forces that delay or deny projects at every tum… We need to build more housing near employment centers and transit.”

This is a rejection of our long-standing, auto-oriented, one-size-fits-all approach to city making. Fortunately, in 2008, our City of Villages plan began to shift the standards of new construction of private development from single-family, single-use land use outcomes towards more mixed-use buildings and blocks filled with offices, shops, affordable housing, and market-rate homes. This proclamation officially transitions San Diego from focusing on suburban outcomes, as we have for the past 60+ years, to building within our urban neighborhoods.

Now it’s time to do the same for our transit services.

With the Mayor’s emphasis on using transit to connect our employment centers to new housing construction, it is time to shift our transit modes from its one-size-fits-all, over-reliance on Light Rail Transit (LRT – The Trolley) to a mix of transit modes. The problem today is that our Trolley acts like Commuter Rail by linking downtown to Santee and the border, as well as acting like a Streetcar by linking downtown’s Little Italy to Gaslamp. No matter where it is in the city, the trolley stops every 15 minutes at over 56 stations. Plus, it is limited in its ability to climb hillsides to access and serve the neighborhoods and districts located on our mesas.

With its one-size-fits-all use, our Trolley does not really perform to its fullest LRT function, nor is it capable of being a true Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) or Streetcar. LRT is a fixed-rail system intended to serve city-to-city, such as connecting Chula Vista to La Mesa to Santee. BRT is intended to serve community-to-community, such as North Park to City Heights to Rolando. And, Streetcars are intended to serve neighborhood center to neighborhood center within each community, such as from North Park’s 30th street from Adams Avenue to Upas.

Our city’s new Rapid Bus service is essentially an Express Bus, or BRT-Lite, that flows with traffic, stopping at streetlights, and merging with all traffic on the freeways with 15-minute waits between buses. We do have a short segment of BRT, but it is located on a half-mile stretch on Park Boulevard in Hillcrest. And, we have one historic Streetcar circling a downtown loop on our LRT tracks. These limited modes are our best opportunity to quickly expand access to our city with cheaper and lighter forms of transit.

We need a mixed-modal, walkable to/from transit network to compete with the auto-oriented infrastructure we’ve built over the past 60+ years. It is easier to drive a car around than to take transit because we purposely designed and invested to do. San Diego needs to add BRT on major corridors and local neighborhood Streetcars to connect our mix of surface street buses and fixed rail trolley network.

Since 2013, San Diego has been a member city of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), who state in their Transit Street Design Guide (Island Press, 2016, page 178)  “Cities with both buses and a dedicated right-of-way rail system (LRT) have historically structured the former (bus) as a feeder service to the latter (LRT). Bus Rapid Transit can be used to upgrade new parts of the network into trunklines… Streetcars and Buses can also form a multi-hub network.” Just last month the City of San Diego’s Development Services Department stated that it, “is allowing the incorporation of NACTO design concepts as presented in the Urban Street Design Guide (Island Press, 2013),” to plan and design projects. These new rules will permit more dedicated BRT and Streetcar lines throughout the city.

The hierarchy of San Diego’s full-range of public transit service modes are as follows:

  • Heavy Rail (Amtrak) – Connects San Diego to Los Angeles and the nation a few times a day;
  • Commuter Rail (Coaster) – Connects three coastal cities at peak hour times;
  • Light Rail (Trolley + Sprinter) – Connects Santee, San Ysidro to San Diego (with a new line up to University City next year) and Oceanside, San Marcos to Escondido with frequent stops every half-mile or more. Our bus networks feeds into our main LRT lines;
  • Bus Rapid Transit – Easily retrofitted into our wide streets with dedicated bus lanes, separated from traffic, and given priority at intersections to be competitive timewise with local car trips. These connect our canyons (Mission Valley) to our mesas (Clairemont Mesa and Rolando);
  • Express Bus (Rapid & Breeze) – These run faster schedule by not making as many stops as than normal bus services between the same two commuter or destination points on quicker routes;
  • Local Bus – The bulk of our transit service with stops every quarter-mile throughout the city;
  • Streetcars – Modern and historic cars that run on rails that usually flows with traffic on main streets and connects neighborhood to neighborhood;
  • Shuttles (Paratransit, Flex & Lift) – Connects people with daily service and those of us with physical, cognitive, and visual disabilities throughout the city.

The hierarchy of San Diego’s full-range of private mobility modes are as follows:

  • Shuttles (Airport Shuttles, Van Share) – Connects people with daily service and those of us with physical, cognitive, and visual disabilities throughout the city.
  • Bicycles & Jitney facilities – Connects people up to three to five miles comfortably at a slower speed;
  • Pedestrians & scooter facilities – Connect us up to a quarter to half mile distance at a walkable pace.

To support our Mayor’s vision for San Diego, we need to build a more sustainable transit network that focuses on connecting job centers to neighborhood centers with BRT and interconnecting Streetcar lines. Our zoning requires our new housing to be constructed as mixed-use and accessible by pedestrians. The new BRT study investment our City Councilmembers, Georgette Gomez and Chris Ward, announced this week is the right start to building the right mix of transit types to connect new housing with job centers.

 

Love vs Hope

Leon Krier, Public Space, San Diego, Urban Design, Urban Planning

In the middle of reading Dan Solomon’s new book, Love versus Hope, and think he’s beautifully addressing the issues of how to build a more socially inclusive city.

He posits that cities based on Love are a ‘continuous city’ that is manifested in terms of timeless traditions as well as buildings conjoined to form streets/squares. This traditional city has a far better track record at building cities than those based on Hope, which he calls the ‘ruptured city’ that is designed for revolution derived from naive modernist optimism that has destroyed urbanism/cities to implement their hopeful vision of the future that is greener, safer, accessible, whatever.

That said, the ‘walled city’ is a continuous city in an exaggerated/extreme form that moves away from being socially inclusive and just and towards being based on fear to some extent. This leads to a vision of Yoda whispering about how fear leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.

This also leads us to Leon Krier’s Albert Speer conundrum… for it is possible to be insanely scared and criminal towards others while designing great cities/buildings and being very civil to your own tribe? These are questions about the ambiguity of humankind. And of our ethical responsibilities to build cities civilization (towards a less suffering society).
San Diego was mostly built in the ruptured city model. We are moving towards a more continuous city. And as a major border city, today I am proud of San Diego’s leadership because we  haven’t succumbed to the fear and loathing espoused by our immoral federal leadership intended to anger us this holiday weekend. Thank you San Diego Mayor, City Council, State Assemblyman Gloria, State Senator Atkins, Congressman Peters and Congresswoman Davis, for endeavoring to keep us from being an even more walled off city as we close 2018.

Same as it Ever Was… Same as it Ever Was.

San Diego, Urban Planning

We live in the south end of North Park, San Diego. The community has been experiencing an urban development renaissance over the past 25 years. Our city’s planning structure begins with city-wide General Plan policies, local Community-scaled planned policies, and then lot scaled Zoning Regulations. North Park’s Community Plans are supposed to guide decision-makers when making major changes to land use decisions and any updates to Zoning regulations. Know that because we are a Charter City, these regulations do not have to be in conformance with our policies (and they aren’t).

The recently updated North Park Community Plan forged a compromise to ensure that the increase in residential densities enabled mixed-use, walkable urbanism on our main Transit Corridors, El Cajon Boulevard, University Avenue, Adams Avenue (east/west), and our secondary corridors on 30th Street, Texas Street, and Park Avenue (north/south). This ‘upzone’ went along with the ‘preservation’ of older bungalow neighborhoods that need/want more discretionary review for any changes as local ‘preservationist’ agreed to this compromise. It is a win/win plan.

However, it is our zoning that does the heavy lifting in building San Diego. In updating our local North Park Community Plan the city changed the once customized local zoning rules to city-wide zoning regulations. This backwards, 60’s era, city-wide one-size-fits-all zoning approach (generic Land Uses first rules with a variety of development standards/rules overlays to make each use fit into its context) replaced locally customized zoning that was from the 1980s. Unfortunately, old and new zoning still enables new single-story strip commercial drive thru buildings (new Starbucks, Wendy’s, Sonic fast food stores for examples) on our transit corridors via by-right zoning applications. This 8-year and millions of dollars update still makes auto-oriented buildings easier to entitle and build than vertical mixed-use buildings.

So, how is North Park’s renaissance happening? There are two main drivers. First, the market demand for housing is driving new development in North Park as it’s an older neighborhood with great parks, streets, entertainment, and historic amenities. Over a decade ago, a local crew of architects-as-developers, led by Jonathan Segal, have figured out that best vertical mixed-use walkable buildings are a half-block off our Transit Corridors as the city planners knew that a transition from corridors to bungalow neighborhoods was needed, so they made very flexible zones to allow either commercial or residential or some of both… which put our best urban buildings closer to historic homes than ON the transit corridor! This creates unnecessary conflicts, leads to displacement of older apartments, but this zone is North Park’s new building area as demanded by the local housing market place.

Second, the market is driving our internationally recognized Craft Beer industry. This explosion of breweries, tasting rooms, restaurants, and beer halls has been formally enabled by a new ‘artisan’ zone applied throughout North Park’s transition zone mentioned above. New housing and new restaurant/entertainment appeals to the new age employee as the ‘experience’ of living in a real neighborhood refutes their parent’s suburban housing/office park lifestyle… as the next generation tends to do. However, this somewhat smelly “industries” are located deeper into the historic neighborhoods, causing unnecessary conflicts too as they should be located on our main corridors, and not a block or two off.

In short, our city’s zoning regulations are mostly in conflict with the intent of the updated North Park’s Community Plan. Fortunately, due to a lack of municipal planning expertise, a narrow seam of better new development has risen between the strictly regulated commercial corridors and community-activist guarded historic single-family housing areas. While this narrow seam is working, its not building enough to address our housing crisis and our inability to build high-intensity mixed-use along our corridor, leaving the value of our Bus Rapid Transit investments sitting on the table. This continued shift towards building high-intensity mixed-use development along our Transit Corridors is the North Park’s future opportunity to build value without displacement of existing residents

san diego apparel america s finest city

Photo by Stephen Niemeier on Pexels.com

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“Do the Math!” How to Deal with Hot Housing Markets

San Diego, Urban Design, Urban Planning

Transect-LA-nathan-dumlao-539610This innocuous quote from a recent Texas Monthly Magazine article (here) shows how easily it is to misunderstand the forces that shape a hot-hot housing market cities:

“”The problem, of course, is that this idealized urban lifestyle is out of reach for most. The culprits? “Student loan debt, wage stagnation, rising rents, insurance costs, and the lingering aftermath of the Great Recession, which many millennials ran right into at a key career stage,” – Jason Dorsey, President of the Center for Generational Kinetics, an Austin-based research and marketing strategy firm that tracks social trends among millennials and Generation Z.

Ok, so rents don’t rise when wages stagnate. This is because “the rent” is determined by:

Wages x Employment ÷ No. of Units Available = Market Rate Rents*

OK, so while this *equation is simple… the basic point is that the rents are rising in hot housing market cities because our growing upper class wages are booming while the number of units available are limited. Higher wages x higher employment in cities that constrain new development makes for hot markets and high rents.

With wages somewhat stagnating for the shrinking middle class, we understand that rich/middle/poor people want to live in nice /fun/safe places. And, everyone is willing pay more/compete for access to the ‘good life’ in a city that has great amenities, such as arts, parks, rivers (think Austin and Denver), nice weather, beaches, bays (think San Diego), and most importantly lots and lots of jobs with some or all of this stuff (think Bay Area, Seattle, and Los Angeles).

This competition is seen in San Diego, as our rent has historically been high for my entire life, with very little fluctuation in either good times or bad. A recent Federal Reserve paper stated the reason for this is attributed to rental rates being determined more by the level of amenities our neighborhood’s provide than merely by supply of housing.

This factor still fits with the simple equation above as those cities with the good life are too few and far between and those nice places are unwilling to build enough housing to meet market demand… as people continue to look for places to spend their valuable time and money. With that, one neighborhood will be expensive for a variety of reasons, and a similar neighborhood only a few miles away will be stagnant or declining, while still having the same physical access to beaches and bays… just not the economic access.

What Mr Dorsey fails to understand about Austin is that those few units available in the urban fun/nice hipster areas are being rented by those few Sci/Bio/IT-tech engineers who are in high demand and making significantly higher wages (+$200k/yr) than the regular blue and white collar workers ($60k/yr). This drives up the rent in those few high-demand neighborhoods. Austin, and all cities, needs more housing/jobs with nice stuff in more neighborhoods rather than having big money fight for those few amenity-filled neighborhoods scattered throughout most cities.

And with that I feel myself sliding into the displacement/social justice trap. As displacement is the nasty common side effect of gentrification (value increases). So, I’ll put this out there again for your consideration:

The most appropriate urban design response to social justice is to build towards social/enviro/economic (jobs/housing) stability. To be clear, I am not advocating for displacement, but I am advocating for some gentrification in economically static neighborhoods (such as more schools, parks, and market-rate development opportunities) and some economic stagnation (such as subsidized housing and rent control) in hot markets.

This brilliant study shows that all of San Francisco is an expensive because it is affluent with a growing population and no land easily available for development. And, building more housing would reduce rents as it adds supply to the inherent demand. But, if they built enough new housing to reduce prices it would significantly change the character of the city and its quality-of-life… so, urban design will make a huge difference in how San Francisco builds its future! Go Sonja Truss!

Ultimately, our big west coast cities currently flourishing on the tech industry (ironically born in San Jose suburban garages) will continue to be successful into the future as our nation’s constricting economy pushes well-educated, financed people into these nice cities. And, they’ll continue to spill out excess jobs into neighboring cities, towns, and transform conventional suburban tracks (which are still being built, btw) into more urban places (despite their fighting this urban shift). Again, urban design is necessary to move our cities into the future.

By the way… Seattle and Denver have stabilized rents by building more housing. And, a few years ago Denver changed their conventional zoning to a form-based code in anticipation of their 21st century development needs. Need I mention the value of urban design again?