This picture is intended to pair with the prior post…

San Diego city officials have done a lot over the last half century to revitalize downtown. As you can see in this picture it’s mostly been successful. One thing that has happened in the city’s evolution is the increase in tourism to downtown (of course) and a change in pedestrian safety. In this picture you can see what has become quite normal: a car parks in a crosswalk by a hotel. Add to this drivers driving way too fast on local streets, and the plague of eScooters flying down sidewalks, and you get a recipe for disaster. As city center’s re-urbanize city planners and politicians must remember one of the keys that make vibrant downtown neighborhoods great: walkability and bicycle-ability.

Grossmont Center mall in La Mesa, CA is not far from San Diego. Look at all this asphalt. A few times a year it fills up, but most days a lot of it is empty and baking in the sun. So why not build dense and affordable housing here? The mall could serve as a “downtown”. Bus and light rail is nearby.

Many cities believe they must have a gimmick to attract tourists. One such rouse the city of San Diego uses is it’s “world famous “ zoo. There are many rubs to this topic but one that is particularly evil is a century-old mill tax instituted for maintenance of the zoo. Nowadays the amount is .05 cents for every hundred dollars worth of real estate value a landowner has. The median home price in San Diego is in the high hundreds of thousands. The local newspaper San Diego Union Tribune reported on June 27, 2022 that the zoo was raking in almost $18 million dollars with this sneaky tax. The paper also reported that although most citizens don’t hold zoo passes they still have to pay. They cannot opt out. Even if anyone of them is morally against the imprisoning of animals. Tax payers don’t even get a discount on entry tickets.

Several San Diego neighborhoods are pressing the city to introduce traffic calming measures to induce drivers to slow down. After all the city has a zero pedestrian death goal by 2025!!!! Over the recent years San Diego city has been listening to various concerned neighborhood groups about unsafe driving, although not always acting quickly. Bureaucracies are slow and projects are expensive. But why not start meaningful traffic calming measures sooner? There are some that could be instituted quickly with low cost: turn several stop lighted intersections into red light blinking four way stops. Or change the timing of the stop lights so that they don’t encourage drivers to speed to catch the next green light. The good news is that the city has been slowly but surely reducing several 3 lane roads to 2 lane roads, creating roundabouts, creating a pedestrian zone in a major tourist area downtown, and set up pedestrian crossing lights on a few busy streets. In conclusion, I acknowledge we are a suburb nation that needs cars. But we are interested again in our urban city cores. The former has conditioned us to drive a lot, and quickly. The latter encourages walking, public transit and less car use over all.

Several San Diego neighborhoods are pressing the city to introduce traffic calming measures to induce drivers to slow down. After all the city has a zero pedestrian death goal by 2025!!!! Over the recent years San Diego city has been listening to various concerned neighborhood groups about unsafe driving, although not always acting quickly. Bureaucracies are slow and projects are expensive. But why not start meaningful traffic calming measures sooner? There are some that could be instituted quickly with low cost: turn several stop lighted intersections into red light blinking four way stops. Or change the timing of the stop lights so that they don’t encourage drivers to speed to catch the next green light. The good news is that the city has been slowly but surely reducing several 3 lane roads to 2 lane roads, creating roundabouts, creating a pedestrian zone in a major tourist area downtown, and set up pedestrian crossing lights on a few busy streets. In conclusion, I acknowledge we are a suburb nation that needs cars. But we are interested again in our urban city cores. The former has conditioned us to drive a lot, and quickly. The latter encourages walking, public transit and less car use over all.

Several San Diego neighborhoods are pressing the city to introduce traffic calming measures to induce drivers to slow down. After all the city has a zero pedestrian death goal by 2025!!!! Over the recent years San Diego city has been listening to various concerned neighborhood groups about unsafe driving, although not always acting quickly. Bureaucracies are slow and projects are expensive. But why not start meaningful traffic calming measures sooner? There are some that could be instituted quickly with low cost: turn several stop lighted intersections into red light blinking four way stops. Or change the timing of the stop lights so that they don’t encourage drivers to speed to catch the next green light. The good news is that the city has been slowly but surely reducing several 3 lane roads to 2 lane roads, creating roundabouts, creating a pedestrian zone in a major tourist area downtown, and set up pedestrian crossing lights on a few busy streets. In conclusion, I acknowledge we are a suburb nation that needs cars. But we are interested again in our urban city cores. The former has conditioned us to drive a lot, and quickly. The latter encourages walking, public transit and less car use over all.

Several San Diego neighborhoods are pressing the city to introduce traffic calming measures to induce drivers to slow down. After all the city has a zero pedestrian death goal by 2025!!!! Over the recent years San Diego city has been listening to various concerned neighborhood groups about unsafe driving, although not always acting quickly. Bureaucracies are slow and projects are expensive. But why not start meaningful traffic calming measures sooner? There are some that could be instituted quickly with low cost: turn several stop lighted intersections into red light blinking four way stops. Or change the timing of the stop lights so that they don’t encourage drivers to speed to catch the next green light. The good news is that the city has been slowly but surely reducing several 3 lane roads to 2 lane roads, creating roundabouts, creating a pedestrian zone in a major tourist area downtown, and set up pedestrian crossing lights on a few busy streets. In conclusion, I acknowledge we are a suburb nation that needs cars. But we are interested again in our urban city cores. The former has conditioned us to drive a lot, and quickly. The latter encourages walking, public transit and less car use over all.

We will always drive too fast. It’s crazy that an average car is capable of being driven at 80 mph, or 100 mph, or (for some) 160 mph. But in neighborhoods the speed limit is often 25 mph or slower.

Problems linked to chronic homelessness in downtown has banded together several business owners in a particularly hard hit area. They are threatening to sue the city if the city doesn’t start enforcing laws on the books to try and prevent homeless-linked crime happening on their doorsteps. They claim there’s legal precedent from a similar situation in Phoenix.

This burned-out shell was formerly a church called God’s Extended Hand, and mostly served the chronically homeless. Located in downtown San Diego it’s right on the edge of where recently built high rises meet utter squalor. The age-old question arises then on to citify the area. Where will the chronically homeless go? #sandiego #eastvillage

I use public transportation, having given up my car. My family is a one-car family. No regrets over it. But I won’t lie, when city buses are constantly late it does start to suck.

Tijuana and San Diego are border-mates. I feel like Tijuana has always felt more urban than San Diego, at least since I can remember stretching back to the 1990s. But San Diego has been growing up in so many ways especially over the last 25 years.

This Tuesday the San Diego City Council will vote on a proposal to disallow most homeless encampments on city sidewalks. The city will -as an alternative- mandate those in violation move to one of two city-owned properties where encampments are legal.

Walkable cities cannot be replete with one-way three-lane streets. Drivers typically see such streets as an extension of the highway or freeway. Add to this that so many American city urban centers are going through (or hope to) a renaissance. That necessarily means growing pedestrian activity. But it also means coming to terms with post-WWII traffic design. People in crosswalks and speeding cars on wide one-way streets don’t mix. I’m delighted to see San Diego converting several downtown roadways from three to two lanes. It’s not perfect but it’s a start.

#sandiego #rocknrollmarathon The San Diego rock n roll marathon is tomorrow. But what a sh*t show it is now, the night before. The idiots who put on the spectacle invested zero dollars into traffic control. It’s literally taking 15 minutes to drive one block in parts of downtown due to all the road closures for the marathon. In one of the densest areas, Little Italy, residents can’t get home. Angry drivers are road raging, and traffic is utterly snarled. Nice job, Rock n Roll Marathon people.

The Helm building on Front at Beech, downtown San Diego completed around April 2023. The San Diego Housing Commission partnered with the developers given the building has 77 affordable rental apartments for low-income families and individuals. The block itself is home to two aging single room occupancy hotels, some of the very last of their kind in the area. I should emphasize that super expensive Little Italy is right next door. I for one am glad to see such a mix of different people from different backgrounds living in and enjoying the same amenities city life has to offer. Lastly, I would be remiss to not mention the Hughes Marino building also pictured. The man was at the center of a high-level political intrigue in the city, scraping together real estate deals for San Diego. He made sure he got paid around $10M in an opaque manner that reeked of cronyism. He was ultimately charged with a felony or two, but ended up pleading guilty to a misdemeanor. Another controversy in itself.

Transit corridors in San Diego are popping up with greater frequency than I can remember. This picture of intersection of El Cajon Blvd and Park Blvd is an example of the densification of a center city neighborhood along extremely busy stroads. Fortunately there are several bus lines that service the area. Even better is that the local neighborhoods have lots to do within walking distance. The city has allowed for developers to build denser buildings along transit corridors (or even within 15 minutes’ walk of a transit/bus station) without having to build or include lots of parking. Parking spaces, especially the underground variety are really expensive, and said costs ate passed on to renters. Hopefully the lack of parking spaces within these new buildings will incentivize walking and transit use. Lastly, I must confess the developer of the pictured building opted to build underground parking. You win some you lose some.

Citifying cities in the good ol’ USA. That’s what I advocate. My story is one of watching the urbanization of San Diego, California. I’ve watched this place change from smalls-ville to something else. That’s the raison d’être for my Damus feed; to comment on the changes to my beloved city undergoing citification. If you’re into cities, city planning, public transportation, et cetera then join me.