Case Studies Reportcluds

CLUDs PROJECT Case Studies CLUDs PROJECT Report 2013/14 SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT The role of urban rural regeneration in regional contexts www.cluds-7fp.unirc.it www.clud-7fp.unirc.it [email protected] MARIE CURIE IRSES - CLUDs PROJECT CASE STUDIES REPORT SAN DIEGO, CA LAND USE AND PLANNING SYSTEM IN SAN DIEGO. AN OVERVIEW…………………………3 LITTLE ITALY: Community-led approach ....................................................................................34 NATIONAL CITY: Community-led approach................................................................................55 HILL CREST: Community-led approach...................................................................................... 80 JACOBS MARKET STREET VILLAGE: Community Led Approach ........................................107 IMPERIAL AVE: Community-led approach ................................................................................128 NEW ROOTS COMMUNITY FARM: Urban-Rural Linkages ...................................................... 151 ONE WORLD MARKET: Urban-Rural Linkages......................................................................... 163 NORTH PARK: Urban - rural linkages ........................................................................................ 178 SAN DIEGO PUBLIC MARKET: Urban-Rural Linkages ............................................................185 LAND USE AND PLANNING SYSTEM IN SAN DIEGO. AN OVERVIEW Alessandro Boca, Francesco Bonsinetto 01.Introduction (Alessandro Boca) 02.The historic, physical and socio-economic context (Alessandro Boca) - An historical overview - Paradise San Diego: the physical and environmental description of the city - The demographic and socio-economic context - A city of neighborhoods: communities in San Diego 03.The current planning and land use framework (Francesco Bonsinetto) - Land use planning in California - Land use and smart growth at regional level - San Diego’s Plans and Local planning framework - The 2008 San Diego General Plan and Community Planning Areas 04.Future challenges (Francesco Bonsinetto) 05. References 1 01. INTRODUCTION (Alessandro Boca) With a total population of 1.307.402 inhabitants (U.S. Census Bureau 2010), San Diego is the second largest city in California and the eighth most populated city within the United States. The city is also County seat of the namesake San Diego County, which is the second most populated metro area in California with its 3.095.313 inhabitants (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). Located on the southernmost point of the US Pacific coast, San Diego is immediately adjacent to the United States – Mexico border, and it represents the economic centre of the international metropolitan area of San Diego-Tijuana. This area, which has a population of approximately 5.000.000, consists of the San Diego County within the United States and of the municipalities of Tijuana, Tecate and Rosarito Beach in the Mexican State of Baja California. The proximity to the Mexican border is one of the main socioeconomic traits of the City of San Diego (Clement & Miramonte 1993). The economy and the rise of San Diego as a major city is strictly related to the port activity, and in particular with the military sector. As a matter of facts, San Diego currently hosts the largest naval fleet in the world, with several bases of the US Navy, the Marine Corps and Coast Guard. Despite the military and defense sector is today still considered as the main industry of the City, starting from the last decades other industries have considerably raised. The proximity to the beaches, the climate and many important attractions make San Diego a well known touristic destination in the United States and abroad (San Diego Tourism Authority, 2013). Moreover, starting from 2010 as a part of the State development strategy, San Diego has become a world-class place for research, especially in the fields of biotechnology and health (California Governor’s Office of Economic Development, 2011). As a consequence, the City is now experiencing a new trend of economic diversification which brings the research industry at the edge of the main economic industries. 2 02. THE HISTORIC, PHYSICAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONTEXT (Alessandro Boca) An historical overview The site and the wider Region hosted different Indian settlements since approximately 10.000 BCE, while the first European-contact was established in 1542 by the Portuguese explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo. The current placename of the City comes from the flagship “San Diego” by which the Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno travel across the North-American Pacific coast in 1602, naming the today’s harbor area of Mission Bay and Point Loma in honor of the Catholic lay brother San Diego de Alcalà. In 1769 the Spanish Fort Presidio of San Diego was established by Gaspar de Portolà on a hill on the left side of the River, while in same year the Mission of San Diego de Alcalà was officially established by Father Junípero Serra as a part of El Camino Real, the trail connecting the different missions, presidios and pueblos gathering the first Spanish settlements across California. The Spanish colonists «held the land for less than a century, and their occupation was thin and precarious, compared with other regions of Mexico, or even with the other California to the north. The land was too dry, and the Indians resisted, although dying of the white man's epidemics. There was some cattle ranching in the watered valleys, and a presidio and mission were established on a strategic spur of the mesa, commanding both bays and the mouth of the San Diego River» (Appleyard & Lynch, 1974). When in 1821 Mexico gained the independence from Spain after the Mexican War of Independence, San Diego became part of the Mexican state of Alta California. However, the original Fort Presidio of San Diego was abandoned and the Mission was secularized, causing a severe loss of population that was experienced until 1838. The original location of the Fort and the Mission, in fact, was both on the edge of two different hills, causing severe issues in trades and for the necessary provisions of a major settlement (San Diego History Center 1961). With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, that ended the 1846 Mexico-American war following the Texas Revolution of 1836, the United Stated gained the ownership of a large area comprising today’s States of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and parts of Wyoming and Colorado, tracing the new international border just south of the port of San Diego. As Appleyard and Lynch point out, the new border «gave the U.S. the harbor and most of the cultivable land, while reserving a land connection to Baja California for Mexico. This arbitrary line slashed through the natural region, cutting diagonally across the Tijuana River Valley. It made San Diego a border town, a port separated from much of its natural hinterland. It completed the relative isolation of the area, which now became a remote “end-of-the-line” for both nations. That border line has now become a major feature of the landscape» (Appleyard&Lynch 1974). In 1850, part of the former Mexican state of Alta California became the U.S. state of California, and in the same year San Diego was incorporated as a city and established as county seat of the new San Diego County. At the same time, a new urban development named New San Diego appeared in the proximity of the Bay far away from the initial settlement, but as after the abandonment of the Fort and of the Mission, the City remained neglected and underpopulated until the arrive of the railroad (Engstrand 2005). The first of the two main events that changed the new City of San Diego occurred in the late 1860s, when the real estate agent Alonzo Horton promoted a new development between the original settlement and the San Diego Bay, in the area known nowadays as Downtown San Diego. Attracted by the proximity to the port area, this new settlement soon raised as the new core area of the city, causing the final abandon of the original site known to this day as Old Town and a new increasing in population. The new growth of the city led to the choice of San Diego as host city for two different 3 fairs, the Panama-California Exposition of 1915, and the California Pacific International Exposition of 1935. Furthermore both the events were held in Balboa Park, the main San Diego’s park, that with their structures contributed to decorate or to furnish as for the structure today hosting the San Diego Zoo. The presence of a huge natural and deepwater harbor led to the settle of different naval bases in the site since 1852, and also in 1901 the presence of the U.S. Navy became significant with the establishment of the Coaling Station in Point Loma and many others bases and military structures in later years. But what probably caused the fortune of the city was the decision, occurred during the World War II, to base in San Diego one of the main naval hub of the U.S. Navy, causing the population grew rapidly during all the nineteenth Century. Still now the military and defense industry is one of the main one in San Diego. As Appleyard and Lynch note well, «as the city grew, houses at first grouped about the center, or were sprinkled in other speculative town sites down south along the bay. Then the streetcar came, and pusher inland toward the existing settlement of El Cajon, encouraging the growth of a finger of urbanization eastwards from Hillcrest. The arterial shopping streets were created, and the houses pushed into a more difficult climate. But there was very little north of the San Diego River, except for some settlement in Clairemont, and La Jolla. When the private car became available to most people, growth moved inland at many points. It jumped the river, and spread to the vast north space. As migrants poured in, attracted by new jobs and especially by the setting, they wanted a house of their own, just like the one back home, There was no tradition to oppose that, and, technically, it could be done» (Appleyard&Lynch 1974). During the 1960s and 1970s, the site Downtown San Diego was in decline.

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