High-Rise, High-Density, High-Risk – Lessons from the Pandemic

By Colleen O’Connor

Who are these people?  And where do they come from?

What is it about newcomers to San Diego that get in positions of power and proceed to try and re-make the city in the image of New York?  Overcrowded, densely population and dwarfed by sunless high-rises and wind tunnels – are a recipe for disasters in the future.

Has the COVID-19 pandemic taught us nothing about such urban nightmares?

If not listening to New York’s Governor, Andrew Cuomo, repeat day after tragic day that “density” is what overwhelmed his city, then consider Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaas, the Pritzker prize–winning author and academic, with a new exhibition at the Guggenheim.

“To him, the gathering of more than 50% of the world’s population into metropoles that occupy just 2% of the world’s land mass was a problem long before anybody knew what the phrase social distancing meant.”

Or, best of all, read Jonathan F.P. Rose’s book, The Well-Tempered City. He argues, “Most of our cities have lost their original purpose.”

“The problems are wicked, the tide of megatrends is moving against our best intentions, and we are not … meeting the challenge of our times.”  A challenge that has existed for centuries.

That challenge?  Fairness, harmony with nature, intelligence, innovation and trust, a.k.a., the virtuous city.

“In the early 900s, at the height of Islam’s golden age, the scholar, Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi, ranked three kinds of cities in his text, ‘The Perfect City.’

“The best was a virtuous city, a place in which people pursue knowledge, virtue and happiness with civility.

Next came the ignorant city, whose residents seek wealth, honor freedom and pleasure without aspiring to a higher state of well-being and true happiness.

Last came the wicked city, whose people delude themselves knowing that wisdom is the highest calling but justifying the pursuit of power and pleasure with arrogant, self-serving rationalizations.”

The San Diego I know was never an ignorant nor a wicked city.  Indeed, it tried to be “America’s finest City,” even, “Camelot by the Bay”, but the recent history of in-fill developments in old stock neighborhoods, multiple attempts at reversing the 30-foot coastal height limits, and dishonest promises, hypocrisy, and poor stewardship among its leaders, has bent us toward that wicked path.

The most recent examples abound; attempts by the Port of San Diego to add 1600 units on Shelter Island.

Mischaracterized as a chance to remove the “docks” or “piers” on a stretch of bay in the La Playa area of Point Loma, the real details are much uglier:

• An increase of 1,600 new hotel rooms along Shelter Island
• 70,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space
• The removal of the current 30-foot height limit
• A 20-foot wide cement promenade that will replace the dirt paths; probably eliminate the pine trees that provide the rare great blue heron nests; and alter the roads, parking spaces, and entire area from Kellogg Beach to downtown

In short, the new Port master plan included the destruction of a neighborhood and a local culture that existed before Shelter Island was even dredged.  It was defeated by heavy citizen pushback.

Another example, the rushed proposition-driven, non-competitive bidding, near-giveaway to SDSU for the Mission Valley stadium and River site.  Add the multiple “transit” corridors to justify mega-developments along the Mission Bay/Clairemont area.

And now another attempt at removing the 30-foot limit.  This time in the Midway district, led by the newest Council Member and San Diego resident for just 13 years, Jen Campbell.

She promised, repeatedly, during her council race to protect that limit.  Yet, not even two years into her term, she is pushing for more New York style development using the same developer-backed proposition route that won SDSU its land.

Has Campbell learned nothing from the COVID-19 pandemic and its ferocious spread in densely populated areas? Is the ignorance by design or blinded by ambition?

So little trust – so little faith.  So little to cheer about when moves like this take place while others are shouldering their familial and professional responsibilities.

Where is that San Diego? The well-tempered city, working in harmony towards a better, healthier, safer existence for all?  Not perfect, but certainly not wicked.

Like Campbell, some see only mega developments, and massive infrastructures as the future, while neglecting to even maintain the gems of the city; Balboa park, the bays, ocean fronts and neighborhoods.

I prefer, the wisdom of noted urban thinker, Jane Jacobs, “If you don’t build it, they will come.”

San Diego is just fine without mega-density, cinder-block ugliness that passes as “architecture.”

That is the San Diego before the newest incarnation of overdevelopment and infill of any beautiful spaces and neighborhoods still remaining in San Diego.

That is the San Diego with old-school manners and responsibilities that have led to such a remarkable and enviable response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  With just a few show-off “open up” rallies (that numbered in the dozens in a county of 3 million plus people), San Diegans have demonstrated what a model city it really is.