By Danna Givot / Op-Ed SD Union-Tribune / November 12, 2025
[Please see original for all the many links to important documents]
Three years ago, Mayor Todd Gloria unveiled his “Build Better San Diego” initiative, with an ambitious goal of eliminating inequities between our city’s wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods. Build Better San Diego intended to replace crumbling infrastructure and improve public services in our older and long-neglected communities south of Interstate 8.
But our mayor’s pledge now rings hollow. In fact, recent and upcoming community plan updates will only reinforce the cruel reality of “two San Diegos,” not the “one city” he promised. If the mayor and his planning department get their way, our lowest-resourced, infrastructure-deficient neighborhoods will be burdened by extraordinary levels of up-zoning and density, with no funding for desperately needed parks, libraries, and fire and police stations.
The most shocking example of “one city, two realities” is the proposed College Area Community Plan Update that will be presented to the City Council’s Land Use and Housing Committee on Nov. 21. The latest draft proposes a 316% increase in housing units (from 8,200 to 34,150) with a projected 262% increase in population (from 20,400 to 73,940). And these increases don’t include the 8,500 students living on SDSU grounds today, or the 13,000 projected to live there in 2050.
These huge density increases might be tolerable in a community that is well-resourced and has outstanding infrastructure, but that’s definitely not true in the College Area. The draft 2026 California Tax Credit Allocation Committee map indicates that 60% of the College Area’s Opportunity Zones are the lowest resource category.
The College Area is also an infrastructure desert. It has no police or fire station, just one small public park (1.6 acres, which is part drainage swale), and its open space consists of a quarter-mile trail over a sewage easement. The only public building in the College Area is the library, but it is grossly lacking in parking for its service area of 53,000 people.
The draft College Area Plan lacks any realistic plan or funding to remedy these glaring deficiencies even as the Community Plan Update proposes more than tripling College Area density. There is no economic development plan for this neighborhood, so we must assume that the majority of new adult residents will commute to regional job centers, which are clustered north of Interstate 8, and are neither efficiently nor directly accessible via transit. The proposed plan will unquestionably create a dystopian reality of a dense, underserved, lower-resource community that the mayor’s program was supposed to eliminate.
The inequity is even more evident when we review other recent community plan updates. University City, Mira Mesa and Clairemont are all much higher opportunity areas with newer infrastructure and more park facilities than the College Area. They have much more green space: University City has 118 acres, Mira Mesa has 89 and Clairemont has 70. But their up-zoning was only 115%, 119% and 59% respectively compared to 316% for the College Area. Each of those communities has three fire stations; the College Area has none. In 2010, San Diego’s Citygate Audit ranked a new College Area fire station as the third priority on its list. Since then, the city has built or renovated 10 other fire stations, but somehow missed the third one on their list.
I believe it is indisputable that the mayor, his planning department and District 9 Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera are purposely ignoring the inequities in the College Area Community Plan Update. They are willfully and shamelessly relegating College Area residents to a future of high-density, low-opportunity and woefully inadequate infrastructure. The unanswered question: Why is this OK for the College Area? This is an alarming precedent for all communities south of I-8.
Givot, a College Area resident, is vice chair of Neighbors For A Better San Diego and a former McHenry County supervisor in the Chicago suburbs.
You are so right Danna. The mayor and clouncil don’t pay any attention to what the residents want or don’t want. South of 8 re-writing of the Community Plans, is a joke. Because the Planning Commission nor the Mayor or Council pay no attention or figure out a “work around”, to ignore common sense new construction. The new construction with no parking is how many of the Council members live… in apts., no kids, and some live close enough to 202 C St. to walk to work. They don’t have a clue of a vision for family housing.
Danna – great Op-Ed piece in the UT San Diego.
One of the biggest things that struck me are your general comments on the
current and tragic lack of infrastructure. This city council and mayor like
to push things that make no sense. Promoting outrageous density with such disparity of infrastructure is the equivalent of remodeling the kitchen when
every room of the house has a leaky roof. I suppose if challenged, they
would say: If we build it, infrastructure will come. Well, we know that it
is simply an empty promise. This city can’t seem to budget itself out of a
paper bag.
The fire issue should be the biggest concern. Just look at the image
above that was prominently shown in Danna’s Op-Ed piece. It’s hard to fathom the proposed density volume of Gloria’s (and seemingly supported by a lot of the council) stack ‘n pack, cram-and-jam proposed housing initiative for this extreme fire-prone community – such an egregious lack of responsibility in willfully ignoring the fire danger – especially what we all witnessed in Los Angeles most recently.
The old saying, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease”, applies here. Who is the councilmember for the College area? Why isn’t the planning group for this area speaking at City Council? Give them a deadline for a fire station. The trolley goes to SDSU. Connect the trolley to good bus lines and then start a program where people are using the buses. Discourage more parking space and encourage more bikes and bus usage.
Jeanne: Why do you assume the planning group is not meeting with the City Council members? How is it you think giving them a “deadline” for a fire station that was officially declared “critical” 15 years ago is going to result in delivery of a fire station? Is there any evidence that the public giving the City Council deadlines has been productive?
The Council Member representing the College Area is Sean Elo-Rivera and, to date, he has refused to personally take a meeting with representatives of the community. He sends his “representative,” the community liaison, not even his “Director of Transformative Policy.” The Community Representative is also a policy advisor on “economic policies and workforce development,” yet the College Area Community Plan Update has no economic development component and the plan has the exact same square footage of non-residential space in 2050 as it does now – no new jobs to employ or provide services for the 53,540 additional people planned to potentially move into the College Area by 2050. If this representative is in charge of economic policy and workforce development and the College Area plan has neither, that should tell you a lot.
The College Area Community Planning Board and Council worked for 6+ years creating their own plan – the 7 Visions Plan – that accepted a generous 137% increase in housing density, and the Planning Department and Planning Commission blew it off. It may get a passing mention at the Land Use & Housing Committee hearing on 11/21/25, but only because the public will bring it up, so the City will be forced to acknowledge it.
Other city council members and their policy directors have met with representatives from the College Area to discuss the City’s proposed College Area Community Plan Update, just not Sean Elo-Rivera, in whose District 9 the College Area is located. That, too, should be telling.