The Alternative: Bring Housing and Business Back to El Cajon Boulevard.
By Laura L. Henson
San Diego is once again considering dramatic increases in residential density throughout Mid-City as the primary focus of the Mid-City Communities Plan Update. Before assuming that greater zoning capacity automatically produces better neighborhoods, we should examine our own history.
Because San Diego has tried this before, with decidedly mixed results.
In 1965, the City adopted the Mid-City Development Plan during an era of increasing multifamily development. Over the following decades, portions of Mid-City originally developed with modest single-family homes changed parcel by parcel to make room for apartments and condominiums.
The transformation did not occur in isolation.
Freeway construction divided neighborhoods, while Mission Valley and Fashion Valley emerged as regional shopping destinations. The City’s 1984 Mid-City Community Plan acknowledged that the once-thriving commercial strips of El Cajon Boulevard and University Avenue experienced significant decline, due in large part to newer shopping centers in Mission Valley.
As a result, City Heights experienced two profound changes simultaneously: increased residential intensity and declining commercial vitality.
Density alone did not cause the ensuing problems. Economic and demographic changes, freeway construction, disinvestment and other forces contributed. But City Heights subsequently struggled with concentrated poverty, deteriorating properties, inadequate public facilities and increased crime.
Eventually, the City of San Diego changed course.
The City’s 1984 Mid-City Community Plan also acknowledged that rapid population growth had worsened shortages of public facilities. Schools were crowded, open space was scarce, and parks and recreation facilities were inadequate. Parking had also become a serious concern. City planning documents noted that widespread multifamily development within single-family neighborhoods had exacerbated an already insufficient parking supply.
To address these problems, the 1998 Community Plan significantly reduced residential densities because of inadequate community facilities and overcrowded schools. In other words, San Diego has already experienced major land-use changes extending beyond commercial corridors and into established single-family neighborhoods. Later generations of planners concluded that growth had outpaced the schools, parks, infrastructure and other community facilities necessary to support it. That gap persists.
The lesson isn’t that apartments cause poverty or density causes crime. They don’t.
The lesson is simpler: Upzoning is not planning.
Dramatic land-use changes can have enormous unintended consequences when housing, infrastructure, parking, economic opportunity, public safety and neighborhood stability fall out of balance.
So why would we risk repeating that mistake in the remaining residential neighborhoods of Mid-City?
There is a better alternative.
We must bring housing and business back to El Cajon Boulevard.
The Boulevard possesses something Mission Valley could never replicate: Mid-City’s extraordinary cultural diversity. Little Saigon already demonstrates how culture, food and entrepreneurship can create identity and attract visitors.
We need to expand that concept.
New affordable and market-rate housing can rise along El Cajon Boulevard while successful businesses remain at street level. New restaurants, markets, cafés, shops and other businesses could celebrate the Vietnamese, Mexican, Ethiopian, Somali, Cambodian and other cultures represented throughout Mid-City.
El Cajon Boulevard could become an international Restaurant Row—a dining and cultural destination unlike anything else in San Diego.
More residents would provide customers for local businesses. New and expanding businesses would create jobs and work opportunities closer to where Mid-City residents live. Restaurants and outdoor dining would bring people onto sidewalks into the evening. Better lighting, landscaping, pedestrian crossings, public spaces and thoughtfully planned parking could make the Boulevard safer and more vibrant.
Housing, employment and economic revitalization would reinforce one another.
The City already recognizes this potential. Its Complete Boulevard Planning Study envisions part of El Cajon Boulevard as a vibrant, welcoming place for shopping, eating, neighborhood services and pedestrian activity.
But instead of repeating the mistakes of the past, let’s learn from them.
Build housing on the commercial corridors. Restore commerce. Create jobs. Celebrate our many cultures. Protect stable single-family neighborhoods. And finally create the thriving El Cajon Boulevard that generations of Mid-City residents have been promised for decades.
Bookmarking this in good faith to read in more depth later, but it’s credibility is significantly hurt by the choice to use an AI generated image with typos as the cover.
I hear ya, Marli; we have imposed a policy here of not using AI stuff, but the image was sent in by the author who is not part of that policy.