Growth Management in the City of San Diego: Planning the Future Now

Abstract

The city of San Diego has historically embraced growth management as an important element of its planning programs. In the mid-1970s, the city of San Diego embarked on what would become a model growth-management program for larger cities throughout the country. One fundamental aspect of the city's program is the division of the city into three distinct areas or tiers; these tiers are known as urbanized, planned urbanizing, and future urbanizing. These three tiers comprise the basic element of the city's growth-management efforts, and they have been used to locate and focus areas of development. The purposes of this paper include: (1) Provision of a brief history of San Diego's growth-management plan; (2) a reexamination of each tier's status with respect to current conditions; (3) demonstration of the need to plan the future urbanizing area; and (4) discussion of applicable lessons for other jurisdictions. All of the information used in this analysis is public in nature.