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 oney magazine's 14th annual ranking of the nation's best
places to live has declared Portland the winner. This will come
as no surprise to the endless stream of planners, urbanists,
politicians, and public administrators from all over the world
who travel to Portland to learn how to make their own cities
"livable," i.e., prosperous in the global economy while
maintaining a high quality of life for all of their citizens.
What they learn is that Portland's livability was not achieved
overnight or at the behest of a few powerful actors. In fact,
Portland's commitment to limit growth around its periphery by
funneling development toward its center dates back at least three
decades and has been sustained throughout this time by a growing
network of environmental, business, farming, community development,
and affordable housing organizations. It is no accident that
Portland is considered the model for effective urban planning
and growth management. |
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 There
was a time when San Diego claimed that honor. In 1979, the city
adopted a "tier" approach to growth management, a strategy
that, as in Portland, encouraged infill and denser development
in the already urbanized communities by not assessing fees for
development; major new growth was to be accommodated in the "planned
urbanizing" tier, where all capital facilities (the parks,
libraries, schools, streets, etc.) would be financed through
fees paid by the developers. And, to phase growth, a "future
urbanizing" tier was established, outlying areas to be kept
off-limits to development for at least 25 years.
During the
early 1980s, San Diego's growth management strategy seemed to
be working well. Infill development proceeded at a brisk pace
in the urbanized communities and, following a spate of legal
wrangling, "facilities benefit assessment" fees were
collected from developers to pay for public infrastructure in
the planned urbanizing tier. According to a San Diego planning
department document, the city was "considered a model for
effective management of growth."
But sic
transit gloria mundi. Bowing to developer pressure and in
violation of its own growth management policies, the city council
began approving projects in the future urbanizing tier. Overcoming
a 10-to-one financial handicap vis-a-vis the developers, enraged
citizens initiated and passed a ballot initiative in 1985 that
transferred final authority for development in the future urbanizing
tier out of the hands of the city council and directly to the
voters.
At the same
time, the rapid surge in growth of the mid-1980s had serious
repercussions in the urbanized neighborhoods. One after another,
single family neighborhoods were invaded by multifamily buildings,
many of them insensitively designed, and community facilities
were overwhelmed by the onslaught of newcomers. Not until 1987
did the city council began imposing fees on new development in
the urbanized communities -- too little and too late -- to avert
a huge shortfall in public facilities.
Since that
time, the city has done practically nothing to address this deficit.
A few years ago, long-term community activist and former planning
commissioner, Verna Quinn, lamented that "uncontrolled,
unplanned, haphazard infill has left a legacy of deficient parks,
lack of schools and general deterioration with increased social
problems and crime. No one was watching or listening during the
decade all this took place -- and now the city is faced with
a major problem which will require long-term remediation and
huge commitments of public resources." How huge? The city's
most recent estimate for funding the backlog of parks and recreation,
transportation, fire, and library needs is $2.5 billion. Yes,
that's $ with a "b."
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The
deficit in public facilities in the urbanized communities is
grave at many levels. For starters, consider these two:
1) Equity
If the
most important function of local government is the equitable
distribution and provision of public facilities and services
to its citizens, then San Diego has failed miserably. Public
facilities deficits plague San Diego's older, urbanized neighborhoods
south of Route 52, where most of the minority, lower-income population
of the city is concentrated. Newer communities, on the other
hand, enjoy public facilities that actually exceed city standards.
Although built with developers' fees, they go on to exact a disproportionate
share of the city budget for ongoing maintenance and operation.
San Diego's
delinquent urban policy intensifies an ominous drift toward becoming
a socially, economically, and racially fractured city. Contrast
the San Diego situation with that of Portland where, as a result
of deliberate, long-established neighborhood conservation policies
that emphasize housing rehabilitation and quotidian amenities,
older residential neighborhoods are well-served by public facilities,
socially integrated, and successfully competitive with the suburbs.
Furthermore, Portland has accrued many side benefits of those
policies, including active civic participation and enhanced potential
for consensus, and hence for good planning. It is a city that
works precisely because it works for everybody.
2) Quality of Life
Our
public facilities deficit hampers the possibilities for "smart
growth" -- limiting sprawl at the periphery of the region
while encouraging development, through densification and infill,
in the already urbanized communities, thus preserving open space
in the "back country" and reducing overall public infrastructure
costs. Portland's long-term strategy of investment in its urbanized
communities exemplifies smart growth. But while the city of San
Diego has embarked on a similar strategy of densification to
accommodate approximately 400,000 more people in the next 20
years, we have not answered a pivotal question. How can we ask
the urbanized communities to accommodate the brunt of growth
when they lack essential facilities? Without realistic investment
to revitalize these areas, we're setting ourselves up for disaster.
With the development
of a new Strategic Framework Element of the General Plan, the
magnitude of the problem will inevitably be laid bare, as neighborhoods
confront proposals for increased densification in the absence
of adequate funding plans for needed parks, libraries, sidewalks,
etc. Compared to other California cities, our general fund revenues
are low. In San Diego, it amounts to $425 per capita, about half
that in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Our business tax and hotel
taxes are among the lowest in the state. We are the only city
in the region that does not charge a separate fee for refuse
collection. Will the new mayor and council have the political
courage to revisit these and other "sacred cows"?
With the city
already scrambling for revenues for problematic projects like
the downtown ballpark, the revitalization of the neighborhoods
represents more than a planning and financial challenge for the
city. To the citizens of San Diego, it will be the litmus test
of whether our newly elected officials will choose to balance
the influence of powerful special interests with a more inclusive
conception of the public interest. How will they respond now
that the campaign rhetoric is over? Will they join their predecessors
in attempting to sweep this gargantuan dilemma under the rug?
Or will they choose urban infrastructure as their top priority?
To do otherwise risks tearing the city apart. 
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mail.sdsu.edu.