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 he Central San Diego community got its chance to voice
its concerns to The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG)
and among themselves at the second Region 2020 Growth and Transportation
Workshop, held in the Inn Suites Hotel on El Cajon Boulevard
in North Park last month. More than 95 activists from communities,
agencies and non-profits attended this show given by SANDAG to
inform us of its predictions and plans for the coming two decades.
And, they seemed to listen to the feedback as they put on the
show. "The stars are aligned," said Gail Goldberg,
City of San Diego planner, as she introduced City of San Diego
councilmember Byron Wear, and SANDAG staff members Gary Bonelli
and Mike Mc-Laughin, and one wasn't sure if she was talking about
the predictions or the people.
 Attendees
were first shown a video, a "Tomorrowland" look at
what commuting will be like in 2020, with trains, lane dividers,
wrist TVs, and -- the best yet -- "computer-controlled commuter
lanes" that will greatly decrease the time spent going from
here to there. And why? Because one million additional people
appeared and San Diego responded by growing, approving wonders
such as Vista Village and Otay Ranch (named in the video).
Next, Gary
Bonelli, SANDAG Communications Director, led us through the predictions,
all based on that passive acceptance of an increase of 1.2 million
people, 60 percent due to "natural increase" rather
than in-migration. During this part of the presentation, both
Gary and emcee Mike McLaughin, Director of Land Use Planning,
took questions. It quickly became apparent that those present
were not concerned so much with transportation issues alone as
with a range of connected concerns: preserving open space and
dealing with the issues faced by a greatly densified center city,
such as schools, affordable housing, public transit and safe
neighborhoods.
For a while,
the presenters didn't quite get it. I was able to ask two questions
at this point, both of which got a passive treatment: "Is
there nothing we can do about a 1 million person increase in
our population?" and "Why is demand-side management
of traffic the third and last of the options on your traffic
solutions list?" [see story on page 7 for more information
on this approach] The first question was ignored with a shrug
of the shoulders from Mike, and the last was answered by Gary:
"It just happens to be the smallest component of the three.
We'd like it to be more, but it isn't." By the way, this
prediction stuff is from the "2020 Cities/County Forecast,"
Sept/Oct 1999, at the SANDAG website: www.sandag.cog.ca.us/whats_new/publications/infos/info_1999_5.pdf.
The slide
show was next, which was done as a survey of the audience: what
they liked and didn't like in this picture. Fun. Two things I
noticed were that we all seemed to like a human scale in our
land use, be it road or house or skyscraper or neighborhood,
and there were an awful lot of pictures of cars and roads. This
transport sucks a lot of human energy from us and the Earth,
too.
Byron Wear
next presented a report on two success stories of city growth:
the trolley line from the stadium to Grossmont through Mission
Valley, and various projects in Little Italy (ironically "brought
'back' from I-5"), Market St. Square in Downtown, office-to-housing
development. He then promised a "Park linkage in Midway/Sports
Arena" between NTC and Mission Bay, which led into questions
about non-point source pollution. Byron had three solutions for
this "top priority": more diverter systems (like the
one around Mission Bay), going after violators, and "Think
Blue" citizen education about runoff hazards.
Eric Bowlby,
San Diego Sierra Club Chapter Chair, now questioned and commented:
Diverters are fine, until it rains, and everything goes into
the sea we need to save and create wetlands, to promote water
quality. Wear supported this in concept, but the reality is that
we have land uses in place. Eric commented on transportation:
The trolley is at grade level, what we need is an elevated system
around town, and a high-speed system on I-15. Wear: "We'll
look at everything."
Alex Sachs
of HUD pointed out that there were lots of good things in Mission
Valley, but what was missing was affordable housing, the low
to moderate kind mandated by federal projects.
We looked
at the results from the slide show survey. We knew that.
The time for
feedback was now at hand. Mike led the discussion. Some high
points:
Joe Wolf,
of the San Diego Unified School District (he plans new schools)
pointed out that, according to SANDAG's growth predictions, financing
for school infrastructure will be far from adequate. Mike's answer:
"fiscal reform."
SDSU Professor
Jim Wright asked about Mexico, a question on a couple of other
people's minds. Are we ignoring Tijuana in our predictions and
plans? What about the proposed train between Tijuana and Arizona?
"Very important" to a "binational" SANDAG,
said Mike.
Mel Shapiro
commented on the need to stimulate jobs, and asked the theme
question of the night, "How do we balance growth incentives
with affordable housing incentives?" He pointed out the
link between housing affordability and economic success for citizens.
Another participant brought out that San Diego, at present, has
the lowest "affordability index" between jobs and housing
in California. We heard a long speech from a man from North Park
about "attitudes" in public transportation and about
the homeless, with a long detailed list of the bus routes not
available to center-city residents to points north, like Kaiser
Hospital and the Veteran's Hospital, Tecolote canyon and Mission
Trails Park.
James Sisson
asked, "economic prosperity for whom?" and called for
a "coordinated inner-city business strategy." Bob Forsythe
said the real problem is the way the City allocates funds, giving
out examples of Park and Recreation facilities available to Tierrasanta
residents versus Normal Heights citizens. Glass backboards for
Tierrasanta, chain-link nets for Normal Heights; we need "an
absolute and total change" in the way the city allocates
funds. SANDAG Mike's answer for all these problems and concerns
was the same, and it happens to be the fifth item in the Region
2020 Plan, State/Local Tax Reform.
Jim Peugh
of San Diego Audubon came up with the catch phrase of the night,
as part of his comments. He said that we have focused too much
with getting people to where they need to go faster and easier
-- our transportation policy is geared towards increasing mobility.
His solution was "anti-mobility": the idea of putting
goods and services where the people are, so they don't have to
travel far to get the things they need. After this brainchild,
he made two very specific environmental points. First, preserving
open space is not enough. We need to preserve our waterways along
with the open space beside them, to keep our beaches clean, our
habitat habitable, and (unspoken) our birds alive. Second, the
prediction of a 229% increase in population in the backcountry
(47,000 housing units) by SANDAG is unacceptable. "Not smart,"
were his words.
As things
were winding down, Courtney Coyle asked that we not ignore historical
buildings in our quest for affordable, high density housing.
Our cultural resources are important, too. The wrap-up began
with an announcement by Mike and Gary of the removal from consideration
of some proposed freeways. They proudly brought up a map of the
County Regional Highway System (Oct. 1999) with several scratched-out
roads: sections of Hwys. 67, 78, 94, and 8 were now crossed out
for freeway expansion on their eastern ends. Several of us offered
them our own personal felt pens with suggestions to "cross
out 125, and we'll be happy." Ha-Ha.
They took
it all down; here's their list.
- Balance population growth incentives with
affordability.
- Focus on anti-mobility(!)
- Change attitude
- Preserve open space in backcountry
- Solve homeless problem
- Tax reform
- Finance implementation of community plans
This
list, they admitted, "was substantially different"
than the one they had before. I bet. I have a slick new folder
with several pieces of literature in it, they had good coffee,
good cookies, and they knew how to use a power point. I was impressed.
The Hotel had no bicycle racks. 
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