More apartments, less segregation, fewer cars: San Diego OKs sweeping changes to growth blueprint

San Diego made ambitious changes Tuesday to the city’s blueprint for future growth that prepare the city for climate change, speed up revisions to neighborhood zoning plans and try to reverse racial segregation.

“This is a major step forward in terms of how we are not just planning for but shaping the future that San Diego needs,” Council President Sean Elo-Rivera said after the council unanimously approved the moves.

Council members praised the changes, called Blueprint SD, for combining an array of city goals into one document to create the first new big-picture vision for San Diego since the anti-sprawl City of Villages plan in 2008.

“We are in an era where it’s not simply enough to say we need more housing or that we need more transit or that we need more infrastructure,” Councilmember Kent Lee said. “They are all interconnected, and if we’re not able to accomplish them together, then we’re not going to be able to build the city we envision.”

The amended general plan aims to fight climate change by steering new housing into transit-friendly areas so more people can get to work without a car.

It also will allow San Diego to complete updates much more quickly to growth blueprints, called community plan updates, for individual neighborhoods — roughly three years per plan, instead of the usual five or six.

And it seeks to reverse decades of racial and ethnic segregation that began with deed restrictions and discriminatory lending practices beginning nearly a century ago that excluded people of color from some neighborhoods, and then were reinforced by single-family zoning policies that remain mostly in place today.

It would do that by encouraging more apartments and multi-family housing in predominantly White areas of the city deemed “high-resource” because they have high-paying jobs, quality schools and neighborhood amenities, such as parks.

A pro-growth group called Yes in My Backyard San Diego singled out the anti-segregation efforts for praise during a two-hour public hearing Tuesday.

“This plan dares to challenge our segregated housing patterns,” said Saad Asad, the advocacy and communications chair for YIMBY San Diego. “Integration and opportunity are more important than maintaining exclusive enclaves.”

But the plan was criticized by many groups that consistently oppose city efforts to boost housing production. Some said it would destroy the city’s single-family neighborhoods, and some critics said San Diego should be less aggressive about encouraging dense housing, since regional planners have reduced future population projections.

Heidi Vonblum, the city’s planning director, said lower population projections don’t mean the city’s housing crisis has been solved.

“Population growth does not equal housing need,” she said. “There is a current undersupply of housing production that has occurred over the past several decades.”

While San Diego officials tout Blueprint SD as something that will help the city meet its climate action plan goals, environmental groups criticized the plan Tuesday.

The local chapter of the Sierra Club said it’s flawed because it targets growth in areas where buses, trolleys and other transit options don’t yet exist, rather than focusing on areas with transit already in place.

The group wants the city to amend a programmatic environmental impact report that analyzed Blueprint SD and pending changes to neighborhood growth blueprints for Hillcrest and University City.

“A glaring deficiency is that much of this transit does not currently exist,” said club leader Charles Rilli. “The PEIR must be revised to describe how, when and where this transit infrastructure will be implemented.”

Councilmember Henry Foster, whose district includes ethnically diverse and low-income neighborhoods in southeastern San Diego, said part of the city’s anti-segregation efforts should include monitoring where poverty is concentrated.

Business groups, including the Building Industry Association and the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, support Blueprint SD.

They raised questions Tuesday about a late change to Blueprint SD that requires new buildings to be powered by electricity instead of gas. But Councilmember Joe LaCava noted that requirement is already part of the city’s climate action plan.

LaCava praised Blueprint SD for making the city’s big-picture general plan mirror many policies approved since the general plan was last updated 16 years ago.

In addition to the 2015 climate action plan, those policies include a 2021 parks master plan that tries to boost social equity by funneling developer money from wealthy areas into lower-income areas.

Mayor Todd Gloria, whose planning staff spearheaded Blueprint SD, said after the vote: “Blueprint SD is a bold step forward in creating an equitable and sustainable future for all San Diegans. The plan will help us address our housing needs, support economic growth and make significant progress toward our climate goals. This updated framework ensures that our city grows in a way that benefits everyone, now and in the future.”

Originally Published: July 23, 2024 at 7:33 p.m.