6 - SAN DIEGO

Summary

Introduction

Look at the land as it was before any major settlement occurred upon it. That is the basis of the city's quality. We must work with that base or pay an unremitting price.

–Kevin Lynch and Donald Appleyard writing on San Diego (1974).

The city of San Diego encompasses some 403 square miles of land and water, and houses a population of 1.1 million. Located in what is ostensibly Southern California desert with a rainfall of less than ten inches per year, its climate is modified by the Pacific Ocean which gives it an average summer temperature of only 70°F. Its excellent climate and 42 miles of beaches are its great attraction, and help to account for its growth rate of 90 000 per annum through the last decade, although current rates are only half that figure. Nonetheless, growth rates of over 40 per cent are projected for jobs and households up to 2005. The city dominates the County of San Diego (2.6 million) but it is the County which provides basic municipal services, including law enforcement, public health and welfare. Metropolitan San Diego, in which the city has a 40 per cent voting stake, embraces 17 other municipalities, and this area is the focus for strategic planning by means of a General Plan. The plan therefore covers a coastal tract about 20 miles wide stretching for more than 40 miles from the huge Pendleton Marine training base (which is all that separates the outliers of Los Angeles from the San Diego conurbation) to the Mexican border (Fig. 72).