San Diego, CA

Back in December 2023, me and my family sought to make a great escape from a belligerent amount of snow in the Southwest. We decided to head to San Diego, California. Well known for its highly deemed pride in its baseball team Padres, San Deigo is situated at the very end of Southern California, abutting its boundary with Mexico to the South. Whenever its name comes up during the conversation, I immediately act like I know the place quite well. But the trace of thoughts would circle back to blank without gathering enough data to talk about. Regardless, I always had this minimal sense of familiarity with San Diego, and I was very fortunate enough to finally visit the place, thankfully during the winter.

In a nutshell, it was one of the most exuberant cities I've ever visited. Based on my highly subjective viewpoint, I will dismantle the constituents of this city piece by piece. I will then rate how excellent these factors are out of 100 points total. There will be four indicators to measure the CEI (City Excellence Index) for San Diego, which include the following:

Walkability (General Theory of Walkability by Jeff Speck)

1. Useful - Most aspects of daily life close at hand and well-organized.
   1. Mobility
   2. Zoning
2. Safe - Streets that are designed to be safe and also feel safe to pedestrians.
   1. Streets
3. Comfortable – City streets as outdoor living rooms.
   1. Public space
4. Interesting - Sidewalks lined by unique buildings with friendly faces.
   1. Architecture

The walkability indicator relies on the four components of the General Theory of Walkability, introduced in Walkable City by Jeff Speck.

1. Is it useful?

Mobility

The place our family stayed had a trolley station nearby. There was a narrow shortcut that led us directly to the station, which only took about 5 minutes. The trolley takes passengers right to the major spots in downtown and also to the San Diego Zoo. I was astounded by the fact that there was a public transportation system located right next to a travel accommodation. Considering the location of the station, the trolley had a reasonable departure interval - approximately 15 - 30 minutes. Its operation barely makes any auditory disruptions, which made sense on why the rail was able to be placed quite near the accommodation. Despite the contentious viewpoint towards the cost-effectiveness of installing a light rail transit system in cities, I thought it could bring immense benefits to the quality of the urban mobility of a city as its low operation noise level removes the geographic limitation, meaning it can be placed anywhere.

The only thing that concerned me was the costly fare. When our family did the math, we would be worse off if we chose the trolley over driving to make our trip downtown. For the sake of convenience and efficiency of our trip, our family eventually decided to drive downtown instead of taking the trolley. But this is where I felt the need for incentives on the trolley usage to make it the most ideal transportation method to utilize. Perhaps the congestion pricing policy could facilitate this transition from automobiles to the trolley, which the City Council in San Diego seems to be working on officializing lately.

I did not see any bike-sharing stations during my visit. It appears that the city itself does not have a bike-sharing system, but there are several companies that provide one, according to the web source. The distribution of the docking station seemed to be quite limited as I did not spot a single one during my stay there.

Zoning

If you take a stroll through downtown San Diego, numerous coffee shops, restaurants, and retail stores are lined up on the ground floor, holding up two to three-story residential spaces above. Although such a form of development is commonly found in South Korea, especially near the planned community I used to live in back in my elementary school days, I was getting a bit tired of being surrounded by cookie-cutter single-family homes in my neighborhood here in America. Well, San Diego was a perfect remedy to this "suburban sickness" I was having. Although not all streets were zoned for mixed-use development, you should be able to spot one or two for every two or three blocks you walk down.

I've always dreamed of living downtown, getting my sleep disrupted every morning by the sweet wake-up call from the coffee shop owner with a long-lasting smell of roasted coffee beans. I was happy that I could picture myself living in a part of the mixed-use development as I was making my way downtown, fully immersed in the bustling city life. I would never get tired of visiting San Diego with a vast spectrum of interesting and exciting developments.

2. Is it safe?

I felt quite safe walking through downtown San Diego despite the wide car lanes. Downtown San Diego streets follow a simple grid structure, similar to the one in Manhattan. Such street network provides an intuitive sense of direction, allowing the users to easily interpret the space, which therefore makes it easier and safer to occupy the space. I feel safe when I don't have to worry about the incoming traffic looming from random corners of the intersection. The grid street network with intersections allowed me to fully recognize the space and proceed to cross the road without having to be concerned about speeding traffic.

Additionally, there were trees planted along pretty much every street I walked on. These trees were perceived as the barrier on the side of the sidewalk that provided a sense of enclosure and security from vehicles traveling at a much faster speed than pedestrians.

I would also occasionally walk through outdoor dining spaces or local residents walking their dogs or jogging. Having these "eyes on the street" adds vibrancy to the space and made me feel safe enough to remain on the street as a pedestrian.

3. Is it comfortable?

Overall, San Diego provides a decent level of comfort to pedestrians, especially in terms of providing sufficient public spaces.

Public Space

It is my personal belief that city spaces need to have many small-scale local parks within a walkable distance of living spaces rather than having one, big major park acting as an anchor spot that attracts the majority of the population. There are multiple reasons why cities should have small parks, but the main reason is that each public space acts as a detour for pedestrians. Not a single city - regardless of how attractive it shows - cannot keep a man dazzled for eight consecutive hours. Pedestrians do get tired and need a spot to rest their legs. They could walk into a restaurant or a coffee shop to do this, but that requires a fee, meaning they need to pay to occupy the space. No one likes a pricy city, so perhaps a space without any entrance fee would be preferred. These free spaces would be a lot more likely to be occupied if they were located along the pathways that people often take. Downtown San Diego, even though not as much density as the one in Manhattan, comes in handy with small parks sparsely situated throughout the streets.

I started walking from the Tuna Harbor on the West-end border of the city and walked straight down to appreciate the beauty of the Seaport Village. This pathway from Tuna Harbor to Seaport Village was a pedestrian street that connected the plaza spots along the coast. On my way down to Seaport Village, I was able to relax by the pier or the park located in between those two spots. I was given the authority to choose to either sit at one of the public seating areas and stay or continue to walk.

I left Seaport Village and decided to take a walk to Little Italy as I had always been mesmerized by the aesthetics of urban diaspora that retains the depth of the historical and cultural heritage of a nation. On my way to Little Italy, I unexpectedly ran into a small local park called Pantoja Park.

There were trees, a statue, and an open field with benches along the park trail. This tiny but accessible space felt like it provided the needed ventilation in the midst of buzzing streets in the downtown region, almost like an urban sanctuary where people could surround themselves with trees and greenery. I cherish this moment of sitting down at one of the benches at the park while gazing at the canopies of an old chestnut tree that stood there for however long. Surprisingly, quite a few memorable moments were made at such small-scale parks.

4. Is it interesting?

Architecture

According to an article posted in one of the CNU journals, people tend to have more "choices" in a grid street network. I believe these "choices" refer to the options we have at the intersection of the streets. A Korean architect named Hyunjoon Yoo studied the components that make city spaces interesting to occupy mentioned that the space becomes interactive and entertaining to occupy when the users get the most authority on the street. At every intersection of the street, I had multiple options to choose from - cross the road, take a turn, or continue to walk straight. Every block has different types of development, varying from restaurants to retail stores. These variations that occur after walking through each intersection are what made San Diego quite entertaining to occupy, at least for me.

The buildings were largely built in modern style architecture. I spotted some stereotypical high-rise office structures encased with glaring window glasses (seems like having these buildings has become one of the prerequisites to deem a city space as downtown) but what caught my attention the most was the decreasing scale of development as I proceeded towards the core of the downtown area. As I mentioned in the "Useful" section, mixed-use buildings that are 3-4 stories tall began to define the dimension of the street I was walking. This sense of enclosure by low-rise structures on the street felt less hostile, meaning the scale of the overall space came down closer to the human scale. I've met and read a fair share of city lovers claiming that they had more fun in the city when the buildings were lower. Considering that most of the beloved cities in Europe tend to build up to a couple stories or so, I think it's safe to say that cities with buildings that are closest to the human scale have the most potential to entertain pedestrians.

Total Score: 85 / 100 points

Despite a pricy fare, I thought the highly accessible trolley system provided great transportation access to city dwellers with decent coverage throughout the downtown area while dense mixed-use development at the urban core reflected the main idea of creating useful destinations within a walkable distance quite well. Multiple pedestrian-only plazas and wide sidewalks with trees acting as a barrier from fast-moving vehicles did ensure the safety of pedestrians, but the road lanes were wider than I expected, which didn't cause any difficulty in navigating through the area, but thought that could be improved for pedestrians. One suggestion I imagined was to install chicanes and diverters on blocks that get heavy pedestrian traffic to reduce the traveling speed of vehicles. I highly admired the locations and quality of the public space in the area. I loved how parks weren't lavishly designed. They were so plain that users could paint their own colors with their memories. While the city certainly presents interesting forms of cityscape, I thought more stories could be told. A 15-minute trolley ride takes me from downtown to a historic preservation site called "Old Town San Diego" where residential buildings and retail stores from the 1820's, tell a vast history of San Diego. I felt that these historic buildings downtown could be the hidden gems among the box-shaped modernized glass buildings, which I believe is a huge addition to the city as an interesting destination.

Disclaimer: This blog contains highly subjective opinions of the author. As a matter of fact, it is meant to be subjective. This blog was written solely based on the experience the author had while visiting the place of interest..

Written By Taeyoung (Paul) Kim

Last Edited: November 20th, 2024