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A Place for Placemaking in San Diego
Read moreReport Summary
Both in San Diego and around the country, there are signs that leveraging the power of arts and culture into traditional planning processes can improve neighborhoods while better serving community interests. This convergence of interests has created a field that practitioners are calling creative placemaking. The movement is growing rapidly in part because cities around the U.S. are looking for tools to redevelop communities in ways that not only increase economic development, but also build social capital among community residents.
In San Diego, the movement is grassroots oriented, bubbling up through community-led projects. As the projects continue, City staff is being asked to simplify the process to make community dreams, some of which are relatively simple, become reality. Examples include street paint, benches, art in vacant lots, murals, decorative crosswalks, alley activation, landscaping, wayfinding signage, and temporary mobility enhancements-all promoted to revitalize neighborhoods and jump start the building of social capital. As much as these projects are about the product, they are also about the process. That means an authentic, community-led process that respects community history and values.
As the City strives to implement the City of Villages, and Vision Zero strategies in a manner that aligns with the new Climate Action Plan (CAP), City leaders must find opportunities to deeply engage diverse communities about their vision and priorities for the future. The emerging field of creative placemaking offers San Diego a collaborative process to tap into the talents of its thriving arts community and achieve multiple City-wide goals.
This paper outlines case studies of successful placemaking projects in San Diego, and the challenges they have faced. The paper also offers recommendations on how the City can embrace creative placemaking, based on best practices in other cities.
The case studies highlight the following recommendations:
- Create a new, user-friendly permit process to enable and encourage community-led projects,
- Pilot desired projects to determine if process is accessible to all,
- Experiment with and formalize a partnership with local artists and integrate into the existing community planning process, and
- Partner with a local arts or community organization to serve as a conduit for community engagement.
San Diego prides itself on its diverse, unique neighborhoods. Residents are willing to step up to implement their own vision of their space, especially in areas that are highly underutilized and sometimes just plain derelict. One step the City can take to achieve its own goals, is to explore creative placemaking and not only allow, but also encourage communities to work together to create the places they want to see. This requires the establishment of a new creative placemaking permit process in partnership with multiple City departments, including Development Services, Neighborhood Planning, and the Commission for Arts and Culture.
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Report: Circulate San Diego Releases New Report on the City of San Diego's Parking Rules
Circulate San Diego has just released our new report on how the City of San Diego's parking rules are barriers to Transit Oriented Development (TOD). Read the whole report here.
Executive Summary
The parking rules in the City of San Diego are generally collected in the Municipal Code, not in individual community plan documents. This presents an opportunity for parking policy to become streamlined, and comprehensive in its approach. However, current parking rules in San Diego lack cohesion.
Parking policy in San Diego is complex, inconsistent, and difficult for developers to navigate. The parking code represents a hodgepodge of different policies, layered on top of one another over time, reflect a variety of sometimes conflicting and shifting policy goals. In some circumstances, parking minimums for new developments are reduced because of lower expected or demonstrated demand. More frequently, parking minimums are increased, on the assumption that certain areas need added parking, or perhaps more cynically, to keep new developments from coming to those neighborhoods at all.
“For almost every new home constructed in San Diego, at least one new parking space is required to be built.”
For almost every new home constructed in San Diego, at least one new parking space is required to be built. This is true for even studio apartments and other homes well served by transit. San Diego’s parking rules assume every resident will drive for all of their trips. These rules are inconsistent with reality, where many San Diegans do not own a car, or would like to live without having to own a car and pay rent for car storage in the form of a reserved parking spot.
Parking minimums for new developments are generally intended to reduce the impact of a new building to the neighborhood, by limiting the number of new neighbors that use limited street parking. However, parking requirements for new developments have a variety of unintended consequences, famously identified as the “High Cost of Free Parking,” by Professor Donald Shoup, including the tendency to encourage traffic and drive up development costs and rents for end users.
While parking minimums may serve important purposes in some circumstances, parking minimums that are too high can hurt neighborhoods and limit the ability to achieve smart growth goals. The City of San Diego should examine parking reforms that will allow the City to meet its Climate Action Plan goals, and implement the General Plan’s City of Villages Strategy.
Key Findings
- Requests to lower parking requirements are burdensome and time-consuming.
- Reduction in parking minimums for areas near transit are minimal and limited.
- Assumption that all future residents will drive will not support mode share goals in the Climate Action Plan.
