Could San Diego ever go down? (Los Angeles, San Francisco: middle-class, apartments, crime rate)

[sweetclimber]

San Diego will probably be alright. The people of SD will not allow the city to become anything like the craphole to the north (LA) with the huge problems that LA has

[coldwine]

San Diego's only real problem is the relative lack of jobs in the area. It's just not a big city, and it's unlikely to become one anytime in the next thirty years. There isn't a whole lot of business in the area, and California's aggressive anti-business tax code/generic law will prevent much in the way of development in the distant future.

[miamiman]

San Diego has been going down. Phoenix has shot past San Diego in population in the past 20 years. Because of natural geographic barriers (the ocean and the mountains) there is only so much land available for construction. Once buildout occurs, land prices will shoot up even more, and pretty soon few middle or lower class families will be able to afford any sort of home, even in El Cajon or Lemon Grove.

If anything, San Diego will remain what it is today. The city is definitely not growing at a rapid rate. It is overshadowed by Los Angeles and will continue to be.

[UrbanityRules]

Originally Posted by sweetclimber

San Diego will probably be alright. The people of SD will not allow the city to become anything like the craphole to the north (LA) with the huge problems that LA has

Los Angeles is not a crap hole Houston is

[kettlepot]

Originally Posted by miamiman

San Diego has been going down. Phoenix has shot past San Diego in population in the past 20 years. Because of natural geographic barriers (the ocean and the mountains) there is only so much land available for construction. Once buildout occurs, land prices will shoot up even more, and pretty soon few middle or lower class families will be able to afford any sort of home, even in El Cajon or Lemon Grove.

If anything, San Diego will remain what it is today. The city is definitely not growing at a rapid rate. It is overshadowed by Los Angeles and will continue to be.

I guess you could say San Diego is going downhill since while it is currently the 16th largest metro area in country, over the next 20 years Denver, Tampa, and Orlando will probably surpass it in population. They have room to grow, and as Miamiman said, San Diego does not.

And the point about LA's proximity hampering growth in San Diego is well taken. Still, neither of these two issues really mean San Diego will decline.

For one thing, the military presence provides a tremendous amount of stability to the area's economy. And San Diego's military port can't be replicated elsewhere on the southern west coast. LA's port is too congested with freight, and San Francisco is too venomously anti-military. But because the climate can't be beat, many boutique industries such as biotech which employ many highly paid professionals will continue to locate in San Diego. These kinds of professionals are often more lifestyle oriented than money-career oriented professionals. They want to live in an area they find pleasing, not necessarily climb the corporate ladder. These sorts of professionals are willing to pay for the lifestyle they desire. And since Biotech is medical related and has a solid foundation in the UCSD medical complex and the Salk Institute, there are solid long-term prospects for continued growth.

So, if anyone is suggesting San Diego will decline in the sense it will be come a decaying blight ridden city, I'm not buying it. But if you are saying that San Diego will "max out" in the next 20 to 30 years and decline in relationship to some faster-growing area, that undoubtedly will happen. The city could accommodate another 500k within its existing boundaries, and the county might find room to grow another 50% to 4.5 million people at some point after mid-century. But during this period, first the Denver, Tampa, and Orlando metro areas, and then later on the Sacramento, Charlotte, and San Antonio metro areas will overtake San Diego. It does help to have cheap buildable land if a city is going for mega-size. But overall the wealth and economic stability will be there to keep San Diego as an attractive economically viable entity.

Detroit it will never be.

[NewportBorn]

I hope it doesn't grow, I think the larger that socal grows = the less like socal it becomes

[esmith143]

SoCal has been going down for a while. It used to be uniformly nice as recently as 30-40 years ago. Some areas have degraded further than others. Los Angeles is way ahead, followed by Orange County and then San Diego.

LA is basically a big slum with a few wealthy pockets (San Marino, Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach), and educated professionals who can't afford San Marino are forced to commute to their jobs from exurbs like Thousand Oaks and Santa Clarita.

OC is somewhat less far gone, it's more like a patchwork quilt, with nice and pretty areas interspersed with slums. There you have Irvine, an excellent place to live, packed with professionals and high-tech jobs, and famous ultra-wealthy Newport Beach; and 5 miles away you have Santa Ana, where liquor stores and thrift stores outnumber Starbucks.

San Diego is headed this way too. Vista and Escondido are more or less completely transformed; Oceanside is struggling to remain part of "good" SoCal, but things are not looking good. Poway and Encinitas are trying to pretend that all is well, but there are pockets of discontent in both cities. Most areas south of 52 and east of 5 are experiencing white flight. A typical example is Normal Heights (zip code 92116). As recently as 1990, Normal Heights were 71% non-Hispanic white. Today it's 48% white. And even that does not show you the complete picture. If you look at school-age population, fewer than a quarter of all students are white. By contrast, the 75+ age cohort is 92% white. This pattern is typical for many parts of SoCal: long-time white residents grow old and die, and their houses are taken by young Hispanic families fresh from south of the border.

As time goes by, educated people and their children will be increasingly concentrated in the 56 corridor and North County Coast. The rest of the county will end up closely resembling LA and Miami.

My general advice to anyone looking to buy in San Diego long-term - go for substance and learn Spanish. Don't get fooled into buying a shack in University City or Hillcrest just because of school ratings or nightlife. School ratings come and go with demographics, nightlife can turn into being afraid to come out at night. But an oceanfront property will always be oceanfront, and acreage will be acreage.

[allenk893]

Originally Posted by UrbanityRules

San Diego is so fake paradise is hardly a word to describe this city. If you go there you'll see what I mean. I am not saying it's really bad like crime on every street all i am saying is that this place is very overrated I don't see whats so great about it. If you go inland it gets worse it's very hot and sprawly and everything is dumb. SD zoo is alright and so is seaWorld, but thats it. It's not really that exciting in San Diego, and the sad part is San Dieagans think there place is great and is the finest city in America when half of the people in America don't even know about San Diego let alone care about it. San Diegan's spend so much time gloating about their city they forget that nobody outside of San Diego cares.

Well hey, San Diego is alot better than San Antonio! The two cities are similar except for the climate! If people here in SA had a choice whether to live in San Diego or San Antonio, most would choose SD! The city is nicer and great weather and housing cost is different but we could deal with that.

[jkoz]

Originally Posted by kettlepot

For one thing, the military presence provides a tremendous amount of stability to the area's economy. And San Diego's military port can't be replicated elsewhere on the southern west coast. LA's port is too congested with freight, and San Francisco is too venomously anti-military. But because the climate can't be beat, many boutique industries such as biotech which employ many highly paid professionals will continue to locate in San Diego. These kinds of professionals are often more lifestyle oriented than money-career oriented professionals. They want to live in an area they find pleasing, not necessarily climb the corporate ladder. These sorts of professionals are willing to pay for the lifestyle they desire. And since Biotech is medical related and has a solid foundation in the UCSD medical complex and the Salk Institute, there are solid long-term prospects for continued growth.

That's why it could never be "Detroit", which has put all it's money in the "Big 3" - Nearly everyone there is connected and dependent on it in some way. And the pleasing climate here (which Detroit doesn't have) will always make it attractive. The "Detroit River" just doesn't have the same appeal as the Pacific! The only thing that could make S.D. anything close to Detroit in terms of crime would be if, as another poster suggested, the drug cartels move northward and take over our streets in all out drug war--Tijuana in a sense has become another Detroit-or worse actually - there weren't 800 murders on Detroit streets last year as in TJ.

[sdurbanite]

Originally Posted by miamiman

San Diego has been going down. Phoenix has shot past San Diego in population in the past 20 years. Because of natural geographic barriers (the ocean and the mountains) there is only so much land available for construction. Once buildout occurs, land prices will shoot up even more, and pretty soon few middle or lower class families will be able to afford any sort of home, even in El Cajon or Lemon Grove.

If anything, San Diego will remain what it is today. The city is definitely not growing at a rapid rate. It is overshadowed by Los Angeles and will continue to be.

How did I miss this one? So population growth determines whether a place is going up or down? If you ask me, Phoenix has been going down because it's grown too fast. Awful sprawl, increased crime, traffic, etc. I went to college in AZ and I've seen the change.

It's true that we're reaching buildout, but if we grow up (a la Vancouver or SF...not "out" like Phoenix) we could create an urban, vibrant city. Phoenix on the other hand, has always been 10-15 years behind most major cities (ie, freeways, sports teams, light rail, etc) and it's behind in planning as well. They are still mowing down the desert in order to build more ugly tract developments. Mark my words, it will be a modern day Detroit if it keeps growing like that in the future. Deteriorating core, while the suburbs grow further out.