How does San Diego compare?

[Oerdin]

Yeah, having the airport downtown, which BTW is extremely convenient, does mean the approaches and flight paths need to be kept clear. That means the heights of buildings is severely restricted in many parts of downtown.

[Oerdin]

Originally Posted by Sassberto

He obviously is not aware of the city income tax, not to mention the commuter tax and the medieval fiefdom-type municipal tax system that is common throughout the northeast. California is like a carribean island compared to NY/NJ.

Over all California is just about in the middle of the pack when it comes to taxes in the US. California's average tax rate is 10.3% with the national average (50 states plus DC) being 10.1%. The property tax rate is actually well below the national average; like 50% below. Even Texas averages almost twice the property tax rate.

CNNMoney.com: Taxes by state 2005, by rate

[NorthSDLifer]

Hmmm. I wonder what 2009 looks like? Our sales tax is pretty high now. Same for income tax. Our gas taxes are right up there too, no?

[ranzchic]

SDLIFE, remember, downtown was still a dump 10 or so years ago. Padres stadium was only recently opened in 2004, iirc. The revitalization is still an ongoing process down there.

The next civic project seems to be the Library and the waterfront development, and removing all those parking lots in or around city hall. I expect the speed of things to pick up once the recession is done by the end of this year.

[sdurbanite]

Originally Posted by sav858

The problem with San Diego is some people who constantly try to compare to cities above it on another level like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and even NEW YORK. Places like Minneapolis, Portland, Cleveland, Phoenix, Tampa, etc..are better comparisons and NOT Boston, NYC, Chicago, or some major world class city like that. I get so tired of people trying to compare this city to places it should NOT be compared to at all.

Exactly. It's ridiculous that SD is even mentioned in the same sentence as NYC, SF, Boston, Chi, etc, when it comes to urbanity. The same goes for LA. It has 13 million people in it's metro compared to SD's 3 million, so logically it's going to have more of everything.

The above comparisons always seem to come from people who used to live here and have since moved on to the "Big City", wherever it may be. All I have to say to that is, good for you.

[sdlife619]

Ok sorry if I got some of you a little heated, I know it's completely not fair to compare SD to other bigger Metro's.

So, instead of basing this comparison against other huge cities, where does SD stand in the middle of them all?

One thing I didn't realize is that places like Detriot, Chicago, Philly, Boston all cover less ground per square mile compared to SD. While SD city covers over 320 square miles, so in a sense SD is much bigger and covers way more space, but doesn't feel as big. The density index really shows the difference in how we are built vs East Coast cities, the margin gap is huge.

Also it's kinda lame how some Metros like to feel bigger by combining multipile counties together (especially when a city might only have a half a million people), when some of these area's are very far away from the city core itself.

In SD it's just us, that's like if SD county included Riverside County into our Metro, it's pretty stupid. Now TJ makes a little more sense, because it's closer and we have people constantly passing through the border all the time. If you wanted to include TJ into SD's Metro, that would put the grand total of people living here including all of TJ to Camp Penalton to about 5 Million. Which is a lot of people, it sure doesn't feel like it, because hey! Everyone's on vaction in SD

[zango]

Hmm. Well, San Diego is a low rise city. Unless you include downtown. Which is still pretty small. So the density has spilled out into the suburbs. And it shows. Lot sizes for homes in SoCal are like postage stamps. Even Miami has larger lot sizes than San Diego. Unless you are talking about Miami Beach. Which is a whole different ballgame. Still, i would rank San Diego in the top 5 cities in the U.S. And that is saying something.

[SEAandATL]

San Diego feels just like Tokyo (j/k, lol). Actually its more like Yokohama, at least in the downtown area. The trolley system is decent, but it's no where near the train system of the Tokyo/Yokohama Metro area (but then again what is?) I just think they could use some rapid or light rail lines in areas which don't have them, such as the Airport, Balboa Park, Sea World, or the beach neighborhoods.

When I first arrived to San Diego from Atlanta over 10 years ago, I felt that S.D. was smaller and slower than Atlanta. I felt that Los Angeles had more of the Atlanta feel with its downtown skyline and the urban/hip-hop culture. Since then, San Diego has grown a lot and there has been a construction boom in downtown over the last few years.

[ranzchic]

I actually like the downtown height limit. It ensures that the density is not focused on one small area and the love is spread around a bit more especially around Balboa Park.

A people sized living space is alot more attractive to me than supertalls+bad street scene Think of old European cities.

Just look at Dubai at what can go wrong when it comes to dense city planning. I call it the suburbs that happen to have superscrapers.