The Good and the Bad
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2/6/2007
The Good: great weather; beautiful topography of bay, ocean, mountains, etc.; some beautiful older neighborhoods with lots of trees and craftsman and Spanish-style homes around Balboa Park, many things to do without driving too far, okay parking situation, great restaurants in Hillcrest and downtown, people who appear to be friendly, big choice of beaches, many distinct neighborhoods with different looks, lifestyles, etc. If you like cafes and restaurants with outdoor seating, San Diego has a lot to offer. Smokers are more unwelcome by the year, but I've seen worse in terms of smoking police (I smoke.)
Neighborhoods around Balboa Park are walkable, with their own little shopping and restaurant areas. Unlike Santa Barbara, which faces south, San Diego faces west which makes for spectacular sunsets. Great neighborhoods include Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, La Jolla, Point Loma, Little Italy (north of downtown, along the bayfront), Hillcrest, Mission Hills, University Heights and Normal Heights north of Adams Avenue, South Park, Golden Hill and Kensington. Balboa Park is amazing. So are the views from Mt. Soledad and along the waterfront downtown.
San Diegans litter to the point where they should be ashamed of themselves. What a disgrace.
Another bad thing: The way people here drive. Very aggressively, inattentively, inconsiderately, and without signaling.
To say that the city is badly run is an understatement. This city is ruled by an unholy alliance of city employee unions, big business, developers, and a planning concept called "smart growth" that involves tearing down older homes with character and replacing them with multi-family housing (thus destroying the privacy of the other single family homes in the neighborhood.)
North Park between Adams Avenue and Upas Street is a great example of a neighborhood ruined and basically turned into a ghetto by bad planning and development.
Now, the city wants to cram high-rises in these older neighborhoods even though there is no room for new roads to handle the traffic from an increased number of residents and visitors.
The redeveloped downtown is actually very nice (high-rises belong downtown), but even here, bad planning didn't take the railroad into account. Freight trains blast their horns, keeping the residents of the new high-rise condos up all night. The downtown high-rise condos with their spectacular bay and ocean views would seem to be a bargain (compared to New York,
Andrew | San Diego, CA