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The University area is one of 53 community planning areas in the City of San Diego. And this one, as the name suggests, houses the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), which is at the northern end of the blue transit line.
The last time the University Community Plan was updated was in 1987, and so it's an old plan and it is currently being redone to better align with the City's current strategic plan -- which includes things like "creating homes for all of us" and "championing sustainability."
The final draft community plan won't be available until later this year, but there are two draft scenarios available for download. Here's what Scenario A looks like:
The "T" circles are transit stops on the Blue Line (which runs south to downtown and then to the Mexico border), the olive green areas are institutional (UCSD, hospital, etc.), and the purple areas are "urban villages" with densities that go as high as 218 dwelling units per acre (darkest purple). For the other areas, please refer to the legend.
Now let's put this residential density into some sort of context. One acre = 43,560 square feet. So we're talking about 218 homes on every 43,560 square feet of land. For context, our mid-rise Junction House project is 151 homes and our site area is approximately 22,000 square feet (about 0.5 acres). That puts us at roughly 302 homes per acre -- more than what is proposed here.
In total the revised plan could allow for somewhere between 35,000 to 56,000 new homes in the University City area. Not surprisingly, the community has reacted by organizing rallies, such as this one, here, called "Honks against housing":
(I used a screenshot because embedded tweets don’t seem to show up properly in my email newsletter.)
This is, again, not unexpected. And all of the typical things could be said about incumbent residents opposing new homes on top of an existing transit line, next to a major university. But what stands out to me about this protest is its format.
These residents are worried that high-rises will destroy their community. So presumably they are looking to get the word out to as many people as possible. And one of the ways they have decided to do that is stand on the side of a busy road and appeal to people in their cars.
Ironically, I think this actually reinforces the need for an updated Community Plan. Because it speaks to the car-oriented nature of this community and the need for better land use planning around its existing transit stations.
In my view, the line of thinking here should not be, "this is going to destroy our community. How will our roads ever accommodate 35,000 new homes?" It should be, "how do we better plan this community so that our next generation of residents have the luxury not to have to drive everywhere?"
If you'd like to offer constructive feedback on this plan, I'm told that you can email Nancy Graham at nhgraham@sandiego.gov.
Real estate is a local business. And this weekend in Philadelphia really reminded me of that.
Here’s what I mean.
The real estate story in Toronto is condos. We’re buildings lots and lots of condos. When my friend from Chicago recently visited Toronto for the first time, he told me that it feels very similar to Chicago, except that we have modern glass condo towers going up everywhere and they don’t. That’s our story right now.
Low-rise housing in Toronto is becoming increasingly unaffordable (the average price of a detached home is well north of $1M) and so high-rise condos are now what many people can afford. When young people in Toronto talk about buying their first place, that now usually means a condo.
But that’s not the story in Philadelphia.
In Philadelphia, you can buy a 1,600 square foot, 2 storey, 2 bedroom rowhouse in a respectable neighborhood for sub US$400,000. And in speaking with my friends in Philly this weekend, that’s what young people are buying.
This doesn’t mean that Philadelphia isn’t building new high-rise condos and apartments. It is. Obviously nowhere near as many as Toronto. But it is building. Far more than when I lived there before the Great Recession.
However, the condo market is typically more upmarket. The target market isn’t so much first time buyers and the mass market; it’s more people who want full floor apartments in Rittenhouse Square. (I’m exaggerating only slightly.)
Philadelphia is also building more rental towers than condo towers. (Rental has only recently become fashionable again in Toronto.)
I’m guessing that a lot of this has to do with the fact that Philadelphia draws in a lot of transient students and academics each year. In fact, the most noticeably changed area from when I lived in Philly was University City. That’s the area that houses the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University.
So there seems to be strong demand for new rental housing in the city. I’m told vacancies are very low. But when it comes time to buy, young people don’t look to condos like they do in Toronto. They are looking mostly to rowhouses.
This is interesting to me because it’s the exact opposite of Toronto. In Toronto, low-rise is expensive and so lots more people are buying high-rise. In Philadelphia, high-rise is expensive and so people are buying low-rise.
I guess that’s why they say real estate is a local business. What works in one city may not work in another.
The University area is one of 53 community planning areas in the City of San Diego. And this one, as the name suggests, houses the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), which is at the northern end of the blue transit line.
The last time the University Community Plan was updated was in 1987, and so it's an old plan and it is currently being redone to better align with the City's current strategic plan -- which includes things like "creating homes for all of us" and "championing sustainability."
The final draft community plan won't be available until later this year, but there are two draft scenarios available for download. Here's what Scenario A looks like:
The "T" circles are transit stops on the Blue Line (which runs south to downtown and then to the Mexico border), the olive green areas are institutional (UCSD, hospital, etc.), and the purple areas are "urban villages" with densities that go as high as 218 dwelling units per acre (darkest purple). For the other areas, please refer to the legend.
Now let's put this residential density into some sort of context. One acre = 43,560 square feet. So we're talking about 218 homes on every 43,560 square feet of land. For context, our mid-rise Junction House project is 151 homes and our site area is approximately 22,000 square feet (about 0.5 acres). That puts us at roughly 302 homes per acre -- more than what is proposed here.
In total the revised plan could allow for somewhere between 35,000 to 56,000 new homes in the University City area. Not surprisingly, the community has reacted by organizing rallies, such as this one, here, called "Honks against housing":
(I used a screenshot because embedded tweets don’t seem to show up properly in my email newsletter.)
This is, again, not unexpected. And all of the typical things could be said about incumbent residents opposing new homes on top of an existing transit line, next to a major university. But what stands out to me about this protest is its format.
These residents are worried that high-rises will destroy their community. So presumably they are looking to get the word out to as many people as possible. And one of the ways they have decided to do that is stand on the side of a busy road and appeal to people in their cars.
Ironically, I think this actually reinforces the need for an updated Community Plan. Because it speaks to the car-oriented nature of this community and the need for better land use planning around its existing transit stations.
In my view, the line of thinking here should not be, "this is going to destroy our community. How will our roads ever accommodate 35,000 new homes?" It should be, "how do we better plan this community so that our next generation of residents have the luxury not to have to drive everywhere?"
If you'd like to offer constructive feedback on this plan, I'm told that you can email Nancy Graham at nhgraham@sandiego.gov.
Real estate is a local business. And this weekend in Philadelphia really reminded me of that.
Here’s what I mean.
The real estate story in Toronto is condos. We’re buildings lots and lots of condos. When my friend from Chicago recently visited Toronto for the first time, he told me that it feels very similar to Chicago, except that we have modern glass condo towers going up everywhere and they don’t. That’s our story right now.
Low-rise housing in Toronto is becoming increasingly unaffordable (the average price of a detached home is well north of $1M) and so high-rise condos are now what many people can afford. When young people in Toronto talk about buying their first place, that now usually means a condo.
But that’s not the story in Philadelphia.
In Philadelphia, you can buy a 1,600 square foot, 2 storey, 2 bedroom rowhouse in a respectable neighborhood for sub US$400,000. And in speaking with my friends in Philly this weekend, that’s what young people are buying.
This doesn’t mean that Philadelphia isn’t building new high-rise condos and apartments. It is. Obviously nowhere near as many as Toronto. But it is building. Far more than when I lived there before the Great Recession.
However, the condo market is typically more upmarket. The target market isn’t so much first time buyers and the mass market; it’s more people who want full floor apartments in Rittenhouse Square. (I’m exaggerating only slightly.)
Philadelphia is also building more rental towers than condo towers. (Rental has only recently become fashionable again in Toronto.)
I’m guessing that a lot of this has to do with the fact that Philadelphia draws in a lot of transient students and academics each year. In fact, the most noticeably changed area from when I lived in Philly was University City. That’s the area that houses the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University.
So there seems to be strong demand for new rental housing in the city. I’m told vacancies are very low. But when it comes time to buy, young people don’t look to condos like they do in Toronto. They are looking mostly to rowhouses.
This is interesting to me because it’s the exact opposite of Toronto. In Toronto, low-rise is expensive and so lots more people are buying high-rise. In Philadelphia, high-rise is expensive and so people are buying low-rise.
I guess that’s why they say real estate is a local business. What works in one city may not work in another.
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