Despite the high emotions and heated debates between competing visions \u2014 Soccer City (Measure E) and SDSU West (Measure G) \u2014 for redevelopment of the Mission Valley Qualcomm site, no transcendent \u201cbig idea\u201d seems to have yet emerged. But there have been missed opportunities.<\/p>\n
First, neither proposal convincingly makes the case for creating a destination in Mission Valley that fully embraces the connection between global climate change and resilient design. Turning the Qualcomm site into an \u201cecocity\u201d could put San Diego on the cutting edge of environmental design in large metropolitan regions. Paolo Soleri\u2019s Arcosanti project, 70 miles north of Phoenix, is one such example, merging architecture and ecology as an alternative to urban sprawl.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Second, voters ought to be asking which proposal, if any, offers a truly inspiring \u201csense of place\u201d for the Qualcomm site, in a valley that has had almost no identity for more than a half century.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s be clear, Mission Valley has been a planning disaster for decades. Redevelopment on the site offers a rare second chance for the city to begin to retrofit Mission Valley, and finally overcome the legacy of bad planning decisions, that have led to what is today an auto-centric, placeless hodgepodge of disjointed and isolated fragments \u2014 Hazard Center, Fashion Valley, Fenton Marketplace, Mission Valley Center.<\/p>\n A Mission Valley \u201cecocity\u201d on the Qualcomm site would be all about creating a self-sustaining place where every facet of its design embraces the natural environment: green building materials, rooftop urban gardens, solar grids, water recycling with the San Diego River, canals or waterways, and bike-ped greenways.<\/p>\n While the proposals on the Nov. 6 ballot pay lip service to the river and more open space, in the end the renderings and site plan descriptions feel more like talking points and less like a commitment to a sustainable future.<\/p>\n As an urbanized district, Mission Valley urgently needs a sense of place. When we think of Balboa Park, the Gaslamp Quarter or the village of La Jolla, there is something about these destinations that makes people want to go back, a feeling of being somewhere special. This is what the Qualcomm site should aspire to \u2014 the power of something greater.<\/p>\n In fact, the Qualcomm site is tailor-made for such a path-breaking urban development project for two reasons:\u00a0 first, at around 300 acres, the site is huge. And the location is unusually strategic. As the saying goes, \u201cvalue is location, location, location,\u201d and in this case, it\u2019s smack in the middle of Mission Valley, halfway between the coastal and inland urban development clusters, on the cusp between central San Diego and North County, and well-connected to present and future forms of transit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A green \u201ccity within a city\u201d would not only be ideal for Mission Valley; it would fit the definitions of both the San Diego Association of Governments\u2019 vision of a smart growth urban center and the city\u2019s general plan.<\/p>\n Voters have a right to insist on something truly exceptional in Mission Valley \u2014 a sustainable, 21st century urban village.<\/p>\n Will it be SDSU West? Proponents argue that the \u201cvalley annex\u201d campus will bring jobs and make the university an even bigger player in the region. But they fail to acknowledge that, with only a few exceptions, satellite campuses around the nation are notoriously underwhelming.<\/p>\n There is much to like about SDSU West: a medium-density and mixed-use \u201csite plan that includes a 75-acre park and embraces the ecology of the river and plans to use it as a laboratory for the study of pollution.<\/p>\n Yet where is the \u201cbig idea?\u201d Somehow the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts. Design drawings give the impression of a corporate office park.<\/p>\n SoccerCity suffers a similar fate. Its mixed-use site plan cleverly envisions an identity crafted mainly around the sports facility (soccer stadium, perhaps combined with football). But this also feels provisional, in part because it seems to rely on a single infrastructure project.<\/p>\n Voters may legitimately decide we are rushing too quickly to choose between two interesting but incomplete proposals. It\u2019s time to challenge the 20th century surfer adage that there\u2019s \u201cno life east of I-5.\u201d The reinvention of the Qualcomm site must be a more robust 21st century response to climate change. We need to get this right. The Mission Valley site is too big to fail.<\/p>\n \u2014Lawrence A. Herzog, an author and the 2017 San Diego State University Faculty Monty Award winner, has taught urban planning for more than three decades. He\u2019s currently the co-coordinator of the graduate program in city planning at SDSU\u2019s School of Public Affairs.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Lawerence A. Herzog | Guest Editorial [Editor\u2019s note: This editorial first appeared in the Voice of San Diego on Oct. 29. View the original article at bit.ly\/ge-vosd.]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1435,"featured_media":230615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Voters should insist on an exceptional plan for Mission Valley \u2014 and Measures G and E don\u2019t qualify","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11552,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-opinion","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1435"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Voters](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/soccercity.jpg\")