History of Segregation City of San Diego

1769–Present

The first city in the United States to implement zoning in the form of single family, multi-family, commercial, and industrial zones was Berkley, California in 1916. The goal of the first zoning law was both racial exclusion and real estate profits. Residents wanted the City of Berkley to pass zoning to specifically stop “two Japanese laundries, one Chinese laundry, and a six-horse stable to vacate an older apartment area in the center of town, and another that created a restricted residence district in order to prevent a ‘negro dance hall’ from locating ‘on a prominent corner.’”

According to “Roots, Race, and Place,” a 2019 report by UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, the City of Berkeley’s use of the new zoning law “was in part an effort to institutionalize the restrictions that had been enforced through private deed restrictions.”

In 1923, the City of San Diego passed its first zoning ordinance. Like the City of Berkeley, that created four distinct categories of zoning while also ensuring that all white neighborhoods remained segregated from Black, Brown and immigrant residents by requiring those families to purchase or rent 5,000 to 7,000 square feet of land. Forcing Black, Brown, and immigrant families to purchase a minimum amount of land to live in a certain neighborhood prior to the creation of the modern mortgage industry was in effect a ban on those families living in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods like Kensington, Talmadge, Point Loma, Mission Hills, and La Jolla.

The content of the following pamphlet was written by the City of San Diego’s Planning Department as part of a larger report to the State of California called the 2021 – 2029 Housing Element.

Our goal in publishing this pamphlet is to inform residents and media, as well as racial justice and anti-poverty advocates, about the true history of segregation in the City of San Diego and how that history, especially the history of single-family zoning, is the main antagonist and the principal reason why the city remains segregated 100 years after the ordinance was passed.

2021-2029 Housing Element

By City of San Diego Planning Department Mike Hansen, Director Todd Gloria, Mayor

Several intersecting and overlapping factors have impacted patterns of segregation and integration over the course of the City’s history. These factors include White flight; housing costs; access to well-paying jobs and economic mobility; racially and economically restrictive covenants within real estate deeds; redlining; discriminatory real estate practices; zoning; freeway construction; ballot initiatives; and public resistance to increased housing and density. To understand how these factors have shaped the city and its segregation and integration patterns, a high-level overview of the historical development of the City of San Diego is provided. This overview is gathered primarily from thematic and community-based historic context statements prepared for the City of San Diego Planning Department, including those for Old Town, Southeastern San Diego and Encanto, San Ysidro, North Park, Uptown, and Golden Hill, as well as the Downtown African American Historic Context Statement and the Asian Pacific Thematic Historic District Master Plan. Where other sources are utilized, they are referenced.

In 1769 a Spanish land expedition led by Gaspár de Portola reached San Diego Bay and initially made camp on the shore in the area that is now downtown San Diego. However, lack of water at this location led to moving the camp to a small hill closer to the San Diego River near the Kumeyaay village of Cosoy. The Spanish built a primitive mission and presidio structure on the hill near the river. In 1774, the Spanish missionaries moved the Mission San Diego de Alcalá to its present location six miles up the San Diego River Valley. The mission system had a significant effect on all Native American groups from the coast to the inland areas and was a dominant force in San Diego County.

Individuals from a diversity of ethnic and racial backgrounds were participants in the earliest days of Spanish colonialism in southern Alta California. Spain itself was, at the time of its colonial expansion, not long out of the seven centuries of cultural and demographic mixing under the rule of the north African Moors. By the time of the development of Spanish colonial settlements in California, there had been more than seven generations of racial and ethnic blending. The complexities of definitions of identity in Spain and its New World colonies are clear in the 1790 census of the Presidio de San Diego. Of the 90 adults at the presidio, at least 45 were noted as being one or more race or ethnicity. The categories listed included mulatto and colores quebrado (both groups recognized as persons of African ancestry in the complicated Spanish colonial identity system), as well as other labels indicating some portion of African heritage. Originating from Cuba, the West Indies, and Africa, these individuals played a significant role in the settlement and colonization of southern California. Processes of intermarriage between Native Americans, Spanish, and those of African descent precluded the creation of a separate Afro-Spanish identity in early Spanish and Mexican California.

Gaspar de Portola

In 1822, Mexico won its independence from Spain and San Diego became part of the Mexican Republic, which began issuing large private land grants in the early 1820s. As early as 1791, presidio commandants in California were given the authority to grant small house lots and garden plots to soldiers and their families. By 1827, as many as 30 homes existed around the central plaza of what is now Old Town San Diego. In 1834 the Mexican government secularized the San Diego and San Luis Rey missions and in 1835 Mexico granted San Diego official pueblo status. The new Pueblo of San Diego did not prosper, as did some other California towns during the Mexican Period. Shortly after the secularization, continued displacement and acculturation of Native Americans let to increased resistance against the Californios in the late 1830s. Attacks on outlying ranchos, along with unstable political and economic factors contributed to San Diego's population decline. In 1838, San Diego’s official pueblo status was removed, and it became a sub-prefecture of the Los Angeles Pueblo. By 1840, San Diego had an approximate population of 150 permanent residents, down from a high of 600 just five years earlier.

Pueblo De San Diego

Alonzo Horton

American military forces raised the United States flag in San Diego in 1846 and assumed formal control with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848. In the quarter of a century that followed, San Diego was transformed from a Hispanic community into a primarily Anglo-American one. On February 18, 1850 the California State Legislature formally organized San Diego County, and California was granted U.S. statehood just seven months later on September 9th. At its incorporation, the San Diego County census records only eight African Americans in a total population of 798 individuals. This no doubt represents an under reporting given the tendency of African-Hispanics to be listed as White or as Mexican rather than as Black. In the decade that followed San Diego grew slowly. San Diegans attempted to develop the town's interests by attracting a transcontinental railroad and the development of a new town closer to the bay in response to the California Gold Rush.

The real urbanization of the city as it is today began in 1869 when Alonzo Horton moved the center of commerce and government from Old Town to New Town (now Downtown San Diego). The new location was more accessible to the bay, which facilitated the development of commerce. Chinese Immigrants established a fishing colony along the edge of the bay and laborers, farmers, shop owners and others soon followed. 1868 and 1869 were boom years, with steady growth over the next four years until the economic panic of 1873. The population dropped to 1,500 in 1875, but then rebounded as San Diego's civic leaders continued to focus on the development of the railroad.

By 1876 both San Francisco and Los Angeles had direct rail links to the East Coast, and for San Diego to establish itself as one of California’s top destinations it needed one as well. Chinese laborers flooded San Diego during the construction of the California Southern Railroad, and the population of the Chinese Quarter rose to almost 1,000 in 1882. Chinese settlement at the end of the 19th century was located primarily in the area bounded by Second Avenue, Sixth Avenue, “E” Street and “K” Street. Anti-Chinese sentiment swept through the state in the 1880's, leading to the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1882, 1888, and 1892, which prohibited further immigration and forbade Chinese residents from owning property or becoming citizens. These laws had a great impact on San Diego's Chinese population, which dropped to 300 by 1883.

In these post-Civil War years, freemen and Blacks recently freed from the shackles of slavery came to San Diego for the same reasons others did, to start a new life, to find economic gain, and, although not always realized, to experience the relative freedom and opportunity offered by the western frontier when compared to the South. As a result, Black settlers and émigrés in this period came largely from the South and settled throughout San Diego County. It has been suggested that the rural back country was an attraction to Black pioneers because of the availability of cheap land and the sparse population. Rural areas also offered a degree of isolation and anonymity not available in urban areas. Regionally, post-Civil War migration of all ethnic groups, including African Americans, was still felt most strongly in Northern California.

Albert Robinson and his wife, Margaret Tull Robinson owners of Robinson Hotel today known as the Julian Gold Rush Hotel

Once a transcontinental line had been established at the end of 1885, trade increased, and San Diego’s population boomed to 40,000 in 1887. This expansion in trade brought an increase in the availability of building materials. Wood buildings gradually began to replace adobe structures. The 1890 federal census of San Diego listed at least 289 persons as “Colored” or “Negro,” sixty-three of whom resided in downtown San Diego. Of these directory listings, the concentration of the African American population was located between Ash and Market, down to and bounded on the east by 8th Avenue and on the west by State Street. Cheap labor, both skilled and unskilled, had been a problem in San Diego going back to the 1850s. Native American labor filled a large part of the labor needs but by the1880s the majority of the Kumeyaay Indians had been placed on reservations in relatively remote portions of the county. Blacks filled some of the void and they brought a variety of skills to the labor force. Despite the growing prosperity of the city, San Diego's boom quickly went bust in the 1890s as a general depression hit the U.S. In the decade that followed San Diego’s population decreased by half.

At the turn of the 20th century, the City’s population remained clustered downtown and in the newly developed communities to the immediate north, east and southeast, which are the City’s earliest first-ring suburbs. These include the southern end of Uptown (referred to as “Banker’s Hill”) to the north; Golden Hill and the East Village area of Downtown to the east; and portions of Southeastern San Diego (primarily Sherman Heights, Grant Hill, and Logan Heights) and Barrio Logan to the southeast. Portions of all of these early suburbs featured grand homes of the City’s elite, but also included middle- and working-class homes as well. The community of Encanto, which sits to the east of Southeastern San Diego, was outside the boundary of the City at the early 20th century and was subdivided and sold in one-acre “small farm” plots.

The 1910 federal census reveals that 97 percent of the City’s population of 39,578 was either native or foreign-born White. The census data does not indicate what percentage of those listed as native or foreign-born White were Hispanic. The remaining 3 percent of the population was listed as “Negro” (1.5 percent) and “Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and All Other” (1.5 percent). Around this time, the city’s Mexican American community was scattered through downtown, the harbor, and present-day northwestern Barrio Logan. The Asian American community, which by this time also included Japanese merchants and fisherman, remained concentrated in the downtown area and grew to include additional blocks to the north and east. For many African Americans in this era, Front and F was the “residential area within the downtown sector.” However, with improvement in their economic status during the 1890s, some African Americans began outward settlement from the downtown area to the east and to "more expensive urban neighborhoods" like Logan Heights in present-day Southeastern San Diego. In the early years of the community, the ethnic composition of Southeastern San Diego was typical of other neighborhoods, with minorities scattered throughout a predominantly White community. According to a 1982 article about the history of Logan Heights, “Both blacks and Mexican-Americans had lived in the area as early as the 1890s, but they attracted little notice; their numbers were small in relation to other neighborhood residents, and other parts of San Diego—particularly the central area—offered greater concentrations of these minority groups.”

City of San Diego 1900

In the early years of the community, the ethnic composition of Southeastern San Diego was typical of other neighborhoods, with minorities scattered throughout a predominantly White community. According to a 1982 article about the history of Logan Heights, “Both blacks and Mexican-Americans had lived in the area as early as the 1890s, but they attracted little notice; their numbers were small in relation to other neighborhood residents, and other parts of San Diego—particularly the central area—offered greater concentrations of these minority groups.”

Logan Heights 1905

Beginning in the 1920s, ethnic enclaves began to form in the Southeastern San Diego community, especially in the greater Logan Heights area and Encanto, and in the adjacent community of Barrio Logan. As community member Evelyn Mitchell remembered, “Barrio Logan was a very diverse community in the past with Japanese, Italians, Syrians, and Mexicans living together”. There are various theories about what caused the change in the ethnic composition, but most scholars attribute it primarily to the increased use of restrictive covenants in housing contracts in other neighborhoods of San Diego. These covenants targeted all minorities, but were especially discriminatory against African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asians, so these groups settled in the older communities of Southeastern San Diego and Barrio Logan where such restrictions were absent or were not enforced. Other factors that caused an influx of minority residents likely included proximity to bayfront and railroad jobs as well as social institutions such as churches, desire for cultural familiarity amongst others of the same culture, and international events that triggered large-scale population migrations across the country. Additionally, as the automobile opened new lands for settlement, wealthier White residents who had once lived in the neighborhoods close to the downtown commercial core took the opportunity to move further afield beginning in the 1920s, leaving vacancies for minority groups in the inner city.

The use of racially restrictive covenants was common throughout the State of California and across the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and were found in many deeds in San Diego from roughly 1910 until they were ruled unenforceable by the Supreme Court in 1948. Not only did covenants prohibit the sale of property to anyone other than someone of the “Caucasian race” (the language seen most frequently), but they also included minimum valuations for improvements to the property, which precluded lower income individuals and families from purchasing a lot and improving it. Areas subdivided and sold during the 19-teens through the 1940s often included such restrictions, unless they were within or adjacent to areas already occupied by people of color. The areas of the city developed prior to the 19-teens, which generally did not have racial covenants, provided opportunities for homeownership for San Diego’s minority communities who were excluded from the newer neighborhoods that White residents and property owners were relocating to.

In 1923 San Diego adopted its first zoning ordinance, establishing five different zone types (Ordinance 8924). Zone “A” was reserved for exclusively single-family residential uses; Zone “B” allowed for multifamily residential uses, hotels and boarding houses, churches, clubs, and public or private schools and charities; Zone “C” allowed for most commercial and office uses, as well uses allowed in the “A” and “B” zones; Zone “D” allowed for all business except industrial and processing facilities; and Zone “E”, which allowed any use. The ordinance enabled areas of the city to be brought before the Council to be zoned, a process which began the following year. The practice of zoning cities to separate uses from one another began in 1916 and was intended primarily to protect single family homes from other uses. This included not only heavy commercial and industrial uses, but multi-family apartments as well. Apartment buildings, which were generally occupied by lower-income residents and people of color, were seen as undesirable and a threat to single-family property values. Debate over the establishment of zoning in San Diego in 1923 did not commonly include overt discussion of or reference to race, but rather focused on use. Although the zoning ordinance did not include any explicit racial or ethnic segregation, it specifically stated that it was not the intention of the Council to “interfere with or abrogate or annul any easement, covenant, or other agreement between parties; provided, however, that where this ordinance Imposes a greater restriction upon the erection, construction, establishment, alteration or enlargement of buildings, structures or improvements in said zones… the provisions of this ordinance shall control.” Therefore, covenants limiting the sale of properties to people of color and/or establishing a minimum valuation of improvements were allowed to continue under the new zoning ordinance. Additionally, excluding multi-family apartments, which were typically occupied by lower income residents and people of color who were denied equal access to economic opportunity, from single-family zoned areas reinforced segregation that had resulted from other factors such as covenants.

“...but they also included minimum valuations for improvements to the property, which precluded lower income individuals and families from purchasing a lot and improving it.”

Debate over the establishment of zoning in San Diego in 1923 did not commonly include overt discussion of or reference to race, but rather focused on use. Although the zoning ordinance did not include any explicit racial or ethnic segregation, it specifically stated that it was not the intention of the Council to “interfere with or abrogate or annul any easement, covenant, or other agreement between parties; provided, however, that where this ordinance Imposes a greater restriction upon the erection, construction, establishment, alteration or enlargement of buildings, structures or improvements in said zones… the provisions of this ordinance shall control.”

Logan Heights 1905

Within this environment of racially restrictive covenants and newly established zoning, the 1920s saw a dramatic increase in the Mexican American population in Southeastern San Diego, as large numbers of immigrants fled to the United States after the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). Many settled in Logan Heights and Barrio Logan, which transformed the former into the largest concentration of Mexican families in the city during the 1920s. In 1916, gambling was permitted in Tijuana, which also created a connection between San Diego and Mexico. Additionally, restrictions on European and Asian immigration imposed by the federal government after World War I left many jobs in agriculture, construction, transportation, and mining available for Mexican immigrants. Mexican laborers were instrumental in constructing new housing developments in eastern San Diego, acting as agricultural workers in Imperial Valley, and building transportation and infrastructure projects. The 1930s saw a decline in Mexican immigration due to the scarcity of jobs during the Great Depression and government efforts to deport and repatriate Mexican immigrants. The Mexican American population in greater Logan Heights was estimated at approximately 5,000 in 1937.

During this 1920s and 1930s, the Japanese population in San Diego was scattered throughout the city in locations such as Mission Valley and Pacific Beach, as well as surrounding areas including Spring Valley, Chula Vista, and Otay Mesa. The Japanese population in San Diego was estimated at approximately 1,000 in 1937. During this time, they were primarily engaged in farming and fishing. Encanto was still a rural suburb and attracted an enclave of Japanese farmers who cultivated the rolling hills.

The community of San Ysidro at the border with Mexico initially developed as an agricultural community outside the boundary of the City of San Diego. Coinciding with the growth in tourism to Mexico in the late 19-teens and early 1920s, San Ysidro shifted from primarily agricultural to residential uses, and the population increased. The community was primarily Anglo at this time, as few Mexicans were living on the U.S. side of the border. Americans were attracted into the area because of recreational gambling and horse racing just over the border in Tijuana, Mexico, while both Americans and Mexicans were attracted to agricultural employment opportunities in and around San Ysidro. A shift in demographics occurred in the border community of San Ysidro around 1933 with the repeal of the 18th amendment that ended Prohibition, the nationalization of foreign-owned properties in Mexico, and the enforcement of Mexican anti-gambling laws. Due to the ensuing decrease in business, Anglo racetrack-related trainers and horse owners left San Ysidro, and some of their homes were purchased by Mexican families who worked in the United States.

The Great Depression brought home construction in San Diego to a near stand-still in the early 1930s, with high unemployment and defaults on existing mortgages. In 1933, the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) was established by the Roosevelt administration to buy mortgages at risk of foreclosure and refinance them into new government mortgages, which would allow people to keep their homes. However, the HOLC would not buy and offer mortgages in areas they deemed economically hazardous. To identify these areas, maps were made of major cities with each neighborhood ranked as either “A”, “B”, “C” or “D”. Neighborhoods ranked “D”, shown in red on the maps, were ineligible for federal mortgages, an action known as “redlining.” Redlined neighborhoods were often the oldest neighborhoods in the City occupied by lower income residents and people of color. This was true for San Diego as well, where most of the redlined neighborhoods were in the Southeastern and southern areas of the City where high concentrations of African Americans, Asians, and Hispanic residents lived (Figure A-19). In 1934, Congress passed the National Housing Act and established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to administer a program that offered federal mortgage insurance for private mortgage lenders in an effort to spur private lending. The FHA used the same redlining principles to deny mortgage insurance. Soon private banks, lending institutions, and the Veterans Administration (VA) would follow suit. When the FHA expanded into construction loans for homebuilders, discrimination became even more explicit as the FHA prohibited builders from selling homes to African Americans.

Japanese Farmers – San Diego

San Diego, Downtown 1941

Clairemont 1957

Map of San Diego from Home Owners’ Loan Corp – 1936

The United States’ entrance into World War II effectively ended the Great Depression in California and boosted the regional economy. This was particularly true in San Diego, which received thirty-five percent of California’s aircraft contracts and had the highest per capita share of war contracts in the state. By this time San Diego claimed the Navy’s largest air base and the city’s harbor housed the repair and operations base for many of the Navy’s major aircraft carriers. U.S. Army and Marine Corps camps sprang up throughout the county to train the large numbers of incoming soldiers. In addition, San Diego was home to substantial manufacturing operations. Advertisements nationwide brought thousands of workers into the city to staff the defense plants. The influx of civilian and military personnel caused the San Diego’s population to soar. By the summer of 1941, the population had increased from 203,000 to more than 300,000, surpassing in little more than a year the projected growth for the next two decades. Like other large cities with military or manufacturing facilities now devoted to the defense industry, San Diego’s population growth far outpaced its ability to provide sufficient services for the many thousands of war industry workers.

During the war there was a need for agricultural and industrial labor to fill the gap left by deployed forces and Mexican immigration to the United States rose at this time as a result of the governmentbacked Bracero program, between 1942 and 1947, which allowed thousands of Mexican workers to come into the country to work. Throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, Logan Heights contained fifteen percent of San Diego's Spanish-speaking population. The Bracero program was reconstituted in 1951 and operated until 1964, resulting in a large number of immigrants settling in Logan Heights.

The war-time federal policy of “no discrimination based on race, color or creed” meant that defense housing projects offered an opportunity, albeit limited, for racial minorities to move out of the increasingly blighted neighborhoods in Southeastern San Diego. Housing projects such as Linda Vista (in the hills north of the plan area) and Midway (near the airport) were the only places outside of Southeastern San Diego with notable concentrations of blacks and Hispanics. However, this practice did not last long after the war, and minority newcomers were again forced out of predominantly White neighborhoods and into neighborhoods in Southeastern San Diego and Barrio Logan. African American employment rates dropped to pre-war levels, with war-related opportunities shrinking and some firms who hired African Americans during the war failing to do so afterward. During World War II, the Japanese families who had settled in Southeastern San Diego were forced to move to internment camps. Following the war, most who had owned agricultural land did not, or could not, return to their properties and resettled elsewhere.

“The war-time federal policy of “no discrimination based on race, color or creed” meant that defense housing projects offered an opportunity, albeit limited, for racial minorities to move out of the increasingly blighted neighborhoods in Southeastern San Diego. Housing projects such as Linda Vista (in the hills north of the plan area) and Midway (near the airport) were the only places outside of Southeastern San Diego with notable concentrations of blacks and Hispanics”

Frontier Housing

The postwar era included important demographic shifts in the neighborhoods of Southeastern San Diego and Barrio Logan. Restrictive zoning and discriminatory covenants in other parts of the city reinforced segregated living conditions that had begun in the 1920s, and Southeastern San Diego became home to a majority of San Diego’s poor and non-White residents during the postwar era. The extreme housing shortage that had begun during the war persisted in its aftermath. In response, developers and builders employed earth-moving and mass-construction techniques developed during the war to build large subdivisions in the undeveloped areas of the city north of Mission Valley. Young White families fled the older areas of the city for new subdivisions such as Clairemont and Linda Vista, utilizing G.I. benefits unavailable to minority veterans.

Barrio Logan Community Plan public vote 2014

In the 1950s, the City of San Diego rezoned the greater Logan Heights area—especially in present-day Barrio Logan—from primarily residential to an industrial or mixed-use classification. This zoning change resulted in major changes to the land use and character of the neighborhood: commercial and industrial businesses were now located adjacent to residences, and noisy, unsightly automotive scrap yards proliferated. This zoning change combined with municipal transportation decisions and post-war migration patterns created conditions of blight in the Southeastern San Diego and Barrio Logan communities.

A few opportunities for racial integration did exist in portions of Southeastern San Diego, especially near Encanto. Many African Americans moved to Encanto and Valencia Park from Logan Heights in the 1950s and 1960s, taking advantage of the first opportunity they had to own homes. By 1960, African Americans had grown to 6.8% of the population of San Diego, with up to 80% of the community located in what is now East Village and Southeastern San Diego. One of the first non-segregated residential subdivisions in the city was located just south of Encanto in 1955. This new subdivision was located just outside the plan area, but the presence of the first actively racially integrated subdivision likely encouraged others to move to Encanto proper. Some racial tensions existed and many longterm White residents moved to wealthier, segregated sections of the city when African Americans moved into the neighborhood, but Encanto was generally praised in the press for its peaceful and inclusive qualities at a time when tensions were rising in the western half of the plan area.

Emerald Hills Estates, a 1957 subdivision, was technically open to all, although that was not always evident in practice. According to a 1961 newspaper article, a plan was developed under which White residents of the mixed-race subdivision could trade their homes for other residences in housing developments elsewhere. The plan was devised by Irvin J. Kahn but was criticized by the NAACP as well as by residents of the area. A minimum of 200 homes was needed to put the plan into effect, but only 17 applications were received. Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 formally put an end to discriminatory housing practices, but Southeastern San Diego never fully recovered from the declining socioeconomic conditions that had been exacerbated by years of segregated living.

The post-war housing shortage that existed in other parts of San Diego extended to the border community of San Ysidro. Along with single family homes, new construction included small apartment buildings and a handful of post-war bungalow courts. These buildings offered an alternative form of housing for those who either could not afford a single-family home or those who desired an experience similar to a single-family home with a common space for social or recreational activities. Commercial development also expanded greatly along San Ysidro Boulevard; and Institutional facilities, such as the Customs House, public library, and churches were established to service the tourists and/or residents. The town was now a full-fledged city that supported the various economic, social, religious, and recreational needs of the residents and visitors.

Irvin J Kahn

In 1957, San Ysidro was annexed to the City of San Diego and is now one of numerous communities within the city. Although water concerns from San Ysidro residents and commercial owners precipitated the idea of annexation, the City of San Diego as a whole recognized the importance of the border to the region and voted for annexation in 1957. For the City, San Ysidro provided “…a direct land connection to Mexico and a stake in the international trade that flows across the United States Mexico border.” Shortly after its annexation, the community experienced a shift in demographics as the population transitioned from primarily Anglo to Mexican in the 1960s. In addition, San Ysidro continued to play an important role in the local, regional, and national economy as the border crossing became the busiest crossing in the U.S. in 1988.

As the population in Southern California continued to expand after World War II, increasing traffic congestion led city engineers to create a new transportation system to move large volumes of cars quickly without having to pass through congested business districts. In San Diego, master planning for the new freeways began in the early 1950s, and the communities of Southeastern San Diego, Barrio Logan, Golden Hill, San Ysidro, and the East Village area of Downtown were all heavily affected by these plans. Large swaths of these neighborhoods, which housed most of the City’s lower income residents and people of color, were razed in the 1950s and 1960s to make way for the six- and eightlane freeways, effectively eliminating the once-fluid edges of the neighborhoods. The freeways not only demolished some of the neighborhoods’ oldest buildings, but also displaced families and businesses and exacerbated social issues. Socioeconomic consequences caused by the freeway construction included segregation of lower-income and ethnic minorities; reduction in existing affordable housing stock; separation of communities from services such as stores, churches, and schools; and health impacts resulting from increased exposure to pollutants.

Prior to the highway construction that bisected Logan Heights and essentially created Barrio Logan as it is known today, this community contained the largest Mexican-born and “Spanish surnamed” community in San Diego though its ethnic makeup also contained a minority of African Americans, European Americans, and Asian Americans. The completion of Interstate 5 through the heart of Logan Heights in 1963 rewrote the boundaries of the neighborhood. The interstate splintered Logan Heights in two, with the area to the southwest of Interstate 5 becoming known as Barrio Logan and the area to the northeast known as Logan Heights. The Mexican American residents of Logan Heights have used the word barrio, Spanish for “neighborhood,” to describe the area from the early years. In its most positive connotation, outsiders and Mexican Americans alike refer to predominantly Mexican American urban neighborhoods as barrios. Many residents embraced the cultural association that came with the capital “B,” claiming Barrio Logan as a Chicano space. The City officially initiated the use of Barrio Logan to describe the area southwest of the Interstate 5 in the 1970s.

The completion of the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge in 1969, which towered over Barrio Logan with its on-ramps and support pylons, displaced more families and businesses, creating a dramatic physical and visual change to the neighborhood. The residents were not aware of their rights to protest against the bridge and many felt they had no choice but to leave. Barrio Logan’s population dropped from 20,000 to 5,000 between 1969 and 1979 and many of the older homes and buildings were razed for industrial structures.

Chicano Park land take over

Coronado Bridge construction over Barrio Logan

During the 1960s and early 1970s the Chicano movement became a powerful force for change and promoted a social movement within the Mexican American community of Barrio Logan and Logan Heights. United by a concern for equal rights, Mexican Americans adopted the terms Chicano and Chicana to identify them not just of Mexican heritage but also of mestizo ethnicity. The first Chicano activity in Barrio Logan occurred in the late 1960s when young college students and veterans of the Vietnam War, inspired by the national Chicano movement, instituted some small clean-up projects in the area. Yet it was the 1970 takeover of a 1.8-acre plot of land beneath the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge that propelled the movement into the consciousness of the larger San Diego community. In April 1970, a young Chicano activist, Mario Solis, alerted the community to the commencement of construction of a California Highway Patrol station beneath the bridge on the land that City officials had promised as a park. Word spread quickly, and protesters successfully stopped the earth moving activities and occupied the park. The occupation lasted twelve days, after which the City agreed to grant the community the land and surrounding property totaling 7.4 acres. When it came time to choose a name for the park, the residents chose “Chicano Park” in recognition of the Chicano movement that had been so influential in inspiring the protest. The creation of the park has been cited as the defining event in Barrio Logan’s recognition as a Chicano community.

Freeway construction continued in the early 1970s, and at this time disrupted the street system in San Ysidro. Residential and commercial buildings were removed to make way for the freeways. In 1971, Interstate 5 was straightened and widened for the millions of vehicles traveling to and from Mexico. In addition, construction of Interstate 805 also began in 1971 and led to the demolition of two hundred homes in old San Ysidro. It essentially bisected the town into two sections, displacing residents and disrupting local businesses. Freeway development was the main reason why the San Ysidro border crossing became the busiest in the United States.

Villa Nueva Apartments, San Ysidro

As the water quality in San Ysidro improved in the late 1960s and investors saw promise in the proximity to the new Highway 5, building activities increased. The first subdivision in San Ysidro since the early 20th century, Mount Carmel Heights, was filed by the San Ysidro Development Co. The developer specifically built “…frame and stucco dwellings with distinctive Spanish designs to appeal to Mexican-American families from Tijuana.” Housing development in the northern area of San Ysidro also increased to offset the displacement of residents due to construction of Interstate 805, including the development of Barrio San Martín and an addition to Mount Carmel Heights. In addition to Mount Carmel Heights and other single-family housing subdivisions, developers began to construct multifamily units in San Ysidro from the 1960s through the 1980s. Some, like Villa Nueva, were federally subsidized to provide homes for families displaced by freeway construction. By 1988, over half the population in San Ysidro was of Mexican descent. Many of these families lived in recently built housing developments that were funded in part by Federal subsidy programs.

The northern areas of the city, including University, Mira Mesa, Rancho Bernardo, and Rancho Penasquitos began developing in the 1960s, followed by areas such as Scripps Ranch and Carmel Valley in the 1980s and 1990s. Like other large suburban developments of the post-WWII period, these communities were not served by meaningful transit, were accessible primarily by car, and were predominantly home to middle and upper-middle class Caucasians. Demographics shifted in some of these communities in the decades that followed, due primarily to the presence of the University of California San Diego and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. The community of Mira Mesa exhibits strong diversity. In 2016, Asians constituted 39 percent of the population, while non-Hispanic Whites made up 33 percent. Hispanics represented 20 percent, residents with two or more races made up four percent, and Blacks constituted three percent of the CPA’s population. In comparison to the City of San Diego in 2017, Asians made up 17.3 percent of the total population, Hispanics 30.3 percent, and non-Hispanic White 56.7 percent. However, the majority of the communities in the northern areas of the City remain predominantly White.

Over the course of the City’s development, there has been a constant push and pull between development and opposition to growth, dating back to the early 20th century and the “Smokestacks vs Geraniums” debate of the 1917 mayoral election. City boosters envisioned a great city that would rival Los Angeles, while Progressives and others wanted to maintain and enhance San Diego’s natural beauty for the enjoyment of residents and tourists. This longstanding debate eventually made its way directly to the ballot box via citizen-led initiatives. On November 7, 1972, City of San Diego voters approved Proposition D, which would have a significant impact on housing within the coastal areas of the City. Proposition D placed a 30-foot height limit on all buildings in the coastal height limit overlay zone, which roughly covers those portions of the City of San Diego lying between Interstate 5 and the coast. The ballot argument in favor of Proposition D stated that it intended to preserve the “unique and beautiful character of the coastal zone of San Diego,” by reventing high rise buildings from “fencing off private property” and “obstructing needed ocean breezes, sky and sunshine.” However, after almost 40 years the proposition has also had the effect of limiting density and housing supply within the coastal areas of the City, thereby contributing to increased costs that exclude middle- and lower-income residents. This also results in the exclusion of people of color to the extent that they are disproportionately impacted by inequal access to economic opportunity and wealth-building.

Proposition D, 1972

However, after almost 40 years the proposition has also had the effect of limiting density and housing supply within the coastal areas of the City, thereby contributing to increased costs that exclude middle- and lower-income residents. This also results in the exclusion of people of color to the extent that they are disproportionately impacted by inequal access to economic opportunity and wealth-building.”

Proposition A, placed on the ballot and passed by voters in 1985, limited development of 52,273 acres in the northern area of the City identified as “Future Urbanizing Area” in the Progress Guide and General Plan. These were areas that the 1979 plan did not anticipate being needed for housing development until 1995. Rather than allowing development of the FUA to be at the discretion of the City Council, Proposition A required a vote of the people to shift lands from “Future Urbanizing” to “Urbanized”, thereby permitting development. At the time Prop A was passed in 1985, smaller jurisdictions had passed similar growth management measures, but San Diego was “by far and away the largest city in the state, and possibly the nation, to consider a measure that would place individual growth determinations directly in the hands of voters,” according to a Los Angeles Times article.

With the adoption of the City’s Comprehensive General Plan Update in 2008, the City implemented its “City of Villages” smart growth strategy, which focuses growth into mixed-use activity centers that are pedestrian-friendly districts linked to an improved regional transit system. It recognizes the value of San Diego’s distinctive neighborhoods and open spaces that together form the City as a whole. A “village” is defined as the mixed-use heart of a community where residential, commercial, employment, and civic uses are all present and integrated and offer a variety of housing types affordable for people with different incomes and needs. Over time, villages will connect to each other via an expanded regional transit system. The General Plan update did not include land use designation or zoning changes, which is the purview of the City's community plans. Since the adoption of the General Plan, the Planning Department has updated 10 of its 52 community plans and is currently updating five more. All of these efforts have increased density along transit corridors and encouraged mixed use development that facilitates living near one’s place of work. The City is also making equity a priority in all planning initiatives and engaging stakeholders in how best to break-down the vestiges and remnants of explicit and implicit discrimination and segregation so that all San Diegans have equitable access to quality housing and City services, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, income, or any other identifier.

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