By Daily Scot:
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On my recent whirlwind trip to Southern California I did a speed tour in the dying hours of sunlight through San Diego’s East Village neighbourhood. (Map here.) Located east of Downtown San Diego up against the I-5 freeway, the neighbourhood has quickly evolved from a combination of vacant lots, surface parking and warehouses frequented by artists to a mixed use village supporting micro breweries, shops, tech start-ups, and a range of infill housing from tower to mid-rise wall developments.
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The catalyst for the East Village appears to be the 2005 opening of Petco Park (above, map here) home of the San Diego Padres Major League Baseball team. I thought the integration and connections to and from the baseball park were strong allowing the crowds to filter into the various bars and restaurants before and after Padres games while providing an easy connection to the San Diego Trolley streetcar.
What isn’t clear walking around on a weekday afternoon is the demographics and social housing allocation in the area. As with any great neighbourhood the mix of young/old/families and a place for all incomes to land is as important as the building fabric, but from what I can see their appears to be a range of housing types.
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I believe East Village is definitely worth a visit for the urban enthusiast if you find yourself in San Diego. A great mix of scales, preservation of older buildings mixed in with new adaptive re-use, bus and light-rail connections, bike and car share, it appears to all be here in a well thought out walkable urban district.
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I stayed in an AirBnB place there at the Urbana this past summer while attending a big mapping conference. Nice ‘hood, reminded me somewhat of Gastown. Easy 10 min walk to the main tourist drag, and the conference centre. There’s definitely a mix of folks, and still has some of the “rough edges” that Gastown had in its early transformative days, but mainly leans towards the 20-30 something residents. Baseball days were busy.
It’ll be a bit of gongshow this July. the MLB all-star game is rolling into San Diego, and the big ComicCon show is right afterwards.
And timely enough, both AirCanada and Westjet are starting up direct flights to SD soon.
Also worth checking out is Little Italy, on the NW side of downtown. Will feel very familiar to a Vancouverite.