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PART TWO TWO DECADES OF PLANNING IN SAN DIEGO'S NORTH CITY, 1970-1990 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CHAPTER II THE STAGE IS SET: PLANNING IN THE 1970s Introduction In the years following the Second World War, suburban sprawl characterized San Diego's changing landscape, with newly built freeways sluicing a growing population to and from formerly rural lands in the eastern and southern outskirts. By the 1960s, with a population of over one-half million, the image of San Diego as a quiescent, sunburned navy town was laid to rest. Self-styled as the "City in Motion" and billed as the "All-America City" by Look magazine, San Diego had acquired the trappings of a big time player -- a major league sports stadium, a new civic center, a regional shopping center in Mission Valley, two state university campuses, new downtown skyscrapers, a bridge spanning San Diego Bay, a worldclass research center at the Salk Institute, and its first comprehensive plan. Chapter II introduces a major theme of this thesis: the factors that contributed to the planning outcome of the FUA were operating long before the 1990 FUA planning process was undertaken and were put into place by, and to serve the interests of, the growth and development industry. This chapter documents the planning process during the decade following the adoption of the Progress Guide and General Plan (General Plan), the city's first comprehensive planning document. It illustrates how the seeds of future development in San Diego's North City region were planted in the General Plan and in subsequent planning documents and projects. The chapter focuses on Planning Department activities during the 1970s, as planners developed new principles and new community plans for suburban development. It describes the advent of growth management planning in the latter half of the decade and its limited success in controlling growth in San Diego's North City region. The Progress Guide and General Plan California state law enacted in 1937 required all cities to create a general plan to guide local development (Fulton, 1991). It was not until the mid-1960s, however, following decades of disjointed growth patterns, that San Diego created its first master-planning document, the Citizens General Plan, and submitted it to the voters for approval. Mission Valley hotel developers and property owners waged a fierce opposition campaign, directed especially at recommendations for downtown "urban renewal," and were instrumental in defeating the proposal by a 62% majority (Showley, 1992). On a second go-round in 1967, voters were