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house an awful lot of people in an awfully good manner using this concept....I believe that San Diego has to grow...but we want to see intelligent growth and properly planned growth. (p. B-3) Council gave the go-ahead to start the planning process.5 The Planning Department responded, not with an inquiry into the necessity or advisability of additional development, but with a "Statement of Planning Principles" (City of San Diego Planning, 1972), a conceptual guide for impending development that filled in the gaps of the Planning Commissioner's new town vision: Communities should be designed and located to insure that future residents will be afforded an optimum balance of dwelling styles and prices; convenient shopping, office and similar business centers; educational, cultural, recreational and health services and facilities. Each community should contain a readily identifiable focus achieved through careful utilization of natural terrain in site selection, enhanced and strengthened in the application of the highest standards of the architectural and landscape architecture disciplines. (pp. 13-14) In 1971 Council adopted these planning principles6 and gave the Planning Department formal direction to develop a conceptual plan for the North City region. This request was not merely overdue, it was spurious, a legitimating backup for past decisions; the North City landscape was already charted through piecemeal Council approval of major development 5
The universal endorsement of planning for the North City, which was already in the throes of development, appeared to be less a validation of the benefits of city planning and more a retroactive legitimation for prematurely approved development plans. It also offered presumptive validation for the remainder of proposals waiting in the wings. 6
The "Statement of Planning Principles" was both comprehensive and specific. It called for a planned residential development (PRD) concept instead of typical suburban subdivision practices; minimal transformation of the natural topography; and a balance of social and economic factors, including housing for low moderate as well as high income groups. It called for natural, interconnected open areas linked to and penetrating neighborhood and working areas. Open space was viewed as a means of separating one built area from another and, through the resulting containment--one of the key objectives of the ideal new community--of strengthening a sense of community. Another principle identified employment centers, strategically located throughout the community in a series of small industrial parks to minimize the need to commute to work and to foster the desirable goal of community containment. Planning and siting were to accommodate and support future alternative modes of transit other than the automobile. Natural land forms were to be respected in the creation of a city-wide mass transportation system. Cost benefit principles dealt with the economically sound distribution and operation of public facilities through the clustering of new development and the preservation of the natural environment. Finally, principles involving development phasing focused on the prevention of land speculation and scattered land development. Planners concluded with a seemingly simple planning statement: "In arriving at a concept for the development of the [North City], the principal objective has been to distinguish land which can be developed from land which should not be developed." This objective was to become a Pandora's box of interpretation, value judgment, and power struggles over the following two decades.