Save the Canyons

The depredation of the city’s open space is just one more offshoot of the rapid growth of the area. It is probably impossible to control, but until recently, the City Council had done a good job trying. The various community planning committees, one of which I chair, have submitted well-thought-out plans for managing growth, and nearly all of them have been incorporated into plans meant to take the city into the 21st Century.

Even though plans are approved and implementing ordinances are enacted by the council, developers and residents of the city will still attempt to get exceptions, exemptions and variances for their own projects. Thus, you see precarious-looking buildings hanging over canyons and read about plans to fill in canyons that took centuries to carve.

Our present City Council, with two notable exceptions, seems bound on rapid, uncontrolled expansion, despite the members’ protestations to the contrary. Mike Gotch and Roger Hedgecock have held firm in their commitment to managed growth, and have successfully resisted the blandishments of the developers and their arch-attorney John Thelan.

Growth needs to be concentrated in the city for the next 10 years, but does not need to be achieved by filling in, bridging or destroying the canyons. There are large areas of close-in San Diego that are ugly, timeworn and in great need of redevelopment. They are convenient to downtown offices and to the water. It is logical that population growth should start here.

If this kind of development still fails to satisfy our burgeoning population and if we continue to grow, development can take place at the edges. Why encourage upper- and middle-class citizens to live 30 miles away and commute, thus fouling the air and blighting the countryside with more and bigger freeways?

There are so few people who fight development. Most people sit around dumb and happy while their neighbors inveigh them to go to council meetings, to write letters, to fight City Hall. But they smile and say, “You’re doing a good job and who would listen to me?” Trust me, San Diego, you can be heard and you can make a difference.

CATHERINE A. STROHLEIN

San Diego