San Diego reinvents itself - and gentrifies

Now the seventh-largest city in America, and the second largest in California, San Diego is reinventing itself. Ten years ago, Horton Plaza - an innovative mall in a seedy area - got the ball rolling. A harbor-side convention center added momentum, and the new stadium is seen as the crowning development. After years of litigation and heated debate at City Hall, the final downtown plan was approved - but only after developers and baseball owners agreed to sink significant cash into surrounding neighborhoods.

"This is the first time that a major sports franchise took on the obligation to develop the neighborhoods around it as part of the deal to get its own stadium," says Peter Hall, president of Center City Development Corporation, which has overseen $3 billion in public/private efforts since the early '90s. Now 115 projects are under way, compared with 10 or 15 in a good year before 1990.

Whatever the pros and cons of gentrification, national observers say the San Diego example spotlights a growing integration of urban-renewal projects with the residents they attract. Major attention is paid to how such residents eat, drink, exercise, congregate, and acculturate.

"San Diego is the culmination of three decades of urban-renewal lessons from the '60s, '70s and '80s, in which designers ripped up downtown areas and replaced them with closed-off developments that choked traffic and became islands of isolation," says George Peterson, senior analyst at the Urban Institute. "Now we've learned from that past that the way to breathe real life into cities is to connect neighborhoods, create openness and intimacy where residents can commingle and cross-fertilize."

A walk through the ballpark area shows the fruits of those lessons. Streets are packed with pedestrians and lined with trees and gas lamps; bookstores, theaters, and cafes whose patrons spill onto curbside tables. The two- and three-story retail shops feature yoga studios, beauty salons, and, on the upper floors, residences.

Rows of townhouses and apartments flank the streets that lead to the ballpark, which is open at one end to let passersby see its grassy diamond on nongame days. Unlike Anaheim Stadium, Sacramento's Arco Arena, or New York's Shea Stadium, there are no acres of asphalt parking lots. "Other cities such as Chicago and Milwaukee built giant stadiums surrounded by huge parking lots for tailgate partyers, but they found they didn't generate any other activity and weren't good for the neighborhood," says Norquist.

Here, housing is adjacent, as with Chicago's Wrigley Field and Boston's Fenway Park. The picturesque Gaslamp Quarter is just beyond the archway, and a trolley connects to all areas of the city. Because of its position at the end of the trolley line and near three freeways, designers and planners hope to avoid giant parking lots. Game goers can park elsewhere and take the trolley or walk through the gas lamp district to the park, bringing both energy and patrons.

As other cities confront the problems San Diego has faced, the fallout of development and an influx of newcomers is unclear. Some have complained vociferously about developers' and homeowners associations' efforts to condemn their buildings and get them to move out.

"I don't mind the idea of a ballpark, but the developers are going around and trying to change this area into something it isn't," says Jeff Parker, a worker at Helping Hand Missionary in Barrio Logan. One by one, he says, centers for the homeless are being deprived of funds and being pushed into more remote areas.

But Ms. Edelson sees the city's future just outside her door. "This is what urban living is all about," she says, walking three dogs down a sunny side street. "I walk every where I go, I know the merchants and they know me, and there's just more energy around all the time."

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