A monday thought about houses etc

[channlluv]

I live in a city of approximately 3million. 95% of the buildable land inside the city limits is built up. The county itself is larger than the whole state of Rhode Island and has 17 microclimate zones. (It's 70 degress and sunny where I'm sitting as I write this, down near the harbor, but an hour east of me, there's a snowy ice storm blowing in the mountains.)

The people who live here are nearly as varied. I live in a suburban neighborhood about 25 minutes north of here that I like to think of as ethnically rich. I work at an elementary school in this neighborhood, also suburban, but within sight of the city skyline, and my daughter attends a charter middle school in the same building where I work.

I visit downtown as little as possible - all those people make me nervous. The only highrises are downtown. The apartments elsewhere are rarely above two stories tall.

We do have bike paths all over the place, though, and pretty large recreational areas in all areas built for multi-use, and they are very popular.

I think this city is fairly bike-friendly. It's just so sprawling that it's hard to really consider biking to work. It's 17 miles from my door to the school and would take me two hours with all the lights.

I live where I can afford. If there were more affordable housing close by, I'd consider it, but the houses near here are upwards of $500,000 - and that's for the small townhouses. San Diego is an expensive city to live in, unless you're way out in east county, in the really rural area where people keep horses and things.

As far as population migration, we've already had some schools close because so many people moved away from their neighborhoods. I think our population may be shrinking here, but when you've got 3million to start with, it's really not all that noticeable.

In 20 years, who knows. I know they're building up our freeway from four lanes to six. What used to be beautiful rolling hills across the canyon from us is now an unbroken swath of cookie-cutter McMansions. There's nowhere else to build housing except the rural areas way north and way east, and the residents out there fight it every time there's a resolution on the ballot to open up rural land to development. More power to'em. When we go up there, it's not to eat at the new strip mall Subway.

Our business economy seems pretty stable compared to a lot of other regions. We have a lot of foreclosures, but not whole blocks like in some areas of the country. I think our unemployment rate is a little better than average, too, but I also know several big companies left San Diego in the last few years.

So to finally answer your question, in 20 years, where will we put everyone? North and east, and there will have to be smaller city-centers in each community because we're already sprawled as far as we can go here, I think.

Roxy