San Diego’s growth has been managed and made at least a little Smart.

The San Diego Trolley circles downtown and connects it to the far reaches of eastern (Santee) and southern (San Ysidro) San Diego County.

In the middle, downtown’s various neighborhoods (Little Italy, Cortez, the Gaslamp Quarter, the Marina, etc.) have been reinvented by the Centre City Development Corporation, which has used tax-increment financing to acquire land and mate it with developers who’ll build the kind of projects — residential, mixed-use, even parks and schools — the community wants.

The current big-ticket project, the Ballpark District, will include not only a new field for the Padres but surrounding blocks of hotel, office, commercial, and residential development, replacing what is now a run-down warehousing district à la the East Austin Rust Belt.

This article appears in January 14 • 2000.

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