City To Double Allowed Housing In Mira Mesa

By Andrew Keatts, the Voice of San Diego

December 7, 2022

This post originally appeared in the Dec. 7 Morning Report. Get the daily newsletter in your inbox by subscribing today.

The San Diego City Council passed new development regulations for Mira Mesa Monday, in hopes of spurring home building there in the coming decades.

Mira Mesa is currently home to 26,800 homes, and the new regulations would allow the community to grow to 58,000 homes.

Keep in mind: Mira Mesa’s new community plan – like others that set general development rules throughout the city – are not strict blueprints anyone should ever expect to be fully fulfilled, even in the long-term.

For example, the new Mira Mesa plan replaces one passed in 1992 that would have allowed developers to theoretically build 34,000 homes there. In thirty years, it reached just over 75 percent of that. The total development number the plan allows is a maximum that could only be reached if every property in the community not only redevelops from its current use, but also does so to the absolute limit of the new zoning rules.

City planners started writing the new plan four years ago.

The city’s climate action plan imagines 50 percent of city residents walking, biking or taking transit for all of their trips by 2035. Planners say the Mira Mesa plan will max out at 28 percent of trips taking place outside of a car. The city has never passed a community plan with the mode share targets it lists as a target in its climate plan.

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