Building a Better San Diego

Defining a Vision for Our City

We, David and Catherine, were thrilled to join Our City San Diego's July roundtable on "How To Build A Better San Diego." A gathering of the most progressive developers and designers tackled some of our region's biggest challenges and proposed solutions to improve our city’s built environment.

"The potential for San Diego could be unbelievable," said David McCullough, who pushed for lifting regulatory delays. Elyse W. Lowe, of the city's Project Submittal and Management Division, noted “2015 building permits were up 20% from 2014, and addressing these delays will create space for new designs and innovation."  Some of the other road signs indicating a direction forward included: removing building height limits of 30 feet west of I-5, educating the general public and roof decks in North Park.

There are certainly sunnier skies ahead for San Diego's built environment as the roundtable participants take action rather than talk about the issues. Our design philosophy at MLA is dedicated to making spaces liveable, useable, friendly and beautiful throughout all of San Diego. Mike Burnett of FoundationForForm Architecture & Development stated, "I've been taking it upon myself to make an example. One that you can look at and show, versus trying to argue it with other people. I want to use my energies more efficiently and say, 'This is what I'm talking about.' And you can see it and walk through it."

All of us at McCullough Landscape Architecture are looking forward to continuing this conversation in order to realize our city's amazing potential!

You can find further event coverage in the July/August issue of the magazine (page 34).