There's Still Time to Voice Your Choice for San Diego's Future
If you haven't voiced your choice yet, it's not too late! Here's our earlier blog posting about what it's all about:
By now many of you have heard about “Our Greater San Diego Vision,” an unprecedented effort to engage tens of thousands of San Diegans to create a 50- to 100-year vision for our future.
Through Equinox Center’s research into quality of life issues in the region, one of our key findings has been that the San Diego region sorely needs a cohesive vision for the future – one that can guide truly regional planning as we look to add another 650,000 residents by the year 2030. (Too often in San Diego, plans are developed in silos between rather than across issue areas – like water, energy, land use and transportation – or cities: Del Mar, National City, San Diego, etc.)
As a resident of San Diego County, Our Greater San Diego Vision, led by The San Diego Foundation, is a chance for you to lend your voice toward shaping that future. After a series of public workshops, The San Diego Foundation has narrowed down some possible future scenarios, and is now inviting a broader swath of the public to in a sense “vote” for the ones you’d like to see.
We just went through the process of “voicing our choice” at http://ourgreatersandiegovision.org/equinox. Here’s how it works:
1) You’ll be asked which issue you’d like to weigh in on: future scenarios, education, jobs, community and culture, etc. You can go through one by one and do all of them if you like, or just choose one you care particularly much about. (If you do them all, realistically expect the exercise to take at least 20-30 minutes. We suggest doing this over a glass of wine at the end of your work day so you can really focus, as the questions are not exactly no-brainers.)
(Screen shot from Our Greater San Diego Vision)
2) Given Equinox Center's focus, we were particularly interested in “Future Scenarios.” Check it out and you'll probably find that going through the selection process is an opportunity to learn a bit about how regional planning works and to reflect on where our individual priorities lie. For example, you’ll be asked to consider trade-offs and compromises like:
- How will we build enough new residences for our growing population, while also preserving natural spaces and minimizing water and energy waste in the region?
- Is it realistic in the future to maintain the ideal of single family homes on large plots of land, or would you like to see other, more efficient types of development promoted more?
- If growth has to be accommodated somewhere, what’s the best place to concentrate it?
Go ahead and check it out for yourself here: http://ourgreatersandiegovision.org/equinox. The site will only be up through this month, so don’t wait too long!