Development

San Diego is facing an existential fork — to build or not to build?

The region’s newly minted political leadership wants to woo youth, diversity and sophistication by beefing up urban centers with new train stations and apartment buildings. They argue this increasingly metropolitan San Diego will be more egalitarian; as new buildings go up — literally, in multiple stories — housing costs will come down, they promise.

However, many residents enjoy the region’s culture of single-family houses and car commuting. Affluent homeowners have banded together to repeatedly block developments that would obscure views, increase traffic or otherwise transform a neighborhood’s character.

Officials will face tough decisions in the coming year over how hard to push their vision, including overhauling streets to widen sidewalks, adding bike lanes and removing parking. They will also have to work out the details on a $177 billion plan to build hundreds of miles of new high-speed rail and agree on a strategy for bringing a needed tax increase to the ballot box, perhaps as soon as 2022.

Embracing such growth won’t guarantee San Diego becomes affordable. Cities around California and the U.S. have built train stations, fancy bike lanes and lifted restrictions on new development only to see entire neighborhoods transformed into playgrounds for affluent young transplants. Critics argue that such an approach has too often displaced working-class families.