I know the Downtown condos quite well and I don’t think that the luxury living model is suitable for the average American family because:
1) The spaces are too small and too expensive. How are you going to put two 200lb people in less than 800sf?
2) Americans are pack rats and love to shop for stuff. Look at the growth of the self storage business in the last 20 years.
3) Americans love sports and BBQ. You can’t have football parties and BBQs in a condo.
4) Americans love their cars and most people still feel that taking the bus is for losers.
5) The HOAs are too high.
6) No place for the kids to play. You need parks, sport facilities, etc.. for the kids.
For Downtown to be more successful, you need large basic apartments that are cheap to purchase and maintain. The luxury or pseudo luxury only appeals to the professionals.
I personally think that housing innovation is being hamstrung by local codes and setback requirements.
I believe that large affordable fee-simple row houses with no HOAs are the way to go. Blighted neighborhoods such as Encanto and City Heighs could be rebuild and revived. Allowing such buildings would give incentives to owners to sell their lots and cash out. The housing stock would then be upgraded to modern standards. That alone would solve much of the density and transportation problems.
Row houses with shop houses downstairs and living uptairs is another way to go. Immigrant family would love that because that’s how they lived in their original countries. Travel the world and you will see. Current codes that segretate live and work are exacerbating transportation problems.
San Diego wants to become a world class city but still has the building mentality of 1970s suburbia. We are simply more ornate than the 1970s but it’s basically the same.
