San Diego vs. Portland?
As a native and 30-year resident of San Diego, I think most people here have gotten it pretty straight in this thread already, particularly phr4gmonk3y, RikiTikiTavi and madajb. I also grew up in the eastern hinterlands of La Mesa and El Cajon, but now live in Mission Hills, which is basically right next to the airport. I’ll just elaborate on some things others have said: Mass transit: as most people have said, it’s pretty useless unless you design your life around it (i.e. getting a job and a dwelling on the same bus/trolley line or close enough to each other to not have to drive, etc.). The trolley system is improving as they add more lines, but with the geography of SD, consisting of a series of plateaus and canyons, it’s going to be slow going. Mass transit in SD mostly runs in a radial pattern from downtown, which is becoming an increasingly anachronistic plan as more commercial centers sprout up in varoius parts of town. Downtown still has a lot of the financial backbone of the c
I’m a San Diego native, grew up in La Mesa, now in west Clairemont area. Everything you hear about high prices is true. Gas is more expensive, housing is more expensive, food is more expensive, services are more expensive. (I do some travel, so I have some basis of comparison). Schooling is nothing to write home about. The Poway school district is supposed to be among the best and houses in that disctict command a premium for that alone (Note that housing prices appear to be slightly leveling off). This is less pricey than the options like Point Loma and La Jolla, among the most expensive options. Keep in mind there’s always private schools (my experience, admittedly not for everyone), charter schools, and suprisingly good homeschooling options/resources if you’re into that. There are sub-identities within the different communities as noted before, but nothing like, say, San Francisco (it was quite an experience visiting). There is also essentially no useable transit. There’s a bus sys
San Diego can be crushingly unaffordable. The safe and moderately attractive neighborhoods have housing prices which are among the very highest in the entire country, while San Diego doesn’t have anything like the high income job market that makes high price housing a little more palatable in LA or New York or the Bay Area. Everyone I know in San Diego either (a) sends their kids to $15,000/year private schools or (b) lives in one of a few suburbs on the water where every house costs more than $1.5 million, and sends their kids to that town’s public schools. San Diego is like LA in that there are plenty of public schools which, despite being smack in the middle of a neighborhood of $800,000 houses, have 90% free school lunch rates.
I’m living in the southern area of where Bedhead is talking about, Cardiff by The Sea. Socio-economically, I’d say that it’s definitely cost-prohibitive where I live. Homes were expensive to start out with, and from what I understand (I’m a high school student, so please understand my knowledge on the subject is somewhat limited), housing has experienced a fairly substantial inflation over the last couple years. As bedhead mentioned, the schools in the beach areas are relatively nice. I grew up from fourth grade on here, and don’t have any real gripes. My mom’s experience as a substitute teacher, has informed her that the differences in the schools here are shocking. A difference of 10 miles can mean a huge difference in the quality of schools. It’s a pretty wide range. The richer neighborhoods have a lot of money coming in from donations, and as I understand, education funding is tied to property tax. Asking her for advice now, she reccomends checking standardized testing scores for t
Yes, the housing market is awful unless you have exceptionally deep pockets. I don’t so I’m renting, but it’s not much better this way. Additionally, with all the condo conversions taking place to keep up with the demand for housing — my own apartment is on track to do so this summer — folks are being pushed further and further from downtown/central San Diego. I work just east of downtown and my 13-mile commute takes me 25 minutes door-to-door on most days. Public transportation seems like an afterthought with the way the lines are designed and the number of runs that are made; the same commute via foot, bus, and trolley would take me over 1-1/2 hours. I can’t speak to the current state of the schools here; anecdotally, several friends and coworkers with children send them by bus and carpool far outside of their home neighborhoods in order to get them into better programs. As far as the facelessness of SD: the ever-sprawly suburban “neighborhoods” definitely feel this way for me. My
