What Are the Regions Challenges and What Is SANDAG Doing to Address Them?
The San Diego region faces significant challenges regarding transportation mobility, housing affordability, and environmental protection-concerns similar in nature and scope to other California urban regions. SANDAG works to address these issues by developing a regional comprehensive plan, encouraging local actions to follow its policy suggestions, and financing transportation projects that are consistent with its plan. Virtually all SANDAG plans for about 15 years have encouraged local agencies to use their land use powers to promote smart growth, or compact, efficient, and environmentally sensitive development that focuses future growth away from rural areas and closer to existing and planned job centers and public facilities. While SANDAGs policy recommendations make sense, we note that SANDAG has no authority over land use and that fiscal and political factors often work contrary to SANDAGs suggestions. Our review found that local agency land use plans are not well aligned with SAN
