The apartments and condos in the Rio Vista West neighborhood in Mission Valley don’t live up to the development’s walkable-neighborhood billing, says a resident of the neighborhood in this article, posted on urban planning website Planetizen.com.

Environmental journalist Diane DeRubertis penned the piece, lamenting the neighborhood’s latent discouragement of pedestrians:

For starters, Rio Vista West is enclosed by huge, multi-lane thoroughfares, which feed rapidly-flowing traffic to Mission Valley’s freeways and malls. Compounding the problem is Rio Vista’s main retail component – a big box shopping center set upon acres of asphalt surface parking.

The immediate surroundings are also scaled for cars, not people, including an expanding 1960’s-era mall and a new office park. Pedestrians who venture into the adjacent areas not only face daunting intersections, but also find themselves lost among parking lots and traffic. As a result, the Rio Vista West development is not walkable beyond its own driveways.

The piece is worth a read, and those commenting in the thread beneath it get into an interesting discussion of the San Diego City of Villages plan (their sense: on the whole, it has failed) and a discussion of whether the Little Italy neighborhood is a successful model.

KELLY BENNETT

Leave a comment

We expect all commenters to be constructive and civil. We reserve the right to delete comments without explanation. You are welcome to flag comments to us. You are welcome to submit an opinion piece for our editors to review.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.