In 1994 I lived in the top floor of a hundred year old Victorian in the Little Italy neighborhood of downtown San Diego. I paid $325 a month for two bedrooms, a balcony, and formal living and dining room. Within a few blocks were a handful of restaurants, a couple of bars, and a coffee shop that had just opened. Also within a few blocks were various drug dens and the very real danger of getting mugged. And while I didn’t
have a lawn, I did get to sweep needles off my front alcove every couple days. If I wanted to go downtown proper to the Gaslamp I could almost always park for free within a block east of the main drag, 5th. A couple more blocks to the east of Gaslamp was a no-man’s zone of cheap bars, prostitution, homelessness, and crime. On 5th and 4th there were a few dozen bars and restaurants.
Skip forward eleven years. I’m looking out my downtown office window at a dozen new highrises, almost all residential. What’s more the abandoned old high rises are now thriving hotels or condos. Little Italy is virtually crime free, has dozens of restaurants and shops. The Gaslamp downtown must have more than 175 restaurants, bars and shops in safe block after block. There are people on the streets, day and night. Free parking is a fond memory.
Let me try to describe the scale of the change (thanks to JMI Realty and Lennar for data). In the past five 
years developers have built and sold 4,621 downtown condos. There are 9,000 more coming. In the same period of time 2,250 apartments were built with another 1,300 coming. The condos are virtually all sold before they are built. Many have replaced slum housing that made downtown at night a risky experience a decade ago. Five years ago the downtown population was around 14,000 people – many if not most of them lower income. Today the population is about 27,500 people – many if not most middle class. The community plan calls for 89,000 residents by 2030.
And the folks moving back downtown are not your normal lefty elitists. Likely voters downtown (92101) are Democrats 2,539, Republican 2,491, DTS 1,745 (like in any new community, registration and likely voter count accuracy, will take a bit of time to catch up with population).These folks are moving back from the suburbs and demand the type of good government and public order they experienced in the outer San Diego cities.
There is a thirty year story to how California’s fasting growing downtown came to be, but Ill save that for another day because, frankly, I don’t know enough of the real history. Anyone who would like to send me a note with an accurate historical summary, I’d be happy to post for the reading pleasure of the Sacramento City Council.