The City of San Diego hasbeen updating its zoning for the last four or five years to easethe development process and encourage the construction of apartmentunits. The city's development and planning strategies were thetopic of the latest CREW San Diego meeting thisweek, and speakers agreed that the zoning modernization plan hasbeen successful. Speakers at the meeting included moderatorBetsy Brennan, CEO of Downtown San DiegoPartnership and speakers Stephanie Smith,managing attorney of Grid Legal; ElyseLowe, director of development services at City ofSan Diego; Laura Black, deputy directorof community planning and implementation at the City of SanDiego.

"City council has been discussing the effects of the housingcrisis. Trying to create the easiest process possible so thatdevelopers don't have to go to city council, which can be expensiveand long," Lowe said at the meeting, adding that the city is makinga system to empower staff decisions. As a result, the new processhas cut six months off of the permitting process. "We are trying toturnaround a slow system. This goes for land use plan updates andthe city's internal processes," she said.

The city is not acting completely alone. State pressures todevelop more housing have also influenced the modernization of thesystem, according to Lowe. They are requiring units to be added.They are also looking at what local governments are doing. What arethe numbers? Where are those units going? They want to knoweverything from us. It's a new level of detail," she said.