Linda Vista

Linda Vista is a neighborhood in San Diego, California, in the United States. It was San Diego's first significant industrial worker housing complex. For the first time, it extended the city beyond the Mission Valley boundaries, and it also reflected a San Diego that was younger, more racially varied, and more integrated.

 

After being severely damaged by the 1916 flood, an old Linda Vista likely focused on San Clemente Canyon ceased to exist.

 

Many of the residences in Linda Vista were built as part of a government project to house wartime aircraft workers between 1940 to 1941. In October 1941, a construction initiative aided by Reuben H. Fleet resulted in 3,001 dwellings in less than 200 days.

 

The Linda Vista Shopping Center, which opened in 1943 and was demolished in 1972, was San Diego's first and one of the country's earliest shopping malls. It garnered honors for its design, which was inspired by a garden city. A Walker Scott department store anchored the center.

 

Following the Vietnam War and the following Fall of Saigon, Vietnamese immigrants and refugees began resettling in Linda Vista in the late 1970s. Many Vietnamese families still live in Linda Vista. Therefore this would have a significant influence on the neighborhood.

 

The neighborhood was designed using 'garden city' planning concepts and Clarence Perry's Neighborhood Unit Theory, which emphasizes a self-contained community with open spaces, big blocks, a designated service location at the center, and vehicular traffic and pedestrian separation.

 

There are a few public pedestrian routes in the vicinity. They include ones that connect Thomson Ct. and Upton Ct., Ulric St. and Westinghouse St. at Comstock St., Fulton St. and Eastman St. mid-block, and Eastman St. and Linda Vista Rd. at the pedestrian crosswalk halfway down that lengthy block.

 

On October 28, 1954, sales of the project homes began after a lengthy procedure. Purchasers were assigned prices and priority depending on their residency and military service - another point of contention, as most inhabitants had been civilian manufacturing employees throughout the war, including the Korean War.

 

The project's proximity to San Diego originally stretched city services in Linda Vista, exacerbated by the development's exemption from property taxes. In June 1943, the federal government began paying the city in place of taxes.

 

The federal government began supporting school operations in September 1941, but finances for the construction of school buildings, playgrounds, lamps, or any other type of store took longer. It took another two years for operations to materialize.