Density and Zoning
A Calculation of Allowed Housing on the Guejito
I have taken each of the proposed alternative county general plans including current zoning and analyzed them to determine the amount of housing, or dwelling, units that would be allowed under each plan version. By calculating the acreage in each zoning category for the Guejito it is possible to arrive at the total allowed dwelling units for the Guejito Ranch as a whole. These results are shown in a table below. Maps showing zoning designations used are also included on this page.
| CURRENT ZONING REGULATIONS | Acres in Zone | Allowed # of Units |
| Limited Agriculture - 40AC | 85 | 2 |
| Limited Agriculture - 8AC | 98 | 12 |
| General Agriculture - 10AC | 201 | 20 |
| General Rural - 8AC | 232 | 29 |
| General Agriculture - 8AC | 899 | 112 |
| General Agriculture - 40AC | 20053 | 501 |
| TOTAL PLANNED DWELLING UNITS | 677 |
|
| GP 2020 Alt19 REFERRAL MAP 2008 | Acres in Zone | Allowed # of Units |
| Rural Lands (RL-20) | 206 | 11 |
| Rural Lands (RL-40) | 21347 | 534 |
| Semi-rural Residential (SR-10) | 14 | 1 |
| TOTAL PLANNED DWELLING UNITS | 546 |
|
| GP 2020 Alt21 HYBRID MAP 2008 | Acres in Zone | Allowed # of Units |
| Rural Lands (RL-40) | 2364 | 59 |
| Rural Lands (RL-80) | 19204 | 240 |
| TOTAL PLANNED DWELLING UNITS | 299 |
|
| GP 2020 Alt22 ENVIRONMENTAL MAP 2008 | Acres in Zone | Allowed # of Units |
| Rural Lands (RL-160) | 18642 | 117 |
| Rural Lands (RL-40) | 205 | 5 |
| Rural Lands (RL-80) | 2720 | 34 |
| TOTAL PLANNED DWELLING UNITS | 156 |
The County General Plan and it's associated zoning regulations set forth the parameters for future development including allowed housing development per acre. It is the purpose of these plans to provide the citizens with logical, predicable, and compatible land use and development into the future. As San Diego County prepares to update its General Plan for the unincorporated areas of the County several alternatives have emerged. The new general plan known as GP2020 has several proposed alternatives with varying degrees of development allowed. The ones identified and use here are alternate 19, the Referral Map, alternate 21, the Hybrid Map, and alternate 22, the Environmentally Superior Map. All alternatives are dated March 2008. A Special Planning Area or SPA can be used to rewrite existing planning on large areas and is a tool used by developers and public officials to promote their own ideas of appropriate development. None the less it all begins with the General Plan.
A special note about the (RL-160) designation should be included. This most extreme of all designations is almost a no building allowed zone. It is only used in the Environmentally Superior map and even there occurs only in 3 places, the Guejito, a part of Mesa Grande, just east of the Guejito, and around in holdings of the Anza Borrego Desert.
I would be happy to include any other suggested plans in this analysis.
All of the plans suggest a very low overall density. Although the allowed housing varies greatly between alternatives when these total are spread across about 22,000 acres of undeveloped land without any infrastructure to support development it is not clear that planning would proceed substantially differently under any of the alternatives. The cost of providing such infrastructure and the complicated process of development planning are beyond the scope of this study. Current Zoning allows for 677 units. The Referral Plan allows for 546 units. The Hybrid Plan allows for 299 units. The Environmentally Superior Plan allows for 156 units. The legend to the left shows the zone colors and descriptions for all the maps and alternative plans below.
Kit Wilson
