A History of Community Planning in Ocean Beach

Originally published Feb. 21, 2013

Editor: Here is a series of articles and accounts about the history of community planning in Ocean Beach going back to the Sixties and Seventies. It is not a complete history, but does offer up an early history of the Ocean Beach Precise Plan, the planning crisis that faced the community in the early 1970s, OB Planning Board, and OB’s response – which by the middle of that decade – made California history.

The Battle Over the Ocean Beach Precise Plan- how urban planning became a democratic process and how OB was saved (here)

an introduction to the story about OB’s historic battle over the Precise Plan and about the fight to make urban planning a democratic process – which in the end directly saved Ocean Beach from over-development, enabling it to be the quaint village it is today.

How the West Was Won – how urban planning in Ocean Beach became democratic (here)

we take a look at the history of urban development and planning on the Peninsula, and how the planning crisis which developed during the early seventies was resolved with the formation of the OB Planning Board.

The First OB Precise Plan: Pen Inc Plans High Rise for Ocean Beach (here)

we reviewed what the first Precise Plan represented, and just who were the members of Peninsulans, Inc., the local establishment group who wrote it.



The Community Awakes – OB Responds to the Early Seventies Planning Crisis (here)



the opposition to the first Precise Plan mobilizes to deal with the crisis.