By Tom Coat / SD U-T Commentary / July 31, 2026 As battles swirl around Pacific Beach’s Turquoise Tower, Midway Rising and ADU “apartment buildings,” a more fundamental concern surprisingly has been pushed to the sidelines. For 54 years, historic Proposition D protected San Diego’s coastal communities with a 30-foot height limit. That allowed all San Diegans access to our magnificent shoreline. In an essay published in The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Opinion section, City Council President Joe LaCava summed up Proposition D’s importance to San Diego: “San Diego’s 30-foot coastal height limit symbolizes a commitment to preserving the city’s coastal access and differentiating our valued shoreline from walled-off cities like Miami. The height limit is not only a regulatory restriction but a reflection of San Diego’s identity,” LaCava wrote. Today, this “reflection of San Diego’s identity” has been blacked out — “voided.” All it took was a declaration of a crisis in the Legislature and bureaucratic approval. That’s so easy, it begs the question: What is the next declared crisis where votes won’t count? The will of 64% of San Diego voters who approved Proposition D in 1972 was trashed because the state said Proposition D conflicts with developer-friendly state density bonus housing laws. Those laws, incidentally, resulted in a hugely unpopular “unintended consequence” — the 268-foot high Turquoise Tower proposal over which the city and developer are still haggling.