Yep. San Diego is largely a post-car creation. Philadelphia is a city of rather similar population, but is basically the same size as it was in 1890[1]. San Diego, on the other hand, grew almost 10-fold from 1890 to 1930, then again from 1930.
I don't know too much about zoning processes, aside from that in the mid-to-late 20th century, mixed use zoning wasn't in fashion. My grandfather was a suburban mayor in the '60s, and when he talked about zoning process, he said it was: "Well, we drew a box and put the residential here, and the commercial district here" -- and San Diego was built up at a similar time, so I expect a similar process existed. A decent representation of this process is SimCity -- that the entire notion of mixed-use zoning was absent is certainly a reflection of 20th-century urban planning.
"Librande: Yes, definitely. I think the biggest one was the parking lots. When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don’t think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.
Manaugh: You would be making SimParkingLot, rather than SimCity."
I don't know too much about zoning processes, aside from that in the mid-to-late 20th century, mixed use zoning wasn't in fashion. My grandfather was a suburban mayor in the '60s, and when he talked about zoning process, he said it was: "Well, we drew a box and put the residential here, and the commercial district here" -- and San Diego was built up at a similar time, so I expect a similar process existed. A decent representation of this process is SimCity -- that the entire notion of mixed-use zoning was absent is certainly a reflection of 20th-century urban planning.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_cities_in_the_United_S...
[2] http://www.sandiegohistory.org/links/sandiegopopulation.htm