Linda Vista, San Diego, CA

Linda Vista was built in a hurry. In 1941, with aircraft plants short of housing for their wartime workers, the federal government put up roughly 3,000 houses on this mesa above Mission Valley in about 200 days, and two years later the neighborhood got what is often called San Diego's first mall. That shopping center is long gone, but the wartime street grid and many of the small houses remain. Homes today mix those compact 1940s houses with later infill and a good share of apartment complexes. Remodels sit right beside houses that look much as they did after the war. The University of San Diego campus crowns the bluff just west in Morena, and from the western streets the view runs out over Mission Bay toward the ocean. Linda Vista Road is the main commercial spine, and its plaza near Ulric Street is packed with Asian groceries and restaurants. Xinjiang BBQ grills lamb skewers and spicy fish late into the night, staying open until 2 or 3 in the morning. Tid Din Thai Kitchen, farther down Linda Vista Road, cooks Thai grill plates from lunch through dinner. Down on Friars Road at the valley edge, Mr. Peabody's pours drinks over burgers and lets leashed dogs join you on the patio. Thuan Phat Supermarket stocks Asian staples in the same plaza, and on Thursday afternoons the Linda Vista Farmers' Market takes over the lot beside it, run by the community group Love, Linda Vista. The library is on Ulric Street. Interstate 805, State Route 163 and Interstate 8 all sit within a few minutes, and the Morena/Linda Vista trolley station lies just beyond the neighborhood, down the slope in Morena. The Linda Vista Recreation Center on Levant Street fills a 15-acre site with two softball fields, four tennis courts, a gym and a skate park. Kelly Street Neighborhood Park and the Kearny Mesa Dog Park add smaller green spots, while the canyons that drop toward Mission Valley frame the mesa's southern edge. Space is what you give up. The houses are small, the apartment blocks are dense, and stretches of Linda Vista Road look tired. In exchange the mesa sits a few minutes from the bay, the valley and three freeways, with lamb skewers available long after the rest of the city has gone to bed.