Teralta West, San Diego, CA

This is the part of City Heights most people mean when they say downtown City Heights. Teralta West covers the blocks of San Diego between University Avenue and El Cajon Boulevard from State Route 15 east to Fairmount Avenue, and it holds the busiest few blocks of University in this part of Mid-City. The freeway shapes daily life more than anything else here. Centerline transit stations sit right in the median of State Route 15 at both University and El Cajon, so Rapid buses can drop down to freeway level and skip the surface traffic on the way downtown. Rapid 215 also runs the length of El Cajon Boulevard, and Interstate 8 is a quick drive north. The two main streets carry the errands and meals. Sayulitas keeps taco shop hours from early morning to late night, and Royal Garden on El Cajon pairs a Vietnamese and Chinese menu with a banquet hall that hosts weddings and quinceaneras. The Black Cat Bar, open since 2011, has pool tables, a chandelier, a red neon cat in the window, and a decor loosely inspired by Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, and it books live bands in a room that holds about a hundred people. Homes are mostly apartment buildings, with a scattering of older houses on the side streets off Orange Avenue and 43rd Street. Density is high and lots are small, so private yards are rare. Public space comes from the blocks around it. Teralta Park, California's first freeway cap, covers State Route 15 along the western side, and across University the Urban Village cluster holds the branch library on Fairmount and Officer Jeremy Henwood Memorial Park. Every Saturday morning the City Heights Farmers Market fills Wightman Street just south of University with produce stalls and prepared food. Living next to a freeway has a cost. Traffic noise carries along the western blocks, the main streets are loud and crowded, and green space inside Teralta West itself is scarce. The upside is that few places in San Diego put a library, a weekly market and two freeway-level bus stations this close to home.