“Designing San Diego: If we started over, what would we do differently?”
Vicki Estrada is a landscape architect, an urban designer, and president of Estrada Land Planning. The firm’s mission is “to design spaces and modify the land in a creative and ecologically sound manner.” She believes that landscape architects “are uniquely qualified, among design professionals, to create design solutions that consider sociological, environmental, engineering, art, spatial and architectural factors.”
High-profile projects by Estrada Land Planning have included: the Balboa Park Master Plan and the Central Mesa Precise Plan, the San Diego Zoo Expansion, Santee Town Center Transit Station, Otay Ranch, Rancho San Diego, Renaissance La Jolla, San Diego State Trolley Station, El Cajon Boulevard Medians, the Bayfront Trolley Station, Highland Avenue in National City, the San Ysidro Pilot Village, the downtown San Diego Broadway medians, the Interstate-5 widening project from the 5/805 merge to Oceanside, Encinitas Community Character Survey, and the Ocean Beach Skate Park.
On the subject of “starting over,” Ms. Estrada must be considered an expert: Vicki lived most of her life as Steve Estrada, before undergoing a sex change operation. Tom Fudge of KPBS writes: “Back in 2005, Steve Estrada appeared on this show, These Days in San Diego, to tell the world he intended to become a woman. It was a dramatic moment in the life of a man who was deeply involved in the politics and civic life of San Diego. Steve Estrada has become Vicki Estrada both physically and psychologically. She had her sex change, called gender reassignment surgery, in 2006.” Vicki married her partner, Lynda, on August 23, 2008.
