San Diego being both a military and college town means the city also pulls in a lot of white and Black transplants from the Midwest, Northeast, and South. This gives San Diego a East of the Mississippi flavor with Latin undertones. I like to describe San Diego as a Midwestern city in California. Columbus or Minneapolis with palm trees and beaches.
It's interesting because although Los Angeles also has transplants from out East but it's still culturally more overtly Western than SD. Outside of the westside, it's practically the same culturally as Phoenix.
Yup. SD is basically the most traditional city left on the West Coast. I think overall white folks outnumber everyone by the millions at a 2.x-3:1 ratio. Other cities may have a larger population, but they don't have the same white:non-whites ratio. Whereas other cities may have a similar or greater white:other ratio SD does, they won't have the same population of 3 million+.
It's White flight really. SD basically got this way because everyone moved out of LA to OC when it started to get more diverse, then OC started to get more diverse so they moved to South OC, now those South OC people moved to San Diego. That's the honest truth and saw it happen over the last 20 years.
They're 100% going to stronghold it from here by making shyt expensive af. It's crazy too because while I've stared at the same shytty road conditions all over the streets for years in LA, SD potholes really don't last very long. You can definitely see them move to fix problems the quickest in that city.