When most kids played SimCity, the thrill came from building skyscrapers or fending off disasters. For Heidi Vonblum, the game planted the seed of a lifelong career in shaping real cities.

Today, Vonblum is Director of San Diego’s City Planning Department. She is the heart of planning efforts aligning climate, housing, conservation, mobility, and infrastructure goals into one vision. “Planning isn’t about one single piece—it’s about making all of the pieces work together,” she said. “The part I’m most passionate about is when it all comes together in partnership with the public, elected officials, departments across the organization, and all other levels of government.”

Her path to city planning wasn’t entirely conventional. With a B.S. in City & Regional Planning from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, Vonblum began her career as an environmental planner. She later went on to receive her law degree from the University of San Diego School of Law, where she took classes by night and continued to work as a planner by day, eventually practicing in the San Diego City Attorney’s Office as a Deputy City Attorney, where she got to have the City Planning Department as her client for nearly ten years! With the opportunity to return to planning, she brought with her a unique perspective. “I’ve absolutely loved getting to see it from all sides, and my greatest joy is getting to work with the best colleagues ever for such a long time. I have literally grown up with the professionals in my organization,” she said.

That perspective shaped two of her most impactful projects. The first was San Diego’s Parks Master Plan, which overhauled how the city planned and funded parks. “The old way wasn’t working; a new system was needed,” she explained. Her team developed updated standards to serve San Diego’s future rather than its past, while also rethinking how to fund mobility, fire, library, and other citywide assets.

The second was the 2024 Comprehensive General Plan Update. San Diego’s General Plan hadn’t been updated since 2008, and in the years since, the city had become largely built out, infrastructure needs had widened, and climate and housing challenges had grown more urgent. “It was the kind of project I love most—making all of the goals work together to form a comprehensive plan for the city’s future,” she said.

Her career has not been without challenges. “I’ve been turned down for many opportunities, and the road to success has a ton of bumps in it,” she admitted. Coming from a working-class family, she didn’t grow up with the polished vocabulary often expected in professional settings. But she views that as an advantage: “It’s made me more successful as a planner because I can communicate in a straightforward way that people can more easily understand.”

She credits much of her success in her leadership role to the experience she gained from being a mom to her three amazing young children, who have deepened her multi-tasking, problem-solving, and communication skills, and extended her patience to epic levels, She advises young professionals to  “care about what you do; no whining; be patient; and show kindness as often as you can.”

For her, the profession is about more than policy or process—it’s about impact. “I’m proud to be in a position to identify barriers to progress and find solutions that improve the lives of the communities we serve,” she said.

Like the childhood game that first drew her in, planning still feels like a puzzle where the pieces must fit together. But this time, the stakes are real—and the city she’s helping to shape is her own.

Education: Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, B.S. , City & Regional Planning; University of San Diego School of Law, JD.

APA Divisions: City Planning and Management Division, Housing and Community Development Division, Planning and Law Division, Sustainable Communities Division, Transportation Planning Division

States Lived: California

Home