Lindbergh field is almost in downtown San Diego. You can almost walk from down town to the airport.
Up until the mid 1970 there were miles and miles of open flat land just a few miles north of the city center. They should have moved the airport before all that land was turned into residential areas.
I will not be surprised to hear one of these days a plane going down in San Diego (back in the mid 1970s a PSA jet and a small private plane collided).