If you ask around the fleet where the families live, Tierrasanta comes up fast. It's a quiet, master-planned neighborhood in the geographic center of San Diego — nicknamed "the Island in the Hills" because Mission Trails Regional Park wraps around it — and it's been a military-family favorite for decades.
What it's actually like, day one
Tierrasanta is residential through and through: single-family homes, cul-de-sacs, good schools, and trailheads into Mission Trails at the edge of the neighborhood. It was built largely on former Camp Elliott military land in the 1970s, and its central position is the whole point — you're roughly equidistant from Naval Base San Diego, Coronado, Point Loma, and MCAS Miramar, with I-15 and SR-52 right there. It's calm, family-first, and a little tucked-away.
The tradeoff
You're trading water and walkability for space, schools, and a central commute. There's no beach and no real nightlife — it's a place you come home to, not go out in. For a family that wants a yard and a short-ish drive to any base, that trade is exactly right; for a single sailor who wants to walk to bars and sand, it isn't.
Verify before you sign
Pull the specific San Diego Unified school for the address, drive the commute to your actual base at your report time, and — because it backs onto open canyon — check the brush-fire zone and any HOA rules for the street.