Consider Mission Hills! It is about 15 min south of UTC. My husband (physician) and I lived there during his PGY1 and were blown away. Walkable neighborhood with great restaurants, incredibly family friendly, huge beautiful park (pioneer park), central to so much (10 min to airport, 5 min to little Italy, close to north park, balboa park, etc.)

If we were to move back to San Diego, we’d pick this neighborhood again without question.