Communities in Crisis

Southern California may be one of the most unique areas in the country. For those of us who have grown up in the area, it is easy to take certain elements of our landscape for granted. There are few other places on this planet where, within a hundred miles, one finds dazzling beaches, inland areas with a temperate climate, picturesque mountains with forests and snow, and deserts of breathtaking beauty. Yet over the course of six decades this natural beauty has been gobbled up by the great blight of sprawl. It is a trend that has resulted in cities like Irvine, whose beige landscapes, vast parking lots, and generic chain superstores could place it just about anywhere in the United States. Sprawl quashes any sense of community, and has led to a lifestyle of destructive consumption.

Sprawl is a product of the reigning zoning laws and use of federal and state dollars on highways and sewer systems since World War II. The zoning of land has resulted in single-use areas, separating residential and commercial spaces. These zoning laws have allowed for the creation of tremendous residential neighborhoods stretching out over vast distances. For those of us who have grown up in such areas, it is difficult to imagine that there was ever a time when one could walk down the street to the grocery store on the corner, or where, in more densely populated areas, our apartment building may have also housed a small shop on its first floor. But there was such a time, and there are still places where this is the case.

Sprawl is also a product of our interstates. The development of the interstate system began under the Eisenhower administration and has been responsible for encouraging sprawl throughout the United States. In many industrialized countries with comparable systems, such as France or Germany, highways often form a ring around cities and are used for traveling from one city to another—but not here in California. The development of the highway system allowed for the development of ranches that had begun as Mexican land grants, such as the Irvine Ranch in Orange County or San Diego County’s Rancho Bernardo and Rancho de los Peñasquitos. Often with advance knowledge of plans for interstates, the planners of cities such as Irvine developed towns in which the freeway became a framework around which the city grew. This in turn contributes to the need to use an automobile for performing even the most mundane tasks within a city. Instead of driving from city to city on the highway, as one might in Europe, here one relies on the highway to travel from neighborhood to neighborhood. Furthermore, the reliance on the highway as a framework for new cities makes it difficult to set up an efficient mass transit system.

The immediate impact of the development of the highway system is that areas that in the 1920s and ’30s would have been more difficult to reach were suddenly made accessible to anybody owning an automobile. More far-flung, previously rural areas (such as most of Orange County) were suddenly brought a lot closer, fueling the out of control development that has reshaped the Southern California landscape.

Irvine’s original architect, William Pereira, designed Irvine to be a series of “villages” separated by streets wider than some highways. While Pereira’s plans for Irvine did not entirely become reality, his concept of “villages” is typical of exurban trends to develop insular communities closed to the outside world, be it through the actual presence of a gate or merely through the high walls and wide streets that border each development. This philosophy, coupled with the substitution of gaudy shopping malls for genuine public space, has left Irvine—like so many other exurbs—without anything resembling a city center, stifling any sense of strong civic identity. Because the layout of these areas tends to emphasize automobile transport over walking or bicycle riding, Irvine and other areas of sprawl are contributing to a lifestyle that ultimately pumps more carbon into our atmosphere. Here in Irvine, booster literature often gives lip service to such nice words as “sustainability,” usually citing the preservation of X amount of undeveloped land. Laudable though this may be, the fact remains that we already have a city in which the excessive consumption of energy is encouraged, no matter how many acres of land the Irvine Company sets aside.

Irvine is only one of countless examples of the way in which sprawl is an integral part to the increasing homogenization of American cities. Travel from one place to another throughout the United States and it becomes apparent that the corporate mentality that has driven sprawl over the last 60 years has taken its toll on the uniqueness of our communities. Certainly Irvine has its share of smaller businesses, but these are tucked away in strip malls anchored by businesses one could find most anywhere. Aside from taking in Southern California’s famous scenery and climate, any visitor to Orange County would be hard-pressed to find activities that do not include dropping a fortune at Disneyland or patronizing one of Orange County’s many oversized shopping malls. We watch our movies at Regal Cinemas, we buy our books from Barnes and Noble, our clothing comes from the same stores and the same designers, we dine at the same restaurants, and, at the end of it all, we retire to houses that all look the same.

Sprawl also contributes to the growing alienation that is the natural result of our nation’s ideology of individualism. More and more we seek to hide from the world around us. Many who can afford to lock themselves up in gated communities that are impenetrable to members of the lower class, with the exception of those who have come to make sure that the lawn is still perfectly manicured.

As the population of the United States continues to rise, it becomes clear that places such as Irvine cannot be continuously built up without planning. Instead we must focus on redevelopment, recycling materials and already developed land to create denser communities while remaining affordable. The result would be a nation in which the quality of life is above and beyond that which much of our current generation of exurban children has ever known.

An earlier version of this article appeared in The Irvine Progressive, a Campus Progress sponsored publication.

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