Urban Studies, Vol. 39, No. 13, 2507– 2530, 2002
Who Built Irvine? Private Planning and the Federal Government Ann Forsyth [Paper rst received, June 2001; in nal form, April 2002]
Summary. The Irvine Ranch in Southern California is the largest privately master-planned ‘new community’ or satellite new town ever to be built in the US. The development was led by the private sector but government played an important role. This paper traces how the federal government shaped the Irvine development through a range of policies and programmes from defence to habitat protection. In turn, the developers of Irvine were cast in a role of co-ordinating parts of government. This analysis highlights some of the problems likely to be faced as governments promote similarly phased, co-ordinated and mixed-use proposals under the rubric of smart growth or sustainable development.
Introduction The Irvine Ranch in Southern California is the largest privately master-planned ‘new community’ or satellite new town ever to be built in the US. Started in the early 1960s, and only half way through its development, by 2000 it housed around 200 000 people. This paper traces the various ways that the federal government shaped the Irvine development, looking both at policies and programmes that shaped suburban growth in general and those that had more speci c effects on the Irvine Ranch. In the US, urban development, particularly residential development, is most often seen as the domain of local government or the work of large-scale federal programmes such
as urban renewal or the Federal Housing Administration. This paper highlights an alternative way of understanding urban development, analysing how a large number of federal programmes and actions have incrementally shaped the development process, sometimes independently and sometimes in concert with local governments. The casestudy site, the Irvine Ranch, is a very complicated project that has intersected geographically with many jurisdictions and programmatically with numerous policy and regulatory areas. However, Irvine was not one of the 13 Title VII new towns developments that received federal loan guarantees and oversight in the late 1960s and early
Ann Forsyth is in the Design Center for American Urban Landscape, University of Minnesota , 89 Church Street SE, Minneapolis , MN 55455-0109 , USA. Fax: 161 262 74124. E-mail:
[email protected] . The author wishes to thank Guy Stuart, Kathy Crewe, Ray Watson, John McDonald and two anonymous reviewers for providin g helpful comments on this paper. Rob Gilmore prepared the map; Sarah Calderon, Ruby Henry, Jerome Chou and Ned Thomas did important but boring library work; and Elissa Malcohn transcribed many of the interviews. The James Irvine Foundation , now funding environmental programmes, provided a grant to support this study. Additional assistance came from the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard and the Dean’s of ce of the Harvard Design School. The Lincoln Institute for Land Policy funded related work. The Irvine Company offered nancial research support with no strings attached and no reporting requirements, but after some thought I decided not to use it. They did, however, copy slides and some plans for me. Staff at the UC Irvine library were extremely helpful. Finally, thanks to the many interviewees who answered the author’s question s in a thoughtfu l manner. 0042-098 0 Print/1360-063 X On-line/02/132507– 24 Ó 2002 The Editors of Urban Studies DOI: 10.1080/004209802200002708 6
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1970s. Rather, this paper charts federal effects in the far more common situation where land-use planning is, on the face of it, under the control of local levels of government and the private sector. ‘New community’ is a term used in the US for large developments, generally over 2500 acres (1000 hectares), that have a comprehensive and mixed-use design. The most self-contained are also called new towns, even when part of a metropolitan area (Eichler and Kaplan, 1967; Grif n, 1974, pp. 3– 4). The paper shows how, in such projects, developers take over a signi cant number of roles traditionally undertaken by government. This is particularly the case with the more comprehensively planned new communities such as Irvine that provide signi cant employment, cultural facilities, habitat protection and elaborate recreational programmes. For the developer, this quasigovernmental role included: initial and ongoing physical master planning, administering private development controls, setting up neighbourhood associations to maintain common and recreational areas, and work in attracting employers and retailers. The developers may also initiate the formation of local and specialised governments, as Irvine did when it established the Irvine Ranch Water District in 1961. In fact, there are many legal similarities between local governments and private corporations—in terms of functions like borrowing—and this is made extremely clear in new community development (Monkkonen, 1988, p. xii; Frug, 1999). Of course, private companies doing new town developments lack democratic accountability. In the case of Irvine, county and city governments have, however, regulated development since it started in the 1960s and so democratic accountability was present in this form. Large developments also need to interact with and co-ordinate government agencies beyond the local level. The large size and comprehensive, mixed-use designs of such developments make this interaction even more likely. Such developers need to work actively with governments in order to get
their development done with the various pieces in place at the right time. The coordination role is reminiscent of specialpurpose governments such as urban renewal authorities. Many new towns built in other countries are actually developed by such special public development corporations. It can be argued, then, that large developments are uniquely affected by government. However, they are also only extreme versions of what is a typically signi cant urban role for the federal level. This combination of typicality and uniqueness makes developments such as Irvine important as case studies as they can clarify what can often seem to be a messy and diffuse set of federal effects on urban form. While previous scholarly work has been done on individual policies (such as the interstate highways programme) or sectors (such as housing), this case study is unusual in examining a wide range of policies and programmes as they affect a particular development.1 It is thus more comprehensive in terms of policies and programmes covered and yet more speci c in terms of examining a particular place. The paper draws on over 60 interviews conducted with people involved in Irvine’s development, governance and activism; socioeconomic and scal data; archival sources; and examination of the physical structure of Irvine through photographs and mapping. Interviewees had a variety of positions on the development and were chosen for historical knowledge and to show a range of opinions. People’s names have not been given, but rather their role in Irvine has been indicated. 2 Archival sources came from three collections at the University of California Irvine, the slide collection of The Irvine Company (TIC) and personal les of interviewees. These included hundreds of plans, reports; maps; slides; speeches; and local newsletters, magazines and newspaper articles. Some activists and the City of Irvine generously shared reports on issues such as the El Toro base reuse. To trace political battles over such issues as affordable housing and environmental protection, newspapers were searched on line and clippings and re-
WHO BUILT IRVINE?
ports in the archives were also examined. It has not been possible to cite all these sources in this paper, but the story relies on them. A small number of useful books, articles and dissertations also dealt with Irvine and they are cited in the text and their approaches are dealt with in a footnote.3 The analysis was constructed by comparing sources with each other and with additional data on social and economic factors, drawing out the federal effects. It should be noted that I have never before studied a development company that is hated so intensely by a signi cant group of people. There are different reasons—a dislike of the development aesthetic, disagreement with TIC policies and a critique of its quest for pro ts. Indirectly, these critics helped me as the planners at TIC had been so heavily denounced in the past that they were less fearful of being studied than other development professionals might have been. My position has been to try to highlight areas of con ict and criticism although, in an articlelength treatment, there is not the space to deal with all such disagreements. This paper rst outlines the basic history and features of Irvine, outlining the role of the private-sector players in planning. The paper then brie y examines the main areas of federal policies and programmes with effects on suburban growth and on Irvine. In particular, Irvine was affected by policies in the areas of —highway funding and energy policy, shaping transport options; —housing and taxation policy supporting home-ownership; —agriculture; —defence; —education; —new towns; —taxation of non-pro ts; and —environmental regulation and infrastructure. While there are dozens of such developments in the US, Irvine holds lessons beyond the speci c new community style of development, in particular for the more comprehen-
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sive forms of change as are currently being proposed in the US anti-sprawl movement (Ewing, 1991). Like the most comprehensive new communities, these forms of development provide mixed-use, phased, serviced environments that preserve open space and place people near jobs. They also, like such new communities, have a regional vision and are seen as a solution to problems of metropolitan growth. The complexity of new community development, however, raises questions about the implementation of such policies, particularly in situations with less co-ordinated, patient, wealthy or in uential proponents. The Story of Irvine The Irvine Ranch is composed of wholes and parts of three Spanish and Mexican land grants. At its maximum size it was around 115 000 acres (46 539 hectares)—over a fth of the area of the current Orange County and eight times the land area of Manhattan. It reached from the ocean to the Santiago Hills beside what is now the Cleveland National Forest, and from Laguna Beach to Newport Beach (Cameron, 1979, p. 4; see Figure 1 and Table 1). California became a state of the US in 1850. While many families managed to maintain their land grants, proving title to the new US government was expensive and interest rates and droughts in the 1860s forced them to sell. James Irvine I, a San Francisco merchant who had made money during the gold rush, worked with partners to assemble the Irvine Ranch in the 1860s, eventually buying them out in the 1870s. On Irvine’s death in the 1890s, his son James Irvine II inherited the entire ranch and incorporated it as The Irvine Company (TIC) in West Virginia (Cameron, 1979, pp. 1– 5; Cleland, 1962). Histories of the ranch tend to focus on the family dynamics of the Irvines—a rich and powerful family with some mysterious deaths (Irvine Smith, 1971, pp. 7– 9). The ranch became one of the world’s largest Valencia orange orchards and was also
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Figure 1. Irvine Ranch: major features.
known for such products as walnuts, avocados and lima beans (Cameron, 1979, p. 5; Cleland, 1962). For the purposes of this paper, however, two elements of this early history are most important—provisions for keeping the land intact and the tradition of long-term investment. In terms of family dynamics, in 1937 James Irvine II transferred 51 or 54 per cent of the ranch—accounts disagree—to a non-pro t foundation as a means of stopping Irvine heirs from splitting up the ranch and also avoiding estate taxes (Cleland, 1962, pp. 144– 146; Kane 1996, p. 218). This policy was a success for several decades, even after James Irvine II died in 1947. Only a few parcels were sold and the proceeds of the sales of those parcels were used to pay for signi cant agricultural water infrastructure investments without having to take on signi cant debt (Cameron, 1979, pp. 6– 7).
The presidency of both the company and the foundation stayed in the family until 1959. At that time, the last male Irvine in the immediate family died although Joan Irvine Burt, a grandchild of James Irvine II and owner of 22 per cent of the stock, became a board member in 1957. In 1959, the company’s presidency passed to Arthur McFadden who was also a trustee of the Irvine Foundation as were most company board members (Cleland, 1962, pp. 145– 147). Company president McFadden was owner of some former Irvine agricultural land in the central valley, active in a number of local agricultural associations and member of a family with long associations with Newport Beach (Hellis, 1970, pp. 32– 33; Cleland, 1962, pp. 146– 147). However, this was always seen as a temporary appointment and in 1960 he was succeeded by Charles Thomas, a
WHO BUILT IRVINE?
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Table 1. Irvine Ranch time-line Date
Event
1860s, 1870s 1937 World War II 1949 1954 1956 1957 1959
James Irvine I buys ranch, rst with partners whom he then buys out James Irvine Foundation formed Military bases constructed on Irvine Ranch Housing Act Housing Act Interstate Highway Act UC Irvine site selection study initiated Presidencies of Irvine Foundation and Company pass to non-family members; UC Irvine site selected and initial planning of Ranch Planning for Irvine Southern Sector Plan agreed to by Orange County UC Irvine opens US Department of Housing and Urban Development created Housing and Urban Development Act—creates Title VI new towns Taxation Act—affects non-pro ts owning for pro t companies Irvine General Plan accepted by County Housing and Urban Development Act—creates Title VII new towns City of Irvine incorporated in central part of the Ranch Endangered Species Act Irvine Ranch sold Don Bren buys out most others—becomes sole owner in 1996 Habitat protection negotiated
Early 1960s 1964 1965 1968 1969 1970 1971 1973 1977 1983 Early 1990s
former head of Trans World Airlines (TWA) and before that Secretary of the Navy (1954– 57) in the Republican Eisenhower administration (Cleland, 1962). These appointments started a long succession of non-Irvine presidents and, eventually, changes in US tax policy forced the sale of the company by the Foundation in the late 1970s. While the history of the presidency of the company has captivated a number of authors, the most important factor for this argument was its relative stability into the late 1950s (Cleland, 1962; Brower, 1994). At over 40 000 hectares, the ranch had never been a family farm—the Irvines had not even moved from San Francisco to live on the ranch until 1906. The farming was on an industrial scale. In 1860, there were around 40 000 lambs born each year on the ranch; in 1960, there were 325 000 orange trees and no sheep (Cleland, 1962, pp. 142– 143). The company estimated that its agricultural water system was the “largest private water system ever built in the United States
and, possibly, ever built in the world” and involved creating a water district to deal with downstream water rights (Cameron, 1979, pp. 6– 7). Both the foundation and The Irvine Company ran the ranch as a long-term investment. This provided a continuing tradition of planning and co-ordination that provided a model for the later new community proposal. In the 1950s, a number of sub-divisions were created around Newport beach and about 450 hectares leased for research and development facilities by the Aeroneutronic division of the Ford Motor Company (a defence contractor) and the Collins Radio Company (Cleland, 1962, p. 150). This continued the tradition of small land sales. However, the freeway system was also gradually moving down into Orange County. Even before the federal interstate system was designated in 1956, other national and state highways were being developed. A version of Interstate-5 appeared in the 1939 Expressway-Transit plan for Los Angeles
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County and ran through the ranch (see Taylor, 2000, p. 200). In 1957, the rm of Pereira Luckman was asked by the University of California to locate two sites for new Southern California campuses. The rm examined 21 sites and chose a site on the Irvine Ranch as the best one in its sub-region. The company board was slow to make a decision but nally reluctantly recommended the university plan to its shareholders—although Joan Irvine was a strong supporter and garnered a great deal of publicity (Schiesl, 1991, p. 58; Kane, 1996, p. 222). By the time of the actual selection, the Pereira Luckman rm had split in two (Charles Luckman Associates, 1959). Pereira did the main feasibility and planning work for both the University of California and TIC. Economic feasibility for a university and college community of around 100 000 people on 10 000 acres (4047 hectares) was established by October 1959 (William L. Pereira and Associates, 1959, 1960). Development was largely on the southern part of the ranch, near but not right on the coast with 2141 hectares in residential areas and the rest in commercial, university, research, transport and greenbelts. By 1960, TIC had come to see the necessity for master-planning a larger area and hired the same rm to do a plan for the entire Southern Sector while it was also doing the campus master plan (William L. Pereira Associates, 1963, 1964a, 1964b; Kreditor and Kraemer, 1968). Irvine certainly would have developed eventually. Development had already started to skip over it to the southern part of the county and county property taxes were increasing substantially (and it was not until 1965 that the state passed the Williamson Act to allow reduced taxes for land kept in agriculture). Further south, the 52 000-acre Mission Viejo development was planned between 1963 and 1966, showing the extent of demand even further from the core Los Angeles area. Thus there were many factors pushing development. In addition, TIC was not merely passively reacting to circumstances. For example, at the time of the
University of California siting proposal in 1959, the president of TIC—McFadden— was also a member of the UC Board of Regents (Cleland, 1962, p. 152). The University of California Irvine opened in 1965, a year after the wider Southern Sector plan was approved by the county. In 1970, The Irvine Company presented a physical plan extending the southern plan into the central section of the ranch. This enlarged development was to be for 430 000 people on 53 000 acres (21 448 hectares) in the City of Irvine, with additional development on the coast (Irvine Company, 1970; Grif n, 1974). This plan dealt with land use, circulation and housing and aroused some controversy with the Orange County Board of Supervisors who were not as supportive of TIC as their predecessors. The county now wanted consideration of more issues including “conservation, recreation, air transport, public investments, community design, safety, human, economic and environmental quality” (Mason, 1971; capitalisation removed). The county planning staff also had concerns about loss of agricultural land, the designs of villages, a lack of speci c plans for affordable housing or mass transit, traf c projections and ood control (Orange County Planning Department, 1970). At the end of 1970, and with these caveats that they proposed would be incorporated into the County General Plan, the Orange County Planning Commission agreed to the new Irvine plan. One year later, the City of Irvine was incorporated, partly to head off annexations from neighbouring areas. However, only the middle two-thirds of the ranch is in the City of Irvine—six other municipalities and the County contain parts of it, with a signi cant developed area in Newport Beach. While the municipalities have their own planning approaches, they have tended to adopt the basic structure laid out by TIC. By 1980, the City of Irvine’s population was 62 234; by 1990, 110 330; and by 2000 the population of the City was 143 072 and of the ranch about 200 000. The City of Irvine estimated 168 000 jobs in the city alone in 2000 (City of Irvine, 2002).4 By
WHO BUILT IRVINE?
1990, 53 per cent of the labour force were employed in ‘executive, administrative, and managerial’ or ‘professional specialty’ occupations compared with 29 per cent in California. Another 37 per cent were in sales and administrative support. Many gures are not released at the city level in the 1997 economic census; however, of those industrial sectors large enough to report, 27 per cent of employees were in manufacturing industries and 29 per cent in wholesale trade. While 76 per cent of the City of Irvine’s population was White in 1990, by 2000 those who were White alone had dropped to 61 per cent (compared with 60 per cent in California). In the same period, Asians had increased from 18 to 32 per cent of the population (compared with 10 and 12 per cent of the state population on the same dates).5 In 1990, 22 per cent of its population were foreign-born with half of those arriving in the previous decade. These were the same proportions as in California as a whole and more than the US gures of 8 and 3 per cent respectively. However, while international immigration has been important in Southern California, recent growth has been through natural increase (Southern California Studies Center, 2001, p. 12) (see Table 2). Federal Role Much has been written about the federal role in promoting general urban growth through a range of national policies and policy areas that have been in place for some decades (see Glickman, 1980; Burchell et al., 1998, 1999; Checkoway, 1980; Fishman, 1999; Hanchett, 1994; Nivola, 1999; Popper, 1988; Katz, 2000; Bloom, forthcoming).6 However, research attention has mainly focused on a narrow subset of federal policies and programmes. Most prominent have been low-income housing programmes, urban renewal and enterprise zones, support for transport (particularly highways) and incentives for private home-ownership. However, these effects have not always been easy to quantify. In 1999, a US General Accounting Of ce report titled “Extent of federal in uence on
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‘urban sprawl’ is unclear” (GAO, 1999) outlined recent policies that have had direct effects on urban growth.7 The report found inconclusive evidence of effects on urban growth. The ndings were not conclusive mainly because their focus was on highly quanti able effects of current policies rather than the overall effects of programmes historically (Burchell et al., 1998; also GAO, 2000). However, obviously federal policies, programmes and activities have affected the suburban parts of urban regions—in areas from utility pricing and regulation to the Clean Air Act and immigration. In the case of Irvine, a number of federal activities were most important —The 1956 Interstate Highway Act and road funding combined with energy policy that kept gasoline prices low and made automobility attractive. —Mortgage nancing through the taxation system and the Federal Housing Administration, along with the lack of capital gains taxes on housing. This was combined with diminishing subsidies for low-income housing. —Agricultural policy that did not proactively stop the use of agricultural land for urban development. —Military policies that channelled contracts and activities to the sun belt, transferring a high level of economic activity and thus housing growth to areas such as Orange County. This included the siting of two military airports on the Irvine Ranch as well as numerous defence contractors. —Educational policy that kept funding at a local level, encouraging fragmented local control of non-college educational funding. This was combined with a Cold War emphasis on increasing higher education opportunities. —Federal support for new communities in the 1960s and 1970s including events and programmes that investigated and promoted new communities. —Changes in taxation policy in the US Taxation Act of 1969 that forced the for-pro t
88 1 0 8 3 100 6 84
Race and Hispanic origina (percentage) White Black American Indian, Eskimo or Aleut Asian or Paci c Islander Other race (balance, 1980) Total races Hispanic origin (of any race) Non-Hispanic White 22 488 52 27 7 6 5 3 73 27 137 800 454
21 337 75 63 25 2.77
Households Total number of households Family households (percentage) Married-couple families (percentage) Non-family households (percentage) Average household size (persons)
Housing Total number of housing units 1-unit detached (percentage) 1-unit attached (percentage) 2– 4 units (percentage) 5– 9 units (percentage) 10 or more units (percentage) Mobile home, trailer or other (percentage) Owner-occupied (percentage) Renter-occupied (percentage) Median value owner-occupied ($) Median rent ($)
62 134 28 1 95
Population Total number under 18 years (percentage) 65 years and over (percentage) High school graduates (percentage of persons over 25)
Irvine City
CA
57 5 9 6 18 4 56 44
77 8 1 6 9 100 19 67
69 56 31 2.67
23 667 902 27 10 74
1980
42 221 39 28 6 12 12 3 62 38 294 700 913
78 2 0 18 2 100 6 74
40 257 69 56 31 2.74
110 330 24 6 95
Irvine City
Table 2. Data for Irvine City (incorporated December 1971)
CA
55 7 9 6 17 6 56 44 195 500 561
69 7 1 10 13 100 26 57
69 53 31 2.79
29 760 021 26 11 76
1990
60 40
53 711
64 2 1 32 5 104 7 57
51 199 67 54 33 2.66
143 072 23 7
Irvine City
CA
57 43
63 7 2 13 19 104 32 47
69 51 31 2.87
33 871 648 27 11
2000
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80 12 1 3 3
Commuting (workers 16 and over) Drove alone (percentage) In carpools (percentage) Using public transport (percentage) Using other means (percentage) Walked or worked at home (percentage) 69 17 6 2 6
64 25 13 3 11 18 1 1 10 3 12 7 4 4
18 243 8 295 11 8.3
82 9 1 2 7
75 27 26 6 20 17 0 1 6 0 4 2 1 1
56 307 25 332 6 3
a
Race gures for 2000 are numbers alone and in combination with other races. Source: US Census of Population and Housing (http://fact nder.census.gov/home/for 1990 and 2000).
75 23 23 5 15 16 0 1 6 1 6 2 1 2
31 300 12 169 4 7
Labour force and occupation Persons 16 and over in labour force (percentage) Executive, administrative and managerial occupations (percentage) Professional specialty occupations (percentage) Technicians and related support occupations (percentage) Sales occupations (percentage) Administrative support occupations, including clerical (percentage) Private household occupation (percentage) Protective service occupations (percentage) Service occupations, except protective and household (percentage) Farming, forestry and shing occupations (percentage) Precision production, craft and repair occupations (percentage) Machine operators, assemblers and inspectors (percentage) Transport and material-moving occupations (percentage) Handlers, equipment cleaners, helpers and laborers (percentage)
Income Median household income ($) Per capita income ($) Persons below poverty level (percentage) Persons 65 years and over below poverty level (percentage)
72 15 5 2 7
67 14 15 40 12 17 1 2 10 3 11 6 3 4
35 798 16 409 13 8
WHO BUILT IRVINE?
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Irvine Company to be sold by the nonpro t James Irvine Foundation in the 1970s. —The recent move to environmental regulation and funding environmental infrastructure. Overall, these factors created a context of overlapping policies and priorities. Federal government agencies are typically organised by specialty—such as transport, energy or environment. Agencies at the same level of government and covering the same geographical area interact with each other, although often these interactions are limited. Governments also interact across levels, typically within one ‘sector’ or forming a “vertically linked chain of federal, state, area wide, and local agencies addressing a common functional specialisation” (Christensen, 1999, p. 66). Thus the federal effects listed above are often mediated through other levels of government within the same sector. While these government interactions may be co-operative, they can also be obstructive and this has certainly been the case in Irvine (Christensen, 1999, pp. 33– 43). Federal Effects Highways and Automobility The federal highway programme was an important underpinning of much suburban development in the US. In Orange County, the role of the federal and state highway system was particularly obvious, creating the potential for Disneyland (opened in 1955 along Interstate 5) and eventually the development of the Irvine Ranch. A policy of road building was not unique to the US, but the US did have an early commitment to this process with major state-funded and federally assisted projects happening decades before the 1956 federal highway programme (Nivola, 1999, p. 13; Gelfand, 1975). In the mid 1920s, TIC had already donated the right of ways for the Paci c Coast Highway along its coastline and the state of California had a signi cant highway programme (Cleland, 1962, p. 134). However, before the 1950s,
federal highways required a one– one match with state dollars. In 1954, this was changed to three– two, and, in 1956, to nine– one and along with that came increased federal and state control, even in metropolitan areas (Taylor, 2000, pp. 205– 206). Additional features of the interstate highway system made this transport mode particularly favoured after the mid 1950s, particularly the establishment in 1956 of “a semiautonomous federal trust fund, continually replenished by speci cally designated tax collections, started pouring a stream of revenue into construction projects” unlike most other countries where roads were funded through general revenues and therefore tended to be “underfunded” (Nivola, 1999, p. 13). This was combined with relatively low investments in transit, creating an infrastructure that allowed, and promoted, low-density development. TIC of course already owned its land and so it did not deliberately seek out land near interstates, as most other new community developers did, but rather the roads were placed through the land-holding. Initially, TIC made efforts to revise routing so that its agricultural production would not be disrupted. The California State Highway commission negotiated with TIC about the alignment of the Santa Ana Freeway (I-5). They eventually placed it along an existing highway rather than realigning it “further south through Tustin” as a concession to TIC (Hellis, 1970, p. 39). Similarly, the San Diego Freeway (I-405) alignment though the Irvine Ranch to its junction with the I-5 was negotiated although it did “destroy some ne agricultural land in the foothills” (Hellis, 1970, p. 39). For both freeways, TIC stood up for its interests in retaining access across the freeways. However, an Irvine Company offer to give a higher alignment for the Paci c Coast Highway—free of charge, given the realignment would make coastal development more feasible—was rejected by the district engineers and highway commission (Hellis, 1970, pp. 40– 42). Once it decided to develop the university community, The Irvine Company’s consultant
WHO BUILT IRVINE?
and in-house planners used the interstates as a framework for the development, although some of the proposed freeways were never completed. However, the general effects of the highway system were not pre-determined and were in fact actively debated by some of the people who became key players in the new communities movement. For example, in 1957, the Connecticut General Insurance Company, that later funded the new community of Columbia Maryland, held a fourday conference on the theme of “The New Highways: Challenge to the Metropolitan Region” (Owen, 1959, p. x). A key question was “How can we increase the ef ciency and livability of our cities through the national highway program” (Owen, 1959, p. x; capitalisation removed). Fifty- ve people wrote papers for the conference or participated as speakers and panelists. Wilfred Owen from the Brookings Institution compiled the sense of the meeting into a 1959 book, Cities in the Motor Age (see also Gelfand, 1975, pp. 229– 230). The answer the book provided was to call for more planning—of the 1950s modernist mode—to reclaim the highway programme from the engineers and use it both to renew city centres and provide a framework for better-designed suburbs. What this case exempli es is that, in the 1950s and 1960s, people were hopeful that the energy of the “biggest public-works program in history” could be channelled towards making better urban areas—eliminating slums in the inner city and strips and boxy suburbs on the edge (Owen, 1959, p. 10). There was an open-ended sense of the possibilities of these huge investments. However, there was also concern that the engineeringdominated approach of the federal and state roads bureaucracies was too narrow (see also Gelfand, 1975, p. 230). The car certainly demanded attention—by 1955 two thirds of households had an automobile and transit was in deep decline (Gelfand, 1975, p. 231). Use of automobiles has also been supported in the US by the continued low price of automotive fuels. In addition, low energy prices made it possible to heat and cool large
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homes. This in turn enabled people to live in a more dispersed pattern (Nivola, 1999, p. 20). Irvine’s planners did try to tame the car and created identi able residential and industrial districts surrounded by a loose grid of landscaped arterials leading to concentrated and convenient shopping areas. Irvine Company planners are still proud of their lack of strip shopping development and the planning has created a relatively legible environment. As one early design consultant explained [Irvine] was also the best effort so far to really accommodate the car. You know Radburn included it but it was [just] a way of getting to work. But Southern Californians live in their cars. I know I would try to get rid of them and Ray [Watson, head of planning and later president of TIC] would make me put them back. And I do think that it really was the best effort in the country to design with the automobile. … But it is probably the best of the places designed for the car and what was also incredible was that they kept track of how ideas worked out and there was a correction process. I didn’t see that work being done in Columbia (Interview KM-08). While most of the roads in Irvine were local, and later even many highways were funded by the county and state with the most recent limited access roads being privately operated toll roads, the early federal support for automobiles helped to frame an orientation towards this transport mode. While automobiles were to be the dominant mode in Irvine, early plans do mention buses and the structure was put in place for other modes (Kreditor and Kraemer, 1968, p. IV-32). The mixed-use activity corridors of the early Irvine plans are in fact the corridors where regional light rail is currently being proposed (OCTA, 2002). Mortgages and Housing The US support of home-ownership has been well documented in terms of income tax
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ANN FORSYTH
deductions of mortgage interest, the lack of capital gains taxes on homes, “the exclusion of homeowners’ implicit rental income from taxable income” and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) support of mortgages that allowed low down-payments (Carliner, 1998, p. 302). All these policies dated from before 1951 (when capital gains tax exclusions were introduced) and encouraged investment in housing over other forms of saving (Carliner, 1998, p. 301). Up to 1962, the FHA was associated with guidelines for evaluating property prices that emphasised socially homogeneous suburban locations re ecting the values of the private real estate industry to which the FHA was strongly linked. Up to 1950, the ethics code of the National Association of Real Estate Boards prohibited brokers from introducing races into an area if their presence would decrease property values (Gelfand, 1975, p. 220). Other procedures were biased towards new construction over renovation and towards home-ownership over rental housing (Gelfand, 1975, p. 217; Nivola, 1999, p. 22). FHA policies have now changed so that, by 1996, 46 per cent of FHA loans went to city centres compared with 37 per cent of conforming conventional loans (GAO, 1999, p. 11). However, the earlier preferences and biases tended to send loans to suburban areas. This was important because FHA and Veterans Administration “mortgage guarantees accounted for as much as one-quarter of all the single-family homes built in the postwar period” (Nivola, 1999, p. 22). When the US Department of Housing and Urban Development was created in 1965 it combined programmes focusing on both city centres and suburbs (Kaplan, 1995). This had some potential for con ict but this mix of city-centre and suburban responsibilities could also be seen more positively as potentially creating a wider constituency for housing (see Frieden, 1995). While several interviewees mentioned their own Veterans Administration housing loans, interviews with representatives of TIC and data from the recent Consolidated Federal Funds Reports (available from 1983)
indicate that the FHA has had a relatively small direct role in Irvine. Early on this was because Irvine’s land was leased and not sold, a policy in effect until 1968 when it was relaxed for some areas (Breckenfeld, 1971, p. 148). The leasehold policy was due to TIC’s desire to keep the Ranch intact but was not acceptable to the FHA. As can be seen in Table 3, by 1987 Irvine had a very low level of new loan guarantees and insurance per capita at only $43 (1996 dollars) compared with $1826 for the county. While it increased, by 1996 it was still only $183. Although these gures include a number of federal programmes, including student loans, they obviously indicate low levels of such support for Irvine. For the developers, this would have had some bene ts particularly in the early part of the development when the FHA was more active in vetting the planning of new developments (GAO, 1999, p. 11). In 1990, detached conventional housing made up only 39 per cent of units in the City of Irvine and there certainly was early innovation in design that might have been dif cult to have approved by the FHA.8 However, mortgage interest deductions would have still been important in Irvine. In terms of racial issues, Irvine was never legally segregated, but neither did it make many active attempts to market to nonWhites (Dientsfrey, 1971). In the current period, Irvine is not as segregated as its region but its main ethnic groups are Whites and Asians with few African-Americans (Kato, 2002). Irvine has had a mixed history with lowcost housing. Interviews and analyses of Irvine Company documents indicate that the company always had some support for a mix of income levels in its housing, partly to attract employers to its business parks. It built some of the rst attached housing in Orange County and pioneered market segmentation in the 1970s that involved targeting products to a wide variety of household types. Irvine has a number of subsidised lowand mixed-income developments and they have received insuf cient attention because
39 429 225 438 18 197 24 4 454 43 401 718 345 1 826
Total (excluding loans and insurance) Total per capita Defense Direct 1 procurement (percentage of total) Defense Direct 1 procurement per capita
Total including loans and insurance Guaranteed loans per capita
44 682 915 462 3 181
36 584 853 913 14 386 12 1 750
Source: Consolidated Federal Funds Report (compiled at http://govinfo.library.orst.edu/).
15 998 269 3 956 494 638
Other federal assistance Direct loans Guaranteed loans and insurance
7 471 118 8 090 590 431
19 091 672
24 447 360
Other federal expenditures or obligations
2 241 843 783 1 910 490 000
5 024 797 521 4 450 941 989
Procurement contract awards Total Department of Defense
924 263 078 356 919 939
898 509 565 466 041 436 5 256 472 555 3 166 974 775 2 089 497 780
1 245 319 385
594 645 105
3 721 260 840 2 615 237 983 1 106 022 856
9 686 990 473 2 539 043 701 7 147 946 772
2 543 168
10 263 660 391 5 200 189 565 5 063 470 826
2 166 801
FY 1996
Direct payments for individuals Total Retirement and disability All other
Grant awards Salaries and wages Total Department of Defense
Direct federal expenditures or obligations Total direct expenditures or obligations Total Department of Defense All other agencies
US resident population
FY 1987
Orange County
6 51 41
2
2
2
3 74
61
7 21
53 104
22
2 2
55 57
41 21 89
3 23
109
2
2 2
2
2
17
Percentage change
1 251 418 597 43
1 247 611 837 14 107 36 5 112
0 3 806 760
0
1 313 393 238 183
1 290 311 305 10 271 36 3 680
150 512 22 931 421
38 988
254 591 000 228 941 000
16 786 328
396 391 284 977 901 225 841 160
16 786 328
0 0
76 778 343
348 194 659 233 305 644 114 889 015
125 624
FY 1996
City of Irvine
396 391
0 0
55 083 804
340 458 095 226 221 333 114 236 762
88 437
FY 1987
Table 3.: Federal funds to Orange County and the City of Irvine (in $1996)
2
2
2
5 324
28
3 27
new 502
new
11 1
4135
4135
0 0
39
2 3 1
42
Percentage change
WHO BUILT IRVINE?
2519
2520
ANN FORSYTH
their attractive designs blend in with other housing. In early 2000, new homes started at $144 000 and TIC was working on more inexpensive market rate rentals, with costs held down by increasing densities (Irvine Company, 2000). However, the issue of affordability has been a continuing problem. The early developments in the 1960s were biased towards the higher end of the market—both because they were developed near Newport Beach to take advantage of existing services and because TIC needed cash because of their large up-front infrastructure costs. The bulk of Irvine’s development has also coincided with the period in which federal subsidises for low-income housing were contracting (Muniac and Auger, 1995). Residents of Irvine have generally resisted subsidised housing construction throughout the period of Irvine’s development. For example, a study of Orange County politics, based on in-depth interviews conducted in 1970 and 1972 with 23 residents of an Irvine Company development, found the population to be supportive of ecological issues but against public housing (Lamb, 1974). In the late 1970s, City of Irvine and TIC were sued to create more affordable housing—725 units for lowincome groups using Section 8 funding—but this move to increase production was not sustained (Settlement Agreement, 1977; Banzhaf, 1980). In 2000, TIC claimed that the City of Irvine had 3233 units of subsidised affordable housing or about 6 per cent of its housing stock, although HUD data indicate that as of 1998 only around 700 of these units were federally subsidised (Irvine Company, 2000; US HUD, 1998). Many of the other units come from such sources as local linkage programmes requiring set-asides of affordable housing for people at 50, 80 or 120 per cent of county median income and with no centralised waiting-list for units (Schiesl, 1991). This is a complicated patchwork of a response but, given the policy and political context of the development, it would have taken a very signi cant effort to do more.
Agricultural Policy Up to the 1960s, the Irvine Ranch was the largest land-holding in Orange County and was rmly agricultural. This agricultural heritage shaped the way the owners of the Irvine Ranch saw their role. They were used to managing land, holding it through bad times and not expecting quick or constant pro ts. This patient money is very important in large-scale urban development. In many countries, it is supplied by government. The federal government, however, also shaped some of the long-term viability of agriculture in the US. On the one hand, it provided policies that supported large-scale agricultural production like the work of the Irvine Ranch. On the other hand, it did not subsidise agriculture to nearly the extent of European countries or Japan, guaranteeing that selling land for development would generally be economically preferable for those farming on the urban edge. In the mid 1990s, average subsidies per acre were about 12 times as high in Europe and 183 times in Japan (Nivola, 1999, p. 29). People who had lived on the Irvine Ranch for a number of years looked back nostalgically at the orange orchards. Those involved with agriculture had a different view that was more sanguine about changes because their view was fundamentally economic. As one farmer stated in an interview The choice is weed abatement or the chance of just letting it sit idle and having it declared a wetland or some preserve. Agriculture serves its purpose that way. But agriculture in Orange County is easily an interim activity before development (Interview N-04). In this economic view, development was inevitable. Defence During World War II, the US government requisitioned land in the central section of the Irvine Ranch: 937 hectares (eventually 1500) for the El Toro Marine Corps Air
WHO BUILT IRVINE?
2521
Station along the southern side and 647 hectares in Tustin to the north (later converted to a helicopter base). In addition, the Orange County Airport—now the John Wayne airport—was developed in the 1920s along the northern edge of the ranch and made public in the late 1930s. The large size of the Irvine Ranch made it attractive for such military and civilian uses (Cleland, 1962, pp. 132– 133). This structured Irvine’s design to some extent—placing industrial and business uses under the ight paths. Both military bases closed in the 1990s. Tustin is being developed for a variety of uses. After much controversy and activism from local governments and citizen groups, it was decided in 2002 that El Toro will be sold and the City of Irvine has proposed both open space and mixed-use development (Los Angles Times, 7 February 2002). The Irvine Company was not totally in support of the initial land takings. As former ranch manager William Hellis explained
more costly (Hellis, 1970, p. 44). The El Toro base location cut off a planned water gravity feed but TIC was able to preserve the right to complete its irrigation system. It also retained many rights to water on the Tustin base (Hellis, 1970, p. 45). The military presence had a more qualitative effect, introducing many people to the area. An interviewee explained his reaction to the area
The acquisitions of the military on the Irvine Ranch were certainly not desirable, but they had the right of eminent domain and we were dealing with an overall military situation which we couldn’t combat. … The lighter than air [Tustin] base was placed over on Red Hill Avenue, which was very much against our desires. We offered them a site in the mesa country in the area, a little to the south near the old ranch house at a very much reduced price. The land which they took had high agricultural value and had most of the sources of irrigation water and wells which we had developed on this property. Failure in getting them to move the base entirely was to do with the captain who seemed to have the authority to do as he damned pleased without much regard to economics (Hellis, 1970, p. 43)
However, these military bases were only one aspect of the effect of defence policy on Irvine. Military contracts were also important and US military spending is much in uenced by congressional lobbying, re ecting regional caucuses. Markusen explains its effects
In fact, TIC was brie y successful in getting the base shifted half a mile to the south-east, with foundations poured, but then the Captain had the site moved back to the original and current location. He did this even though the construction in that location was much
I mean this was heaven. And I said when I get out of the Marine Corps this is where I will live. And there are thousands of people like me that got here because of the Navy in World War II, got here later in the Marine Corps, the Army, whatever. And that, I think, I don’t know how you quantify that, but that’s one of the reasons a lot of people live here. I don’t know what would have brought me out here had I not come out here with the military (Interview YM-07).
Military budgets have run at about ve to seven per cent of American GNP over the entire postwar period. Particularly in the 1950s this investment was heavily shifted towards areas of the country that had not up to and even during World War II been prominent (Markusen, 1989, pp. 10– 11). Southern California and Orange County in particular have been bene ciaries of this investment (Scott, 1993). Malecki (1982) analysed federal research and development spending for two time-periods—the early to mid 1960s and the mid to late 1970s. He found that the Los Angeles SCSA (a consolidated metropolitan area including at its southern edge, Santa Ana– Anaheim or Orange County) received the highest amount of both defence and total federal R&D expendi-
2522
ANN FORSYTH
tures in the country. For both time-periods, the gures were more than twice the secondranked metropolitan areas (Malecki, 1982, pp. 25, 29; also Scott, 1993). Irvine was able to capture more than its share of this development, offering well-designed research parks easily accessible to the Orange County Airport. While it attracted high-tech companies that were not in defence—particularly in the biotechnology and medical areas— defence was an important base. Data from the US Census Consolidated Federal Funds Report are presented in Table 3. These data were only collected from 1983 (Parker, 1997). The table presents summary gures for Orange County and the City of Irvine from 1987 and 1996, both in 1996 dollars—using the earliest and latest years from a helpful summary provided by the US Census and compiled by Oregon State University. This shows that federal expenditures have been declining in per capita terms and that the City of Irvine has had a smaller per capita federal expenditures than the County. However, defence expenditures were larger in the City of Irvine than in the County in both time-periods, both in per capita and in percentage terms.9 Education The immediate spur for Irvine’s development was the siting of a University of California campus. The period of the 1950s and early 1960s was one of expansion in US higher education driven partly by US federal interest in improving the technical skills of its workers during the Cold War period. Admitting students from 1965, UC Irvine was starting just as student unrest over the Vietnam War was taking hold on university campuses and student culture drew away from mainstream middle-class norms. Irvine company marketing that had focused on the university in the early 1960s changed to wider qualityof-life issues in the early 1970s (Kane, 1996, p. 235). However, the population is highly educated—in 1990, 52.8 per cent of those aged over 25 in the City of Irvine had a bachelor’s degree or higher compared with
only 23.4 per cent in California. Thus the federal government had some effect in terms of helping to promote higher education and in being the focus for disruptive protests. At a pre-college level, most new communities have focused on providing good schools. Such education is funded at a local level and growing municipalities face a balance between providing schools good enough to attract residents with children, and facing a tremendous tax burden with each child. Many have resorted to scal zoning, attracting expensive homes on large lots where the taxes might cover most of the cost of educating children. These policies also limit the number of dwelling units and favour commercial and industrial development that provides tax dollars without children. This has fuelled suburbanisation in general, including the fragmentation of local government controls. New communities have fared better, however, because their mixed-use plans have managed to have a strong tax-base. In Irvine’s case, the development falls into several school districts, although the City of Irvine roughly corresponds with one and has had the resources to become a major attraction. Thus, like other US locations, the new communities have to deal with the lack of national or state-level funding but their mixed-use designs make them more capable of dealing with this. In fact, this is an argument that new communities have made for themselves—for instance, Columbia Maryland distributed a newspaper-style version of its proposed plan that claimed net scal bene t to its county, including the countylevel school districts (Community Research and Development, 1964, n.p.). In Irvine, this relative af uence is particularly striking along its north-western border with Santa Ana, a much poorer area, indicating the need for more regional approaches to education funding. Federal New Programmes
Communities Events and
Except for grants for speci c infrastructure
WHO BUILT IRVINE?
investments that were part of generic federal programmes, the development of the Irvine Ranch was not directly funded by the federal government. It was in fact started before the founding of HUD in 1965, and well before the new communities programmes of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Out of around 150 developments of over 10 000 people proposed up to the early 1970s, there were only 13 developments where the federal government was more actively involved and most were not successful (USPS, 1973; American Institute of Architects, 1968; US HUD 1984). 10 This was under Title IV of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and, more importantly, Title VII of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1970 that allowed loan deferrals and guarantees. Irvine’s Ray Watson was on the federal New Community Board (Title VII) for several years and Watson was also involved with other HUD-sponsored events such as an exchange with the Soviet Union (Watson, personal communication, 2001; US/USSR New Towns Working Group, 1981). However, Irvine was featured in the largest research project on new communities, a federally funded (NSF) study based at the University of North Carolina from 1972 and resulting in an overview book, 7 specialised monographs and numerous articles and working papers (Burby and Weiss, 1976). The project examined 13 private new communities, 2 federally funded ones and 2 retirement communities and these were compared with 19 less-planned developments. Data included 5511 90-minute interviews with adults and 974 questionnaires given to youth. The study ranked the new communities according to 19 indicators of the new community concept and Irvine was ranked third just behind Columbia and Reston (Burby and Weiss, 1976, p. 97). The federal interest in new towns affected Irvine mostly in terms of these debates and evaluations. Taxation As indicated above, in 1937 James Irvine
2523
created the non-pro t James Irvine Foundation, effectively stopping the ranch being split up by Irvine heirs both because of its corporate structure and because it managed to avoid some estate taxes. The provisions of the trust included the following recommendations for the most stable investment for the foundation This land holding is preserved and sustained at its present state of development, with such improvements, if any, as may be justi ed in the future. Portions of the land adjacent to and near the Paci c Coast and Newport Bay might from time to time be advantageously disposed of in various small parcels or units, and hill and unimproved property in larger units; but the great central valley acreage, together with such lands as are essential to the maintenance of the water supply thereto, should in the judgement of the Trustor, be held and operated as a unit (quoted in Cleland, 1962, pp. 145– 146). This situation remained until the 1969 US Taxation Act made such ownership of a forpro t company dif cult—requiring very large distributions of dividends to charity each year. In 1977, after a highly publicised bidding war, it was sold to a consortium and then bought out six years later by one of its members Donald Bren. The changes were not completely independent of the Irvine Ranch as Joan Irvine Smith (formerly Burt) had found out about the legislation and lobbied heavily for it “to wrest control of the Company from what she considered to be the slow-moving Foundation” (Brower, 1994, p. 37; Irvine Smith, 1971). While this seems a dramatic change, and at the time there was considerable controversy and drama, Bren has held the development as a private company. 11 Even with these ownership changes, the basic structure of the ranch’s master plan has not changed, although Bren’s preferences for Mediterranean architecture and heavy plantings have reshaped some of the detailed design and open space has increased (see below).
2524
ANN FORSYTH
Habitat and Environmental Issues Since the 1970s, the federal government has been a key player in creating a set of regulations and programmes that have created relatively centralised control over speci c dimensions of development (Popper, 1988). Early in the development of the ranch, TIC formed a government water district to implement innovative water recycling using government grants. As one of the early planning team members explained We did get a grant, which was very useful to us in the early years, from the federal government—we created a public water district … which is also a sanitation district, and we got a large grant to build a reclamation system, which we did early on. And we are double-piped in much of Irvine. We have a surplus of reclaimed ef uents, but we use it. I don’t think any local agency or entity would ever have had the resources to be able to make those kinds of grants (Interview MJ-08). Over the years, protection of natural features has also been increased. The early Irvine plans envisaged that the coastal areas would be developed, mostly at very low densities although with a string of higher-density clusters. However, after the creation of the California Coastline Commission through a ballot initiative in 1972, TIC responded pragmatically and revised its plan (Watson, 1973; Grif n, 1974). It should be noted that TIC had paid $50 000 towards defeating the coastal ballot initiative, but that this was less than two days worth of its property taxes paid to Orange County alone at that time (Watson, 1973, pp. 5, 7). In the early 1970s, the company also backed down over a plan to develop the upper part of Newport Bay (Schiesl, 1991, pp. 68– 69). Ray Watson, president of TIC, outlined its approach in a 1973 speech to the Institute of Real Estate Appraisers indicating a company policy of working to keep a seat at the table. Where we can, The Irvine Company is becoming an actual working part of public and quasi-public agencies. We have, for
instance, joined with others in our industry and the Planning and Conservation League to conduct a joint study leading to possible recommendations on a state land use plan. At one time, developers called conservation groups their enemies. We are now sitting down with our adversaries in the hopes of working together for the better results that all of us want. Let me assure you that we are not na¨õ ve enough to believe that we will always be in total agreement with these groups … But we realise that if the developer is too rigid, he becomes less effective … The changing role of the private developer is to understand that society has changed and continues to change, to accept this change as reality, and to become a vital segment of this changing scene so that the inevitable change is guided for the best interests of all the people (Watson, 1973, pp. 6– 7). Probably the most dramatic and highly publicised environmental issue on the Irvine Ranch has been habitat protection. From the late 1980s, a number of attempts were made to save Irvine land with habitat values. In October 1990, the Laguna Beach City Council agreed to buy 2150 acres (869 hectares) of land for $78 million in order to create a greenbelt and protect land from development (Los Angeles Times, 21 October 1990). In 1991, the Natural Resources Defense Council and an ornithologist proposed listing the California gnatcatcher as a federal endangered species—this is a bird with a habitat on Irvine Ranch lands. By 1992, TIC had agreed to preserve over 6470 hectares in a county open space preserve. In 1993, US Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbit listed the bird as merely “threatened”. At the same time, the federal Department of the Interior promulgated a ‘special rule’ to allow negotiations over habitat protection under the edgling Californian NCCP—the Natural Communities Conservation Program promoted by then California governor, and later Irvine Company board member, Pete Wilson (Jasny, 1997, ch. 1).
WHO BUILT IRVINE?
The NCCP process aimed to protect overall habitat and avoid species-by-species and project-by project negotiations. In 1996, the agreement for a 15 000 hectare wildlife reserve was signed with protection lasting 75 years. This included around 8480 hectares from TIC (although most of TIC’s land had been already promised to the County or state under earlier negotiations) (Jasny, 1997, ch. 3). In late 2001, this habitat area was expanded. In the end, TIC claims that about 44 000 acres (17 800 hectares) of the Irvine Ranch will be protected as habitat, with the most recent 11 000 acres in perpetuity, in addition to 6000 acres (2400 hectares) of parks and open space (Irvine Company, 2002). While few people whom I interviewed thought that the solution was perfect, most thought that it provided at least a good model. As one environmental activist explained, talking before the latest land donations That is an example of actually piecing together large chunks of habitat and creating a reserve. Now, there may be reasons why that reserve isn’t perfect. One of them is that the toll road runs right through the middle of it. Another is that it’s timelimited in terms of its duration, and there are probably pieces of habitat that should have been included in it that are not. Also, it’s probably not as biologically based as some people would tell you that it is. But having said all that, there is a large chunk of land that’s been set aside by agreement of developers, environmentalists and government authorities. And that’s a very dif cult thing to accomplish in southern California, where we’re used to doing things on a parcel-by-parcel basis (Interview PA-06). However, almost everyone currently working for TIC complained about the current implementation of federal wetlands regulations—feeling that these regulations were overenforced in Southern California and that they undermined local-level agreements about open space. They also felt that their efforts in other environmental areas such as
2525
water reclamation and habitat protection were not appreciated. As one planning professional explained And some person [at EPA] just got their PhD … and they’re basically in control of your land. You play ball or you don’t get your permit. … As you’re aware, the company set aside 17 [or] 20 000 acres of land. But for wetlands we get no recognition of that. … The wetlands people don’t care that we preserved maybe much more valuable wetlands than what we’re impacting (Interview RJ-02). In contrast, environmental bureaucrats involved with wetlands and watershed issues complained that TIC was attached to highly engineered drainage solutions to minimise the size of drainage channels and maximise developable land. As one explained Wetlands can remove pollutants, but you’ve got to have the land area. And now with the land values what they are here, that has to be planned from the beginning, otherwise it’s just a battle to try to go back. Tell somebody like The Irvine Company that gee, you originally thought you could develop all this land, but we’re going to take away half of it now. That doesn’t go over too well. They have, in The Irvine Company’s defence, they built a place for half a million people … It’s not for everybody, but I can’t fault them for that. … But they developed a plan when wetlands weren’t valuable. The master plan for Irvine was developed when wetlands were places that we would ll and develop (Interview EN-07). Overall, the effects of these environmental regulations, programmes and grants have been mixed and have changed over time. Irvine does have extensive water recycling. The areas set aside for habitat protection have increased. In return, developers have been able to have more certainty about development and, in some cases, increased densities in built areas. This is generally positive and is potentially compatible with other environmental goals such as energy savings. In
2526
ANN FORSYTH
general, environmental regulations such as the Clean Air Act, wetlands regulations and habitat protection have rewritten the rules of development. New communities developers—as large land-owners perceived to be easier to negotiate with—have been particularly affected. Conclusions: Federal Interactions The Irvine Ranch development was an enormously complex undertaking and part of that complexity involved dealing with the federal government. The large size of new community developments such as Irvine, their innovative or at least non-routine character, and the wealth of their owners, make such interactions likely. From the government side, they are seen as uni ed, wanting to keep good public- and private-sector relations over a long development period and holding signi cant resources that may be unique in a region due to size. These concluding remarks outline two major lessons from the Irvine story—the complexity of coordinating parts of government in such developments and the implications of this for current proposals for smart growth or sustainable development. Overall, how did the federal government affect Irvine? A lack of an explicit national or any other kind of urban policy is often seen as a negative—leading to inef ciencies and exacerbating co-ordination problems. This absence of policy did create inconsistencies and con icts among agencies and policies—and contributed to uncertainty over areas like coastal development. It sent unclear messages to the development community. However, it also gave a large developer like The Irvine Company some exibility, gaining autonomy through orchestrating government interactions while risking being mired in bureaucracy. It is very complex to co-ordinate vertical sectors in government organised by specialisation such as transport and defence, partly because they employ technologies that change at different speeds (Christensen, 1999, pp. 80– 81). However, in order to get
things built, developers of large-scale new communities have to take on a governmentlike role of co-ordinating government bodies in different sectors and they have to do this essentially from below—rather like a specialpurpose local government dealing with higher levels. This includes managing multiple interactions between agencies as well as making sectors and levels of government aware of con icts. While many large corporations face similar tasks—for instance, large manufacturers—land development injects some added complexities to do with its xed location, cultural impact, cyclical nature and numerous ties to government through regulations and infrastructure provision (Fainstein, 1994, p. 219). In addition, new community developers are tied to a speci c place for decades with a set of clear expectations of continued master planning. This gives them less room to manoeuvre. However, their large property holdings also give them a form of legitimacy in their interactions with governments. It is not surprising then that over the years TIC has had a number of people involved with governmental relations—although their titles have often been ‘corporate’ or ‘community’ affairs. Its staff and board members have had strong associations with politics. As of 1999, the Company’s Board of Directors included Pete Wilson, former Republican governor of California in the mid 1990s. One of the senior public relations employees at the time had worked as press secretary for George Bush Sr when he was vice president. As is described above, an early president of TIC had been Secretary of the Navy in a Republican administration. However, this seems to be more evidence of links to a political e´lite rather than just the Republican party. Orange County has a Republican reputation, although several of my most e´lite business interviewees volunteered that they were Democrats. Rightly or wrongly, interviewees often complained that, in the long run, the Republican reputation worked to the disadvantage of Orange County in gaining federal support with money going to more marginal electorates.
WHO BUILT IRVINE?
In this context, the federal effects on Irvine’s planning and design have been contradictory with many effects being indirect or unintended. The freeway system opened up large areas. The military ight paths made it dif cult to develop near the airports. Defence spending promoted growth in the area and helped to create a landscape of military bases, research facilities and industrial parks. On the other hand, the recent habitat protection moves have provided some impetus for protecting much of the coastline and mountain areas. Federal defence and research expenditures led to part of the high demand for housing. More local-level effects, with mixed success, include wetlands protection and fair and affordable housing. The federal in uence comes in packages—one either has a federal interstate highway or one does not, and the presence of such infrastructure then opens out a speci c range of development options. In this way, at least part of the federal in uence can perhaps be better conceptualised as a series of thresholds rather than incremental or proportional effects. Irvine has lessons for governments and private developers as they try to create more sustainable development, or to grow smarter. Elsewhere, it has been shown that, while not at all a perfect development, Irvine does fairly well in comparison with current US smart growth, urban sustainability and new urbanist proposals (Forsyth, 2002). This evaluation compared Irvine and two other new communities with over 30 features and criticism of sprawl. While it is still very automobile-oriented—and Europeans would worry about its sustainability—this is a criticism that can be aimed at most of the best practices in the US including Maryland’s much-lauded smart growth programme and the majority of the suburban new urbanist projects. This coincidence between developments such as Irvine and what are understood as best practices in the US is not surprising, given the strong role of developer groups such as the Urban Land Institute in framing smart growth debates. Achieving these development outcomes while also selling the product in the market-
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place has been dif cult—and it has also involved much con ict including legal action over habitat and affordable housing. Are smaller local governments, or less powerful county or regional planning bodies, likely to do better given the uncertainties of the electoral system and their limited control over private property or other parts of government? Could even the federal government take on such a role given the contradictory purposes and procedures of its different departments and agencies? In spite of some squabbles among board members and the drama over its sale in the mid 1970s, TIC at least had a fairly uni ed sense of purpose and managed to attract early residents who transferred enough of that vision to the newly incorporated City. A corresponding image of a rational government actor combining many policy areas to implement a well-thought-out vision of urban development is far from any current reality (Allison and Zelikow, 1999). The case of Irvine is a lesson against underestimating the dif culties in the US system in achieving these more complicated development approaches. In an earlier period, even TIC lost out in its ghts over the siting of military bases and freeways—infrastructure investments with huge impacts, but set in place by very powerful bureaucracies with very set ways of doing things. In contrast, affordable housing suffered from a lack of federal support. Irvine’s development provides a lesson that co-ordination is possible although dif cult. Notes 1. Checkoway (1980) uses a case study of the Levittowns in an article on federal housing programmes and suburbanisation. Some case studies examining the development of individual new towns have included federal impacts (for example, Steiner, 1981). 2. This research is part of a larger study comparing Irvine with two other new communities: Columbia (Maryland) and The Woodlands (Texas). I spent 14 weeks at the sites, 6 in Irvine. I asked people for a history of their involvement in Irvine, their assessments of its successes and problems, how they would change the development, where it was headed, why people lived there, the
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3.
4.
5. 6.
7.
8.
9.
10. 11.
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impacts of government, the likely effects of changing technologies and some questions about their concepts of the good city. Histories or case studies of Irvine include a comparative social history by Bloom (2001); a planning and development history by Schiesl (1991); an architectural history thesis by Kane (1996); a comparative planning thesis by Nishimaki (2001); the account of former public relations director at TIC from 1973 to 1985, Brower (1994); an urban land institute publication by Grif n (1974); and a work focused on the agricultural period by Cleland (1962). The 1997 Economic Census estimated 127 605 jobs in the City of Irvine in 1997 but, at the place level, the data for a number of industries are not released meaning the actual number would have been higher. The 1990 category is Asian and Paci c Islanders; in 2000, Asian alone or in combination. In the late 1970s, President Carter even proposed Urban Impact Analyses for federal proposals, rather like Environmental Impact Statements (Glickman, 1980). Such policies included: mortgage tax deduction; estate taxes; free employer-provided parking; environmental regulations; siting of federal buildings and post of ces; regulatory review mechanisms such as NEPA; transport; utility pricing; and water and sewer regulations (GAO, 1999). For example, in the mid 1960s, the new community of Columbia, Maryland, had special FHA approval only on an experimental basis to subordinate the FHA liens its community association liens for payments to fund common open space maintenance and recreation. This kind of approval was not, however, extended to the Title VII new community of Park Forest South (Burby, 1976, pp. 38, 44). Several new communities have been built for defence purposes including Los Alamos in New Mexico and Oak Ridge Tennessee (Hales, 1997) and Clear Lake City, a suburban area near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Two additional communities received determination of grant eligibility rather than a federal debt guarantee. In 2002, Bren with an estimated net worth of $4 billion was ranked 87th richest person in the world (Forbes, 2002).
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