Irvine residents recently learned that more than 50,000 housing units could be built in town in the future.
That’s A LOT of new houses, and at 1.5 persons per unit, close to 80,000 more residents.
The news has people asking about the city’s defining planning document, the General Plan.
As the author of a book on the history of how Irvine was planned and developed, I learned a great deal about the people and ideas that led to the creation of the plan in a city that more than almost any other in Orange County, is famous for its planning and planners.
General plans have been around since the 1920’s in California, but it wasn’t until 1971 state law required cities to create a plan and follow it.
Irvine’s general plan can trace its heritage to an individual, a company, and a city.
In 1960, the owner of the Irvine Ranch was a non-profit foundation created by ranch patriarch James Irvine II. After his death in 1947 the foundation guided operations of the Irvine Company. Seeing tremendous post WW II growth bearing down on the borders of the ranch (which was essentially a 93,000-acre farm and citrus grove), Irvine Company board of directors made the seminal decision to hold the property in single ownership and plan and develop it as a New Town.
At the same time, the University of California was looking for a new campus. After months of negotiations–and the continuing advocacy of Joan Irvine Smith–the decision was made to donate 1,000 acres of Irvine Ranch land to create UC Irvine. Enter William Pereira.
Pereira was an architect and planner who had been hired UC president Clark Kerr to create a plan for the new campus. The two collaborated with the first UCI chancellor Daniel Aldrich to form the now-familiar circular array of academic and administrative buildings, many in the stark brutalism style Pereira selected. After seeing what Pereira had done for the university, the Irvine Company retained him to create a master plan for the entire Irvine Ranch.
Pereira gathered acolytes around him and began drafting the outlines of a new city of just 10,000 acres immediately adjacent to the university. More or less at the same time, planners who had been hired by the Irvine Company—including Ray Watson—were looking beyond the Pereira plan to the northern foothills of the ranch in what is now Northwood and Orchard Hills.
Researching Ray Watson’s papers at the UCI Langson Library, it becomes clear that Watson and his compatriots were eager to ease out Pereira’s employees and put their own stamp on what would become a plan the Irvine Company could claim as its own. (Watson acknowledged the value of the Pereira plan, describing it years later as “the loom upon which new communities were woven”). In 1964 the Irvine Company plan for the entire Irvine Ranch was approved by the Orange County Board of Supervisors.
After incorporating as a city in December, 1971, the city council set about to create the city’s own general plan, hiring the firm of Wilsey and Ham to guide what became a small army of citizen-planners who held meetings, forums and other public and private gatherings over months to shape the document that would guide future city development. Interestingly, that plan anticipated that at some point in the future, a huge part of the city—El Toro Marine Corps Air Station—might close and become available for development (in 1999 it happened).
Lay the city’s general plan over the Irvine Company general plan and not surprisingly, the two are very similar.
But economics, political pressures and societal changes have caused major and minor changes to the Irvine plan over time. One of the most glaring is in the Irvine Business Complex, the huge job center surrounding John Wayne Airport. First implemented exclusively for industrial development, the need for office space drove the decision to allow it inside the IBC boundaries. And more radically, the city allowed residential uses in the IBC in the mid-1980’s; today there are more than 16,000 housing units there.
Now, driven both by demand and state housing policy, the city faces perhaps the most monumental planning decision the citizens will ever have to make: will a city nearing a population level anticipated in previous general plans decide to add tens of thousands of more homes and new residents?
Michael Stockstill has lived in Irvine since 1974. His book on the history of the planning and development of the Irvine Ranch was published in 2022. More information about the book is available at www.thebigplanbook.com
Opinions expressed in community opinion pieces belong to the authors and not Voice of OC.
Voice of OC is interested in hearing different perspectives and voices. If you want to weigh in on this issue or others please email opinions@voiceofoc.org.