Irvine, California

Irvine is a city located in the United States of America, more precisely in the state of California,
Orange County and it is part of the metropolitan area of Los Angeles. It has approximately 300 000
inhabitants and an area of 170 km2. With this in mind, we might just think that this is a suburban city
just like any other in the States. However, it is not. The city of Irvine is a “master-planned” city,
meaning that it was built from scratch which changes everything about what we can think of the city.
Indeed, when a city is created from the ground up it allows to establish specific characteristics for the
main role that the city will have. This being said, we must ask ourselves why would one build a new
city? The idea of popping a new urban center out of nowhere does not sound so natural, there must be
an objective behind this new creation and said goal will determine how the city is planned. For
example, if the intention is to have more industries in a certain area, the planning will be different than
if you intend to create a residential suburban settlement.
The planning and development of the Irvine area was managed by the Irvine Company, which is a real
estate development company that was established at the end of the nineteenth century in California by
James Irvine I. This company has managed the ranch real estate of this area since then. The planning
of Irvine as a city was made alongside William Pereira, the head architect in charge of the project
which intended to build a new campus for University of California (UC). The main goal of building a
new city in this area was basically having a new university campus. Officially, Irvine was incorporated
as a city of Orange County in December 1971. We should also mention that there was another small
agricultural town named Irvine where there was a railroad station and a post office, but this town was
renamed East Irvine after the construction of what is today known as Irvine.
As it was already mentioned, what distinguishes Irvine are two main things: a college education and
being a built-from-scratch city. What we want to address as the characteristic of college education is
mainly the fact that the reason for building the city was creating what is known today as the University
of California Irvine (UCI) allowing other educational entities to also settle theirs (Concordia
University, Irvine Valley College, etc.). However, during the planning of the city there were other
factors that were also considered that made this city very particular therefore, we must also describe in
more detail what being built from zero implies for the dynamics of this urban center. We will develop
this essay in three parts: the history of Irvine, the importance of education in the city and the reasons
for its economic success.

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Irvine’s history
The area where Irvine is located was inhabited by an ancient tribe called the Gabrielinos.
They were placed in Irvine for at least 2000 years organized in several villages of reduced size. Their
life was quiet until 1769 when Gaspar de Portola came to their land with conquest purposes.
Gabrielinos life changed dramatically, their land began to be distributed among people related to the
Kingdom of Spain, the Portola’s nationality. After a while, the recently independent Mexican
government began to take control of a portion of the land. At this point, there was a mixed Spanish-
Mexican power. The two nations made grants for the possession of the land, which was divided in
ranches. The most important three were Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, Rancho San Joaquin and
Rancho Lomas de Santiago, which later will constitute the Irvine Ranch. The first belonged to a
Spanish family called the Yorba. San Joaquin were the early mission lands of San Juan Capistrano,
they were renamed after they were granted to Don Jose Sepulveda. Rancho Lomas de Santiago were
granted to the Yorda family too, in particular to Teodosio Yorba.
In 1851, after the 1846’s American-Mexican war, land owners were forced to validate their possession
title of the ranch. Because of that, Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana was divided and redistributed to
several people, of whom stand out Benjamin and Thomas Flint, Llewellyn Bixby and James Irvine for
being successful sheep ranchers. In the context of the Great Drought, the owner of Rancho San Joaquin
had to sell his property to Irvine, Bixby and Flint. Only two years later, Irvine, Bixby and Flint also
took the land of Rancho Lomas de Santiago. They used the land of the three ranches mainly for sheep
grazing, until 1878 when Irvine brought Bixby and Flint parts. Irvine died eight years later and, his son
James Irvine Jr., took care of the land which was incorporated to the Irvine Company. He changed the
activities of the ranch from sheep grazing to field crops, such as olive and citrus.
In the beginning of XX century, these cultivations continued and for WWII a portion of the ranch was
sold to the marine for the construction of two facilities. After James Jr. death, his son Myford began to
make use of the land for urban planning. The University of California asked in 1959 for 1000 acres of
land to build a new campus. The plan was to build a city around the campus and the estimated
population was 50.000 inhabitants. Later, the Irvine Industrial Complex West was built and connected
the Turtle Rock, University Park, Culverdale, the Ranch and Walnut villages. The emerging city
continued to grow and in 1970 people voted to incorporate a larger city. Irvine continued growing and
in 2015 had a population of more than 250.000 inhabitants, five times the original idea.

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Irvine's economic success
As it was mentioned, Irvine was originally thought with the purpose of a new place for the
University of California. Due to the increase of people in Los Angeles and the expansion towards the
south of the city, the University of California also started to look south for its new campus. That is
when, in coordination with the Irvine Company and the assistance of architect William Perea the city
was planned. Now, Irvine is not the first city to be created from scratch, other famous examples
include Brasilia, Nowa Huta, or the Dan Wei model in China. Nevertheless, all these cities were
planned under different economic regimes, while the former two were thought by socialist/communist
movements, Brasilia and Irvine were planned from the capitalist perspective. And yet, Brasilia did not
end up having an astonishing economic development or a great public acceptance like Irvine. Why was
that? Where did Brasilia and Irvine differ?
First of all, the reasons for the creation of both cities were different, on the one hand Brazil wanted to
move and remake its capital; an ambitious work for which they hired Oscar Niemeyer. While on the
other hand, as mentioned before, Irvine came to form by the expansion of suburbs in Los Angeles by
the hand of a private company and the University of California. In addition to this, Brasilia was
designed to host the government entities, it was a city planned to have open spaces, where one could
see nature in parks from work buildings to help ease the stress. The city was planned to be the heart of
the country, a dynamic fast working system. Irvine was thought different, according to William Piggot,
the city started "in 1965 as part of California’s massive postwar expansion of its system of higher
education, a development emblematic of the broader political climate of the state at the time."(Piggot,
2012, Pg. 63). Education was a fundamental part of Irvine's success. While Brazilian went to Brasilia
to work but were always willing to leave the city as soon as the job was over, Irvine was the complete
opposite. As a consequence of creating a city with an educational purpose, Irvine started to attract the
interest of many groups. On one side, Irvine started to gain popularity among the asian community
across the pacific. Especially because Asia was going through several wars and conflicts caused by the
Cold War, which led its citizens to immigrate secure locations. Irvine was one of these, and had one
additional special detail, it had a good education system. Just as Piggot describes it: "the quality of the
schools themselves became a reason for Asians to move to Irvine." (Piggot, 2012, Pg. 78). The
education-based city became an attractive spot to look for a safe environment.
Interestingly enough, Asian families were not the only ones looking for a safe place. Big companies
and investment owners were also looking for a safe place to keep their money. Due to the migration of
Asian people to Irvine, connections allowing capital flow were established. Therefore, many
corporations started to set local bases in Irvine, for example: "The March 1989 decision by the
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Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), Hong Kong’s largest bank (and to- day, one of
the world’s largest), to set up its second North American office in Irvine exemplifies the reasoning."
(Piggot, 2012, Pg. 82). This meant that a great influx of resources and investment started to develop in
Irvine. The University was also a part of this development since it started to create and provide the
required skilled labor force for the tasks at hand. Asian migration became so high in this city that by
1987 UCI's enrolment was 39 percent Asian. This meant a wildly diverse environment was formed in
Irvine. Indeed, a cultural change took place. As we learned in class, one of the first manifestations of a
culturally diverse society is the emergence of new culinary traditions. As Piggot puts it, the cultural
involvement was reflected in many ways "They created a ready clientele for ethnic restaurants,
European and Japanese cars, a wide variety of imported goods, and cultural events such as modern
theater, foreign films, and classical goods."(Piggot, 2012, Pg. 87). Throughout this cultural inclusion
and the fact that the city showed itself as a safe and highly educated city, capable of supplying a skilled
labor forces, Irvine became one of the wonder cities of urban planning. Its effect was so big that:
"community planners on the other side of the Pacific Ocean began to recreate the suburban lifestyle found in cities
like Irvine as well. Perhaps the most striking example of this phenomenon has been the creation of the Ju Jun
development an hour north of Beijing. In Chinese, Ju Jun translates literally as “Orange County.” Indeed, Ju Jun’s
developers Weighdoon Yang and Zhang Bo have attempted to replicate the Orange County experience on

Beijing’s exurban frontier faith- fully." (Piggot, 2012, Pg. 87)

This shows how the acceptance of multiculturalism plus the creation of a cultured, educated city, were
characteristics that led to the possibility of Irvine becoming a high-tech development city. This city
was created with the help of different cultures, its results were so notorious that communities across
the Pacific intended to recreate what happened, it was influenced by the Asian culture and later on it
influenced the Asian culture back.

Importance of education in Irvine

Every city must have a reason for its foundation and must keep an incentive in order to
continue to develop and grow. One can see that from this stimulus, other income generating activities
may generate as a result. The purpose of this section is to show how Irvine has been shaped with the
sole idea of selling education. As previously mentioned, Irvine’s planning revolved around the
establishment of a University of California campus. For convenience of Irvine company, between the
1950’s to 1960’s the expansion of higher education for improving technical skills was in the US
Federal government interests due to the competitiveness arisen by the Cold War (Forsyth, 2002). With
this, the city was receiving aid to strengthen its core area (education) and, with time, it would be seen

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as the reason why it is taken today as a huge success. The city planners of Irvine clearly saw education
as an important factor to impulse the economy and growth of the city as high quality and diversified
education is demonstrated to attract residents to a certain area.
The Irvine company, whose profits are derived by construction, is interested in people moving over to
Irvine and buy homes. People with children seeking a suitable place to educate their family would
move over to Irvine and generate a huge flow of tax income. In addition, university students could stay
in the city after graduating and begin their families there, thus, contributing to household construction.
But, what is most intriguing about the way education has shaped the spatial distribution and
governmental logistics of Irvine is the fact that due to the special education policies, neighborhoods are
planned around schools. As schools are funded at a local level, they aim to be the best in order to
attract wealthier families into their zone (Forsyth, 2002). The previous has promoted suburbanization
and has meant a huge impact in the division of tasks the government has to control the city, as an
example: taxes, distribution of dwelling units and industrial development. The astonishing results of
the Irvine Unified School District (IUSD), such as being consistently ranked among the finest
education systems in the US, being leaders in the SAT test scores and setting the goal of having world-
class schools, are clear proves that the prioritization of the educational arrangement in Irvine for city
growth are at its peak (City of Irvine, 2019).
So far, we have talked about how Irvine has positioned its core both US-wide and now, worldwide. It
is now time to mention how the rest of city-relative activities derived from education. The Irvine city
planners have come up with a so-called “Irvine Master Plan” in which they promote their city by
showing their competitive advantages in terms of a better quality of life that stems from education as a
core (Irvine Chamber, 2019). This plan mentions how having world-class schools and having 96% of
their population aged 25 with at least a bachelor's degree in comparison to 83% in California overall in
2019 (Towncharts, 2019), means being a business district, a job magnet and a secure and open space.
It was previously mentioned how Irvine has been a great success of a built-from scratch city in contrast
to other examples around the globe. Keeping this in mind, Irvine has added to its set of goals for the
future in celebration of its 40th year anniversary this year (2019) being a “city of villages” with
“community partnerships”. These goals derived from the fact that if Irvine looks towards being
internationally competitive in the educational sector, they must plan ahead in order to be prepared for a
big amount of new people that will arrive and could eventually stay in Irvine to live.
Returning to the idea of education as Irvine’s core: it is important to highlight that part of this role of
vitality that this factor plays is the connection it ends up having with the citizens. The purpose of
education as stated by author Clark Kerr in 1963: “the new Irvine campus was envisioned as much
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more than simply a place for young adults to further their education. Rather, it was to serve as a
broader institutional lever, designed to remake the region of which it was part” (Kerr, 1963). This
reflection on the purpose of Irvine demonstrates how a city needs an incentive for its foundation and a
motivation for its further growth. In Irvine, this is not merely conceived as just establishing a solid
economy in a certain area but to find through education citizens that will make something bigger out of
a planned city already recognized for its success.

Conclusion

In this short essay we have seen not only the history of Irvine, California but also two characteristics
that distinguish this city from other modern urban settlements. Indeed, this was a city that was
completely planned from scratch allowing a great deal of flexibility in the decision making around
how the city was going to develop. However, urban planning is a double-edged weapon since on one
hand, city projects do not go as well as they were planned. This was the case for Brasilia, for example.
On the other hand, Irvine is an example of a successful urban development of a planned city. As it was
mentioned, this was due to the goal around which the city was created: education. This city has at its
core to attract a very specific type of people: competent and qualified people looking for a save
environment to settle. At the same time this allowed the city to grow economically and become a
center of interest for many enterprises.
It is also important to reiterate the influence of the Asian immigration in the city which contributed
heavily to the good development of the city’s culture and economy (opening the doors for Asian
companies to settle in Irvine). While growing thanks to immigration and international influence, Irvine
was also of great interest for the local government as we also observed during the present document.
Improving the education system of Irvine was a main political goal. We can now conclude that Irvine
is an example and a model of a planned city that grew even more than it was thought, becoming an
important urban center. We must keep in mind that every context is different and unique in its own
way. So, we cannot assume that because this is a successful case that if other cities try to replicate this
same model, they would also be successful. Me must always keep in mind that the context can change
everything about how a city develops. Nevertheless, Irvine leaves very important lessons in terms of
urban planning which we can use as a guideline for the future.

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Bibliography:

● City of Irvine (2019). Education, Irvine a great place to learn. Taken from:
https://www.cityofirvine.org/about-irvine/education
● City of Irvine (2019). History of the City. Taken from: https://www.cityofirvine.org/about-
irvine/history-city
● Cleeland, N. “Irvine Grows as Chinese Gateway: Schools, High-Tech Jobs are Magnet
Creating a Demographic Shift,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 7, 1998.
● Forsyth, A (2002). Who built Irvine? Private Planning and the Federal Government.
Pp.2522-2523.
● Irvine Chamber (2019). Irvine Master Plan. Taken from:
https://www.greaterirvinechamber.com/irvine-master-plan
● Kerr, C (1963). The Uses of the University (The Godkin Lectures). P.78.
● Piggot, W. (2012). Globalization from the Bottom Up: Irvine, California, and the Birth of
Suburban Cosmopolitanism. Pacific Historical Review, 81(1), 60-91.
doi:10.1525/phr.2012.81.1.60
● Town Charts (2019). Irvine, California Education Data. Taken from:
https://www.towncharts.com/California/Education/Irvine-city-CA-Education-data.html
● 2007 Long Range Development Plan, Found at the UCI web page, link:
https://www.ceplanning.uci.edu/PhysicalPlanning/2007LongRangeDevelopmentPlan.htm
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