Orange Coast article

[bkshopr_IHB]

Hehe... funny... I actually thought the maze of some of Irvine's streets were bad for Asian drivers... actually all drivers (I don't know how many times I've been asked directions in Irvine(.

Asians like to hold on to the secret of unlocking the Rubic street pattern.

 

[bkshopr_IHB]

I never said the magazines were publishing false information. They are there to make a good profit $$$$$ for being pro Irvine regardless of relevance such as public transit conscious Irvine or very walkable and pedestrian friendly Irvine. This is not journalism it is purely marketing PR.

Be smart choose publications that do not have shiny slick covers and especially if it is free or delivered to your door for free.

 

[bkshopr_IHB]

5 of the 10 are actually false.

I will post reasons and supports later.

Care to guess?

 

[zovall_IHB]

#9 is the one that sticks out the most to me. I do think the rest of the points are mostly valid.

 

[irvine_home_owner_IHB]

5 of the 10 are actually false.

I will post reasons and supports later.

Care to guess?

Tease!!!!

The only ones I can see as supported are 2, 5 and 8 (and maybe 10). But like all of them... it's subjective so you can either argue them to be true or false depending on which direction the wind is blowing.

They forgot one:

11 - Irvine has 3-car garages

 

[IrvineRenter_IHB]

5 of the 10 are actually false.

I will post reasons and supports later.

Care to guess?

1 - Irvine is more culturally diverse than your city

2 - Irvine has better schools

3 - Irvine has better neighborhoods

4 - Irvine has superior housing

5 - Irvine has more parks and open space

6 - Irvine has better streets

7 - Irvine has a more progressive government

8 - Irvine has bigger corporations and more jobs

9 - Irvine has its own transit system

10 - Irvine is safer than your city

1 is false. Irvine is diverse, but not like many other cities. Several cultural minorities are not well represented.

5 is false. There is very little true open space. There are plenty of parks, but there are cities that have more per capita than Irvine.

7. The Irvine City Council is bought and paid for by the Irvine Company. It is quite conservative.

8. Not really. There are many more small business owners here than big corporations.

9. Yes, it is called your car.

There are debates on some of the others as well, but that would be my list of 5.

 

[bkshopr_IHB]

5 of the 10 are actually false.

I will post reasons and supports later.

Care to guess?

1 - Irvine is more culturally diverse than your city

2 - Irvine has better schools

3 - Irvine has better neighborhoods

4 - Irvine has superior housing

5 - Irvine has more parks and open space

6 - Irvine has better streets

7 - Irvine has a more progressive government

8 - Irvine has bigger corporations and more jobs

9 - Irvine has its own transit system

10 - Irvine is safer than your city

1 is false. Irvine is diverse, but not like many other cities. Several cultural minorities are not well represented.

5 is false. There is very little true open space. There are plenty of parks, but there are cities that have more per capita than Irvine.

7. The Irvine City Council is bought and paid for by the Irvine Company. It is quite conservative.

8. Not really. There are many more small business owners here than big corporations.

9. Yes, it is called your car.

There are debates on some of the others as well, but that would be my list of 5.

No wonder IR is the moderator.

 

[bkshopr_IHB]

Garden Grove

Orange County’s most ethnically and culturally diverse community is experiencing a boom in development of affordable single family homes. Over a dozen new communities have either been built or are scheduled for construction, including the $220 million Brookhurst Triangle project that will include 510 housing units and 88,000 square feet of commercial and retail space. The 17.8 square mile city is home to four annual cultural festivals celebrating Vietnamese, Korean, Arab and American heritage as well the annual Garden Grove Strawberry Festival.

Black, Latino, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Loatians, Philipinos and numerous immigrants from Europe and the former Soviet Republics are part of the ethnic diversity in GG that Irvine lacks. In turn of culture Irvine lacks this completely.

Irvine's housing prices prevented many immigrants from moving in.

 

[irvine_home_owner_IHB]

1 is false. Irvine is diverse, but not like many other cities. Several cultural minorities are not well represented.

I think the debate here would be are we comparing Irvine to OC or non-OC cities. You'll probably find MORE per minority in other OC cities but maybe not as many different ones.

5 is false. There is very little true open space. There are plenty of parks, but there are cities that have more per capita than Irvine.

Even when you include all the little neighborhood parks? What struck me about Irvine when I first visited it decades ago was how green it was. I had never seen such a grassy/treey/bushy place in my life... but I was living in the LA suburbs at that time so it was a culture shock to me.

What OC cities have more parks than Irvine?

8. Not really. There are many more small business owners here than big corporations.

What other OC cities have bigger job centers and more corporate headquarters (and a university)? I'm just curious.

 

[no_vaseline_IHB]

What other OC cities have bigger job centers and more corporate headquarters (and a university)? I'm just curious.

I would claim the Orange/Anaheim/Garden Grove area around the I-5/22/57 crush, but technically that's not one city.

 

[bkshopr_IHB]

Parks and open space.

Casper Wilderness Park SJC 8,000 AC

Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, Laguna Beach, 6500 AC

Limestone Canyon/Whiting Ranch, Foothill Ranch 4,300 AC

Bolsa Chica Preserve, Huntington Beach, 1700 AC

Hungtington Beach has the highest number and acreage of pocket, neighborhood, city, reginal, and grand scale central parks not including the open beaches and open shoreline.

 

[irvine_home_owner_IHB]

Parks and open space.

Casper Wilderness Park SJC 8,000 AC

Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, Laguna Beach, 6500 AC

Limestone Canyon/Whiting Ranch, Foothill Ranch 4,300 AC

Bolsa Chica Preserve, Huntington Beach, 1700 AC

Hungtington Beach has the highest number and acreage of pocket, neighborhood, city, reginal, and grand scale central parks not including the open beaches and open shoreline.

So are we measuring just raw acreage or some ratio of land/people?

From the article:



Irvine has 16,000 acres of parks and open space—that’s 25 square miles—including 18 community parks ranging from 10 to 60 acres, with major facilities such as the three-pool aquatic center at Heritage Park and Deanna Manning Stadium at Col. Bill Barber Marine Corps Memorial Park, which looks more like a minor league stadium than a city athletic field. On top of those well-maintained sanctuaries, the city also has 35 neighborhood parks, which are smaller and tend more toward playgrounds and picnic tables.

“[The city of Irvine] has more parks and open space per person than any other city in Orange County,” says City Manager Joyce.

This impressive—or for you, depressing—park count doesn’t include hundreds of village parks maintained by homeowners associations. You’ll find an additional 37 parks—from one-half to 7 acres, more than 80 acres total—in the village of Woodbridge alone.

On top of hundreds of parks nicer than those in your city, Irvine has thousands of acres of permanent open space, much of it near pristine. Huge chunks of coastal hill terrain, valley meadows, and oak forests on the slopes of the Santa Ana Mountains are linked with adjoining wilderness areas to make a truly extraordinary 50,000-acre resource for wildlife and frazzled suburbanites.



So are those all untrue?

(zovall: You might want to move this thread to the Irvine Real Estate section.. it seems pretty relevant)

 

[irvine_home_owner_IHB]

Hey iho, bk, anyone else... which ones are actually false? ;-)

Well... I would think bk (and graph and many others) would say number 4... but the article was interesting if you read it:



Some people disguise their deep-seated resentment of Irvine by mocking its sometimes bland architectural surface. Not enough innovation or variety, they say. Too much stucco! But, in fact, a residential design revolution took place in this city in the third quarter of the 20th century. The movement started in the 1960s when Ray Watson, The Irvine Company’s chief in-house planner, decreed that nothing would be built on the ranch that wasn’t designed by an architect.

“That was a monumental decision,” says Walt Richardson, founder of RNM Architects and the dean of Orange County residential designers. “Up till that time, anyone could design a tract house. Builders sketched them out on napkins. Ray deserves tremendous credit for upgrading residential design here.”

Like Watson, many of the early architects who designed homes in Irvine were trained at the University of California, Berkeley, where they were captivated by the designs of San Francisco architect and social visionary Joseph Eichler. Eichler’s homes emphasized open floor plans with lots of glass that integrated the domestic and natural worlds, and the houses going up in Irvine in the 1970s reflected his inspiration. Little boxlike rooms connected by narrow doorways were replaced by the spacious, flowing interiors many Irvine residents take for granted.

“The residential design ideas that came out of here spread all over the country and the world,” says Richardson. “Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, builders came here on pilgrimages to see what we were doing and take our concepts back to Arizona and Texas, and Florida and the East Coast. And it is still going on.”



I guess bk can confirm whether or not this is really true... but to the average noob like myself... it's like "Really? Cool!"

I'm surprised BK hasn't talked about this yet.

Is this true? About Ray Watson and Irvine homes drawing inspiration from classic designs and serving as a template for other cities?

Does that mean I'm going to see stucco boxes and 3-car garages in Italy? SKA-DOOSH!

 

[freedomCM_IHB]

[

On top of hundreds of parks nicer than those in your city, Irvine has thousands of acres of permanent open space, much of it near pristine. Huge chunks of coastal hill terrain, valley meadows, and oak forests on the slopes of the Santa Ana Mountains are linked with adjoining wilderness areas to make a truly extraordinary 50,000-acre resource for wildlife and frazzled suburbanites.

[/i]

So are those all untrue?

So now you are claiming for Irvine all the open space in all of The OC?

All of it also abuts other cities, the north/eastern open space is also "part of" Orange, Tustin, Lake Forest. The south/western space abuts NPB, Laguna, AV, CM

Instead of quoting Irvine Co press releases relayed by their bought and paid for minions in city hall, why not figure out what is actually in the city?

 

[The_Maestro_IHB]

I suppose Irvine is diverse from an ethnicity standpoint but it is not diverse in many ways. Someone mentioned the affordability factor. That's one factor. I don't see too many artists or young people with what would be considered alternative or diverse lifestyles moving to Irvine. I think areas like Huntington Beach or the Costa Mesa /Newport/ Triangle square area are more diverse.

 

[graphrix_IHB]

I just threw up in my mouth... WTF are they doing putting Eichler and Irvine in the same sentence? Case in point that it is marketing propaganda. Eichler would have failed every property design in Irvine as being mass produced garbage. Sorry, no three car garages then if it was Eichler influenced, you'd be lucky to get two.

 

[The_Maestro_IHB]

Where are these so called Eichler like homes from the 70's in Irvine? I've never seen anything like that. I've seen a few homes in the Turtle Rock area near the University that I guess look a little MCMish but nothing like an Eichler.

 

[bkshopr_IHB]

Parks and open space.

Casper Wilderness Park SJC 8,000 AC

Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, Laguna Beach, 6500 AC

Limestone Canyon/Whiting Ranch, Foothill Ranch 4,300 AC

Bolsa Chica Preserve, Huntington Beach, 1700 AC

Hungtington Beach has the highest number and acreage of pocket, neighborhood, city, reginal, and grand scale central parks not including the open beaches and open shoreline.

So are we measuring just raw acreage or some ratio of land/people?

From the article:



Irvine has 16,000 acres of parks and open space—that’s 25 square miles—including 18 community parks ranging from 10 to 60 acres, with major facilities such as the three-pool aquatic center at Heritage Park and Deanna Manning Stadium at Col. Bill Barber Marine Corps Memorial Park, which looks more like a minor league stadium than a city athletic field. On top of those well-maintained sanctuaries, the city also has 35 neighborhood parks, which are smaller and tend more toward playgrounds and picnic tables.

“[The city of Irvine] has more parks and open space per person than any other city in Orange County,” says City Manager Joyce.

This impressive—or for you, depressing—park count doesn’t include hundreds of village parks maintained by homeowners associations. You’ll find an additional 37 parks—from one-half to 7 acres, more than 80 acres total—in the village of Woodbridge alone.

On top of hundreds of parks nicer than those in your city, Irvine has thousands of acres of permanent open space, much of it near pristine. Huge chunks of coastal hill terrain, valley meadows, and oak forests on the slopes of the Santa Ana Mountains are linked with adjoining wilderness areas to make a truly extraordinary 50,000-acre resource for wildlife and frazzled suburbanites.



So are those all untrue?

(zovall: You might want to move this thread to the Irvine Real Estate section.. it seems pretty relevant)

Here is the math for this fraudulent advertising.

16,000AC+80AC+50,000AC=66,080AC

66,080ACx43560sf/AC=2,878,444,800sf

2,878,444,800sf/27,878,400sf/sq.mi.=103 sq.mi=10.2mi x 10.2mi of open space

The area between the 55 fwy and 133 fwy (10mi) ; PCH and Portola Parkway (10mi) has to be completely vacant without a single home to equate 66,080AC.

Where is Irvine when the area I cited is entirely vacant? Irvine is way smaller than 10mi x 10mi. How can the open space be greater than the entire actual size of Irvine?

I think IHO will find it difficult to explain himself out of this one.

Better yet Zovall do not move it to Irvine RE this might turn away future IHO neighbors.

 

[bkshopr_IHB]

Irvine Politicians and city officials are the most conservative not progressive. They are not open to new ideas. When a city has their best interest in $$$$$ and not the people who elected them to office. Look at the residential tower projects and the permit fee generated from towers and miles of vacant podium and wrap projects along the Jamboree corridor. That is just greed and so far how many affordable project were built in Irvine for the equal opportunity housing?

This city is hardly progressive.

Better neighborhood to me are subjective. I see better neighborhood is where there are no 2 homes alike and garages absent from the street. Every home is unique and homeowners labor over the front yard behind a white picket fence to show off their garden and sip lemonade under their front porches siting on a swing bench that is placed sideway.

Superior housing to me is where the construction craftsmanship is excellent and woods dont twist. The backyard is at least 2x the house area. My list is just too long to mention.

Production housing is built by laborers and if that is superior then what is considered bad? The lack of yard is detrimental. The lacking sideyards and rear yard confined the house like a prison.

Even San Quentin jail cells have a huge exercise yard

 

[irvine_home_owner_IHB]

Uh yeah... I'm not claiming anything... I'm just asking what's true and not true... since you're the experts and I'm not (at least that's what bk loves to say).

BK... I don't have to explain myself out of anything... I'm not the one who wrote the article... and here's the math:

16,000 x 43560 sf/AC = 696960000 sf

696960000 sf / 27878400 sf/mile = 25 miles = 5 x 5 miles

What is fraudulent about that? I'm sure you can find that climbing around Shady, Turtle Rock, Portola foothills, along the 405/133/5 and between the nooks and crannies of Irvine. Remember... that's parks AND open space. And they didn't say the extra 50,000 acres is part of Irvine... just that Irvine has access to it.

But that's nothing... like graph... I was quite surprised by the Eichler comparison and I was hoping Bk would bust in with his historical knowledge-fu but instead he takes up space with math that doesn't really apply.

I know you guys are jealous of my beauty but let's read before we bash... I'm not the Orange Coast.

And like I said... prove the article wrong... show me some OC cities that can take on The Big I in all 10 rounds. I don't doubt there are a few... but I think I'm not the only one on this board who thinks Irvine is all that and "a bag of chips".