It seems to me that all of these are the points that apply to Woodbury/Portola Springs as "bad design":
1. 4 high volume vehicular arterials
2. Large size
3. No armed guards
4. Major road alignment
5. Community without a back
6. Toll road 241 above the back of the community
I'm not sure what makes these bad design...most can be applied to all non-gated Irvine Valley communities...
Woodbridge backs a freeway, has no hills to "protect" it, and there is a large central area (North and South Lake) in which kidnappers can take a child and speed off on either Barranca or Alton. Except for a few small enclaves, it's not guard gated, and most can access Woodbridge via the large power-line bike path park that fronts the 405.
Northwood is also surrounded by four very large streets (Trabuco, Culver, Jeffrey, Irvine), has no "back". For the most part, not gated, aligns with Yale and Bryan, and it very large.
I'm not sure that Northpark is an applicable comparison to Woodbury, given that the look and feel of Northpark seem closer to the smaller villages like Oak Creek (largely gated).
Besides, unless I'm missing something, does Woodbury have an unusually large number of molesters or kidnappers?
Every day I see people in the smaller parks in Woodbury, people playing basketball in the commons, etc. In fact, the parks seem to be more used than Woodbridge's or Oak Creek's...
I'll grant you the large number of apartments, but I suppose growing up in a large community with no back and a large central park in the center in Huntington Beach never really gave me the feeling that I was unsafe. Oh well. To each their own, I suppose.
-OCR