Santa Ana has become a cool place to be, and that is scaring a lot of people. (Anaheim: amusement parks, hotels)

[DriveNotCommute]

Originally Posted by HyperionGap

I would say it is mainly related to employment patterns (in addition to geographic distance). Exurbs are a generally thought of as "bedroom" communities where the vast majority of the population leaves the area to commute to outside employment centers.

Thanks. I have been thinking it was in that direction but wasn't entirely positive. Maybe "edge city" would be more appropriate in places where I was thinking of the word exurb.

Originally Posted by LuvSouthOC

I don't know if these distinctions are applicable or even matter to tiny OC any longer. People commute here, to OC. And so-called exurbs have fewer people commuting out of the area. OC is now a job center.

He was just answering my question about what defines an exurb. Although I did have the OC and the IE in mind, I tried asking for a neutral definition that could be applied anywhere.

An "edge city" might be a better fit than the word "exurb" for Southern California regions. OC probably isn't an edge city any more but the IE might be?

Originally Posted by mbell75

Tiny OC? Its the 6th largest county in the country and more populated than half the STATES in the US. Tiny, lol

That caught my eye so I looked it up.

If Wikipedia's numbers are right, OC's 2.99 million people would match Mississippi's population, which is #31 out of the 50 states. For a casual discussion this is close enough to be on the mark. We're almost more populated than half of the states. To reach exactly the middle, we need to beat #25 Louisiana at 4.5-4.6 million people. On a side note, I'm not sure our freeways would handle that many more people very well.

OC is the smallest county in Southern California. On a list of all California counties (by land area only) it is 789 to 791 squre miles, depending on source. A county needs 10,000 square miles to break the Top 10 in the US. It needs about 4,180 square miles to break the Top 100.

It is true, though, that many California counties in general are in the Top 100 counties by area.
List of the largest counties in the United States by area - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[HyperionGap]

Originally Posted by LuvSouthOC

I don't know if these distinctions are applicable or even matter to tiny OC any longer. People commute here, to OC. And so-called exurbs have fewer people commuting out of the area. OC is now a job center.

Yes, and therefore I wouldn't call OC exurban =)

Typical exurbs would be stuff in the Antelope Valley (Palmdale, Lancaster, etc) or the boonies of Riverside (Hemet, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore).

[Urban Planner]

Whether or not mbell likes it, Orange County is a mature suburb that has developed edge cities. I'm not going to go into what edge cities are but essentially the Irvine Business Complex, South Coast Metro (Santa Ana/Costa Mesa), Spectrum, Fashion Island, and the area around the Orange Crush (Orange/Santa Ana). For example, the OC/IE Metrolink train is the first suburb to suburb train line in the country. There is only one traditionally defined downtown in OC, and that's Downtown Santa Ana due to it's design and all the government jobs clustered there.

Doesn't matter where the county lines are drawn. For example you can't have 10 million people living in single family homes with auto dependency and no real core and not call it suburban.

[LuvSouthOC]

Originally Posted by mbell75

Tiny OC? Its the 6th largest county in the country and more populated than half the STATES in the US. Tiny, lol

I was referring only to OC's small size, not its population.

[matzoman]

Originally Posted by Pennychaser11

This is happening all over socal and I think crazy housing prices has something to do with it. Young adults living with parents will have to move out eventually and those that lived in nice expensive neighborhoods will have to start looking in places where their parents may have avoided like plague

Bingo!! The places their upper middle class white parents looked down on are the only places their children can now afford to live halfway decently. They are going to have to learn to share and make friends in the hood though. If they don't they are walking food sources for the people their OC parents snubbed and despised.

[dober1]

Originally Posted by Urban Planner

Dang, that's pretty racist right there. You sound a lot like my bitter gun toting uncle. Poor guy was more worried about Mexicans than his health.

Sounds pure American to me.

[Fast Cat]

Originally Posted by Urban Planner

Whether or not mbell likes it, Orange County is a mature suburb that has developed edge cities.

When I look at what a suburb means, let's examine the word itself - (Cambridge dictionary definition: an area on the edge of a large town or city where people who work in the town or city often live; Free Dictionary: A usually residential area or community outlying a city.). From it's Latin root, sub (subordinate) urb (city).

Yet OC is hardly subordinate to its larger neighbor to the north. We have largest entertainment centers and shopping district in the region. We have our own performing arts centers, museums, concert venues, and sport teams. Our businesses have the top tier law firms, accountants, PR firms, etc. to provided any needed professional service without leaving the county. We even have more daily LA commuters traveling here to work, than those going in the reciprocal direction. We have ratio of 1.48 jobs located in the county/household compared to 1.28 in LA county. We even have our own high recognizable identity, as Orange County. When former NFL commissioner Paul Taglibue meet with local leaders to discuss bring football back to Anaheim which I was privilege to attend, he stated that OC would be the NFL's 5th largest market from an economic standpoint. The only thing we lack is our local televised news programming.

So although from a physical perspective we may not look like the traditional urban area, in many other ways we truly are one.

[dexter14]

Originally Posted by Fast Cat

When I look at what a suburb means, I look at the word itself - (Cambridge dictionary definition: an area on the edge of a large town or city where people who work in the town or city often live; Free Dictionary: A usually residential area or community outlying a city.). From it's Latin root, sub (subordinate) urb (city).

Yet OC is hardly subordinate to its larger neighbor to the north. We have largest entertainment centers and shopping district in the region. We have our own performing arts centers, museums, concert venues, and sport teams. Our businesses have the top tier law firms, accountants, PR firms, etc. to provided any needed professional service without leaving the county. We even have more daily LA commuters traveling here to work, than those going in the reciprocal direction. We have ratio of 1.48 jobs located in the county/household compared to 1.28 in LA county. We even have our own high recognizable identity, as Orange County. When former NFL commissioner Paul Taglibue meet with local leaders to discuss bring football back to Anaheim which I was privilege to attend, he stated that OC would be the NFL's 5th largest market from an economic standpoint.

So although from a physical perspective we may not look like the traditional urban area, in many other ways we truly are one.

You sir get it

[Urban Planner]

Originally Posted by Fast Cat

So although from a physical perspective we may not look like the traditional urban area, in many other ways we truly are one.

Peeps keep confusing the word urban and suburban. An urbanized area is defined by the census as areas with 50,000 people or more. Of course all of OC is within that, but it doesn't make it the urban in function.

The big distinction in Southern California is that most of the metropolitan area operates in a suburban manner which just so happens to be urbanized. We're talking about single family homes stretching as far as the eye can see which makes us very much urbanized but not necessarily urban in function. SoCal is such a unique phenomenon. Over 18 million people, most of which live in suburban characteristics in an extremely built environment with very few real urban centers.

OC (with the exception of a few places) is suburban in nature not matter how you put it. Heck, most cities in LA county are and will always be suburban. Point is, Santa Ana (specifically Downtown) is a real large traditional downtown and the only one of that scale in the county.


Urban:


Suburban:



Edit: I should add, no one is debating whether OC is Moreno Valley or Temecula or anything, we are actually debating the physical characteristics and function here. So don't look at it just by definition, one should never do that.

[Urban Planner]

A more local example of this urban function vs suburban function is the following.

DTSA:


vs



No matter how tall a tower is, it don't matter if it's surrounded by 8 lane roads and a sea of parking.