In Search of the Real OC

Just as people start “discovering” that Orange County, California, is cool, the executives at FOX television come up with a show, The OC, covering the lives of two families living in ocean-front McMansions in wealthy Newport Beach. The fact that almost everyone in The OC is white, however, speaks volumes about how most Americans, including academics, planners, and developers, continue to misunderstand the suburbs.

The word “suburb” still raises snickers among some scholars as a place “out there” - where middle-class people without taste reside. The harshest critics delegitimize suburbs by referring to their space as the “geography of nowhere.” Yet the American suburbs have grown so immense and diverse - now comprising well over half the U.S. population - that no stereotype can capture their complexity, meaning, or future direction. For example, according to an analysis of the 2000 Census by William Frey and Alan Berube, suburbs’ share of historically urban groups, such as singles, continues to grow. Indeed, suburbs now have more single households than families with children. Another example: the suburbs in all big metropolitan areas except New York and Chicago contain more office space than is found in the regions’ central business districts. Suburbs have essentially the same elements that make a place urban - but arranged in a form that differs enough from traditional cities to sustain the popular depiction of suburbia as home to middle-class and wealthy white people. 

The standard suburban narrative proves so powerful that it defies all evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the best way to combat this account is by crafting competing “tales” of the modern suburbs. We offer two exemplary tales, touching on the diversity and development of the American suburban mosaic at the start of the 21st century - comparable to those descriptions by Jane Jacobs which gave voice to the plight of the city in the middle of the 20th century.

A Texas-Sized Battle over Newness

To an outsider, Plano, Texas, a suburb north of Dallas, seems new. It is filled with recently built office parks, subdivisions, and freeways. Between the 2000 Census and July 2003, Plano’s population jumped by nine percent, adding almost 20,000 new residents. Plano is also home to many corporations, including such Fortune 1000 companies as JC Penney and EDS, and contains over 8 million square feet of rental office space. But just north of Plano lies an even newer metropolis: exurbs such as Frisco, Allen, and McKinney are booming at growth rates that exceed Plano’s. In fact, McKinney has been the fastest growing incorporated place above 50,000 people in the U.S. since the 2000 Census.

How quickly newness can fade in the suburbs. Plano is not the only boomtown from the 1980s and ‘90s at risk of usurpation by exurbs where growth is just starting to take off. Outside of Chicago, the once hot town of Schaumberg, Illinois, saw its office market soar in the ‘80s and then stopped growing in 1990 as development moved to its western exurbs. Outside of Washington, D.C., the suburbs of Fairfax County, Virginia, experienced similar setbacks as residents and businesses shifted to exurban Loudoun County. Residents who moved to boomtowns for the sake of newness quickly came to desire stability; hostile to change, they locked their suburbs into a form that became passé.

The real challenge for the Planos, Schaumbergs, and Fairfaxes of America is to decide what they want to be when they “grow up.” Plano, for one, is starting to plan for a time when it stops booming. Right now, Plano’s identity is muddled: it is much less urban than Dallas, but with more high-density apartments at its core, it feels crowded compared to nearby newer exurbs such as Frisco. The city is exploring new ways to create a stable and unique sense of “place.” Plano’s future centers will incorporate urban features into its suburban form to produce a new market niche that could help distinguish the city from both Dallas to the south and fast-growing exurbs to the north. According to Plano’s Mayor, Pat Evans, the first step in this new growth model is to build transit-oriented development at Plano’s downtown Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) station. Downtown Plano’s redevelopment is well respected in the Dallas region, and mayors of nearby Irving, Garland, and Arlington mention it in interviews as a positive change they hope to repeat in their suburbs.

According to Mayor Evans, exurbs such as Lewisville and McKinney threaten Plano’s business. As Plano grows denser and more urban, it faces challenges from towns that offer a more conventional suburban setting with less regulation, more surface auto parking, and lower building costs. Also, these places retain a tax advantage that was originally intended to promote economic development in rural areas: under a state law known as “4A/4B legislation,” remote cities can use a penny of their sales tax to promote business development. More mature Texas suburbs such as Plano, Richardson, Irvine, and Garland cannot do the same. For example, Mayor Evans described how a small firm that spun off from EDS was looking to locate in Plano in a built-to-suit building in the Legacy complex. The mayor arranged for the company to obtain $7,000 in tax abatements as part of a retention package. The city of Frisco, however, used 4A/4B money to offer EDS a whopping $700,000 relocation deal. Mayor Evans wonders how Plano can possibly compete against such places without a similar pot of incentive money. She also notes that office developers are expressing doubt as to the future market in Plano, now that it is a place that cannot compete against its exurbs.

As a further disadvantage, places like Plano have already dedicated a penny of their local sales tax revenue to pay for the DART system. People in the Dallas exurbs also use DART, parking in lots at the terminal stations of mature suburbs like Plano, but thus far have been unwilling to pay the taxes supporting existing service or to extend service to their towns. These exurbanites are in a literal sense “free riders.”

The challenges from its exurbs may ultimately deflate Plano’s real estate value and thus reduce developers’ incentive to build denser, mixed-use projects. Mayor Evans wants Plano to be more urban - and the light rail connecting Plano to Dallas should help - but market realities may slow its transition. This is one tale of the modern suburbs that still lacks an ending.

Cosmoburbia - the New Suburban Diversity

“Cosmoburbs” is the term Robert Lang and Jennifer LeFurgy use in their 2006 book, Boomburbs: The Rise of America’s Accidental Cities, to describe wealthy suburbs that are also diverse, seldom dominated by one race. Leading examples around the nation include Irvine, California; Carrolton, Texas; and Bellevue, Washington.

As an illustration of how suburbs are growing more “cosmoburban,” the “real OC” (not the TV show, but the real place), according to recently released census data, is not even majority white. For example, Anaheim - LA’s quintessential suburban semi-city - has grown so diverse that it qualifies as a “New Brooklyn,” or a large, formerly white suburb with a high percentage of foreign-born residents. Anaheim now has the same percentage of foreign-born residents as Brooklyn (38 percent). Neighboring Santa Ana, the County Seat of Orange County, has a population that is over half foreign-born (53 percent). Moreover, the mostly affluent and master-planned Orange County community of Irvine, home of a University of California campus, is just under a third foreign-born (32 percent). The OC’s residents could drive just a couple of miles from their homogenous world of Newport Beach and find a type of diversity unrealized in TV and movie portrayals of suburbia.

Anaheim’s Levitt-type subdivisions - built around the time that Disneyland opened in the 1950s - exemplified the period’s American Dream of a home in the suburbs, which was then limited by covenant to whites. Today, those neighborhoods are home to most of the city’s new immigrants. The post-war Anaheim suburban landscape now comprises some of America’s most dynamic and offbeat places. It features retail strips with authentic, immigrant-owned Mexican and Asian restaurants. Some of the nation’s best mid-century modern architecture, including so-called “Googie-style” coffee shops and “Tiki-Modern” hotels, lie along the boulevards just outside of Disneyland.

Most mental images of suburbia, however, still paint it as “white bread”: nice, but dull, uninteresting, and lacking cultural or ethnic identity. In part, this arises from the image developers have marketed to the public. Suburbs are supposed to be safe from the dangers of the cities. Interestingly, it is this image of safety that attracts a rising influx of minorities. According to the 2000 Census analysis by Frey and Berube, so-called minority groups constituted the largest shift from cities to suburbs in the 1990s. In 65 of the largest 102 metropolitan areas, “minority flight” equaled or outpaced “white flight” to the suburbs.

To be sure, much of the Hispanic and Asian gains in the suburbs were due to new arrivals that jumped past central cities. At the turn of the last century, immigrants flocked to the city centers. Today, half of immigrants move directly to suburbs. Asian immigrants, more than any other group, select suburban lifestyles that are hard to find in their Asian homelands. Changing suburban composition reflects a minority middle-class aspiration. For example, in “The Changing Face of the San Fernando Valley,” Joel Kotkin and Erika Ozuna report that the ethnic diversification of the San Fernando Valley “still epitomizes for many the great middle-class ideal of owning a home in a sunny, safe, comfortable community (for Hispanics and other non-whites).”

Homeownership and its related middle-class values show up in the comparable education and homeownership levels between white and minority Cosmoburbians. Thus, counter to many people’s perceptions, a diverse population need not equal downward property valuations for suburbs. Consider Fremont, California, in the San Francisco Bay area. During the 1990s, Fremont’s white population dropped from 64 percent to 41 percent. Yet the town remained wealthy, having a 2000 median income of $76,579, compared to $41,994 for the nation. In addition, Fremont maintained a 65 percent homeownership rate, just one percentage point shy of the national figure.

Similarly, Irving, Texas, saw its white population drop from 71 percent to 48 percent in the 1990s, and yet its rising median income still ended the decade at $44,956, above the national figure. Mayor Joe Putnam finds that the tipping point has shifted. “In the past, say the 1960s and 1970s, the presence of just a few minorities would have resulted in many whites leaving - now they are more likely to stay put.” The mayor’s impression comports with a Brookings Institution report that shows mixed-race neighborhoods rising in nine of the nation’s top ten metropolitan areas. The Dallas region leads the nation in this shift.

New Cosmoburbs surely offer an appealing package: quality housing, good schools, diversity, and safety. Most minorities do not want to be pioneers nor do they wish to disassociate themselves from their city-oriented social networks. In most respects, the Cosmoburb may be the coming America where race is part of the ambiance and not the noise. Ethnic restaurants and shops with exotic goods draw people into these communities. In a place such as Fremont, it does not matter what race the neighbor is - as long as the lawn is mowed.

But a more important lesson may be that as the nation diversifies, these new Cosmoburbs provide a platform for a global economy. For planners this means that Cosmoburbs should not be thought of as merely bedroom communities, but as new economic hubs for an increasingly “brain”-oriented economy. In Cosmoburbs, the mix of diversity and talent can be a magnet for increasing wealth. Planners need to think of ways to mix people as well as land uses to build communities for the coming century.

Challenging the Old Suburban Dreamscape

We want to challenge the traditional narrative found in The OC and other TV shows that depict the suburbs, and indirectly influence policy. The real OC and - to take the Sopranos’ setting on the other side of the country - the real Bergen County, New Jersey, are much more complex places that demand an accurate understanding. But we are fighting popular culture. We suggest another strategy for fixing the suburban myth: construct an alternative narrative.

Our narrative rests on several important principles. First, suburbs are not a lower form of economy than a city, but equal to the city as a living and working form of central cities of the past. In order to work more effectively, this new form requires rethinking the design of transit and other infrastructure. Second, because housing and commercial markets are dictating new fringe development, regional planning must refocus on strengthening suburbs in the same fashion it has concentrated on building strong city centers. To make new suburbs requires land uses that reflect suburbanites’ desires, such as open space, while recognizing the need for a better assembly of buildings. Third, the transportation solution for suburbs is a better suburban transit system, not a more efficient way to reach downtown. Finally, suburbs can build racial and class diversity as well as cities. The new model for community development needs to consider a cultural-lifestyle package for singles, seniors, the foreign-born, and people of every color. If we envision this future, we can truly plan for and with suburbia.

Blakely, Edward James, and Mary Gail Snyder. Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1997.

Fasenfest, David, Jason Booza, and Kurt Metzger. “Living Together: A New Look at Racial and Ethnic Integration in Metropolitan Neighborhoods, 1990-2000.” Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, 2004.

Frey, William H. “Melting Pot Suburbs: A Census 2000 Study of Suburban Diversity.” Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, 2001.

Frey, William H., and Alan Berube. “City Families and Suburban Singles: An Emerging Household Story.” Redefining Urban and Suburban America: Evidence from Census 2000. Ed. Bruce Katz and Robert E. Lang. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. 257–290.

Kotkin, Joel, and Erika Ozuna. “The Changing Face of the San Fernando Valley.” Sherman Oaks, California: Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, 2002.

Lang, Robert E. Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003.

Lang, Robert E., and Jennifer LeFurgy. Boomburbs: The Rise of America’s Accidental Cities. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2006.