Introduction

Of the six city studies that constitute this book, the study of Irvine (population 100 000) is the odd one out. Not a city at all in the conventional sense, Irvine is effectively the most south-easterly suburb of Los Angeles, though this dubious honour is already being lost to a chain of master-planned communities springing up along Interstate 405 that only stop at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and the Pendleton Marine Training Base.

Why select Irvine as a case study of design control? In the first instance because it features strongly in researches on design control and design regulation (Shirvani 1991; Habe 1989) and is cited repeatedly as an example of suburban planning at its best (at least in the 1980s). Secondly, there is the interesting twist that design control in the city is operated first by the developer and then by the community as a ‘privatised’ system of control. Thirdly, Irvine is a fine representative of a masterplanned community–a large-scale, primarily residential development undertaken by a single developer or landowner exerting short-term and long-term control through deed restrictions to ensure community stability and high property values, characterised by high incomes, social segregation and suburban lifestyles. Finally, Irvine is an ‘Edge City’ (Garreau 1991), part of post-suburban Exopolis (Soja 1996), set in the heart of Orange County, which is seen by many as one of the key laboratories of contemporary urbanism, a giant theme park not just in the eyes of UCLA geographers, but also in the hype of the Californian Office of Tourism (Soja 1996, p. 237).