Back to the 'burbs
THE suburbs, long derided as cultural wastelands, are experiencing a renaissance. And buyers are drawn to them like dieters to a scoop of Cherry Garcia.
No longer just sprawling residential tracts fanning out from nominal downtowns, the reinvented suburbs of Pasadena, Fullerton, San Fernando, Burbank and Irvine -- to name a few -- are pedestrian-friendly villages featuring vintage architecture mixed with new designs, mom-and-pop stores next to national chains, plus jobs a lot closer to home. They have museums, theaters, art galleries, concert halls and restaurants.
"New suburbanism," as it's called, is putting vitality back into suburbia.
"What we're seeing is a very radical reordering of how people live and their relationship to suburbs," said Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy institute. "Southern California is the laboratory for this."
So what's new about it?
Residential neighborhoods that ignore the old suburban model, for starters.
When Hughes Aircraft closed its 2 million-square-foot Fullerton plant in the early '90s, the challenge was to rezone and convert the 340-acre industrial site into a residential and commercial area, said Joel Rosen, the city's chief planner.
The result is Amerige Heights, with 1,400 single-family homes, apartments and condos; a main street with ground-level shops, restaurants and offices and housing units above them; and a pedestrian bridge connecting the main residential area to a large outdoor shopping center anchored by Target.
Unlike the idealized suburb of your parents' generation, the lots are small and close together, and some feature so-called rear-loading garages behind the homes, entered via attractive, landscaped lanes rather than alleys lined with garbage cans.
Many of the homes lack traditional yards, so families enjoy the 20 acres of parks scattered throughout the development, most of which serve as central green zones and are surrounded by residences that face them. The parks are open to the public, but are maintained by homeowners' fees. The large residential streets have landscaped roundabouts to slow auto traffic. Narrow side streets accommodate wider sidewalks for pedestrian safety.
Sara and Roberto Lopez and their three kids moved to Amerige Heights from Santa Ana to take advantage of Fullerton's highly touted schools and child-friendly activities, which the family has easy access to. The development has two elementary schools and a nearby high school.
