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Exploring land use changes in the city of Irvine’s master plan
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Content
Exploring Land Use Changes in the City of Irvine’s Master Plan
By
Julia Lynn Goldsworth
A Thesis Presented to the
Faculty of the USC Graduate School
University of Southern California
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
Master of Science
(Geographic Information Science and Technology)
December 2017
Copyright © 2017 by Julia Lynn Goldsworth
To my parents, Carroll and Karen Goldsworth
iv
Table of Contents
List of Figures ................................................................................................................... vii
List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... ix
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. x
List of Abbreviations ......................................................................................................... xi
Abstract ............................................................................................................................. xii
Chapter 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1
1.1. History...................................................................................................................... 1
1.2. The New Town Movement ...................................................................................... 4
1.3. Study Area ............................................................................................................... 5
1.4. Research Goals and Methods ................................................................................... 9
Chapter 2 Background and Literature Review ................................................................. 10
2.1. Irvine in the Spotlight ............................................................................................ 10
2.2. Urban Planning and The New Town Movement ................................................... 11
2.3. Extracting Data from Old Maps ............................................................................. 14
2.4. Building Historical Narratives ............................................................................... 14
2.5. Using GIS to Track Land Use Changes ................................................................. 15
Chapter 3 Methodology .................................................................................................... 17
3.1. Research Design..................................................................................................... 17
3.2. Data Sources .......................................................................................................... 17
3.2.1. Choosing the Historical Irvine General Plan Map .......................................... 18
3.2.2. Importing the 1973 Map Into a GIS ................................................................ 25
3.2.3. Land Use Classifications in the 1970s ............................................................ 25
v
3.2.4. Land Use Codes in 2017 ................................................................................. 26
3.2.5. Matching 1973 and 2017 Land Use Classifications ....................................... 27
3.3. Data Processing ...................................................................................................... 30
3.3.1. Extracting Data from Historical Map ............................................................. 30
3.3.2. Preparing the 2017 layers................................................................................ 38
3.3.3. Finding Land Use Changes ............................................................................. 39
Chapter 4 Results .............................................................................................................. 41
4.1. The Big Picture ...................................................................................................... 41
4.1.1. Largest Areas of Change and of No Change .................................................. 42
4.1.2. Land Use Codes with the Largest Changes by Percent of Acreage ................ 44
4.1.3. Largest Areas of No Change ........................................................................... 45
4.2. Digging Deeper - Changes by Land Use Code ...................................................... 46
4.2.1. Open Space ..................................................................................................... 47
4.2.2. Parks ................................................................................................................ 48
4.2.3. Residential Density ......................................................................................... 49
4.2.4. Low Density Residential ................................................................................. 51
4.2.5. Where Residential Density Increased ............................................................. 54
4.2.6. Where Residential Density Decreased ............................................................ 56
4.2.7. Irvine Business Complex ................................................................................ 59
Chapter 5 Discussion and Conclusions ............................................................................. 62
5.1. Summary of Findings ............................................................................................. 62
5.1.1. Housing Density Changes ............................................................................... 62
5.1.1. Open Space ..................................................................................................... 63
vi
5.1.2. New Town Principles ...................................................................................... 63
5.2. Study Limitations ................................................................................................... 64
5.2.1. Errors............................................................................................................... 64
5.2.2. Historical Maps ............................................................................................... 65
5.2.3. Parcel Sizes ..................................................................................................... 65
5.2.4. Land Use Codes .............................................................................................. 65
5.2.5. Problems with Roads ...................................................................................... 66
5.3. Recommendations for Future Research ................................................................. 68
5.3.1. Expand the Datasets ........................................................................................ 68
5.3.2. Study Other Large Master Planned Communities .......................................... 69
5.3.3. Potential Uses of Work ................................................................................... 69
References ......................................................................................................................... 70
Appendix A Land Use Code Consolidation 2017 ............................................................ 74
Appendix B Land Use Change Pairs in Acres ................................................................. 78
vii
List of Figures
Figure 1 The City in 1971, the Irvine Ranch and Orange County ...................................... 4
Figure 2 The Recommended Plan of 1977 ......................................................................... 7
Figure 3 The Incorporated City versus the Sphere of Influence ......................................... 8
Figure 4 Irvine General Plan of 1970 From the Raymond Watson Collection ................ 19
Figure 5 Six-foot-tall 1973 General Plan Map ................................................................. 22
Figure 6 Pre-1970 General Plan Map of Land Use........................................................... 23
Figure 7 1973 General Plan of the Irvine Ranch .............................................................. 24
Figure 8 Land Use Classifications from the Irvine Company’s 1973 Map ...................... 26
Figure 9 Inconsistent Coloring of Same Code Parcels ..................................................... 32
Figure 10 Fine Detail of the Inconsistent Coloring. ......................................................... 33
Figure 11 Green Circles for Schools in the 1973 Map ..................................................... 34
Figure 12 Green Polygons in Actual 2017 School Locations ........................................... 35
Figure 13 Verifying Coding of 1973 Polygons................................................................. 36
Figure 14 Digitized Version of 1973 General Plan Land Use .......................................... 37
Figure 15 Pivot Table Results in Square Feet (Page 1) .................................................... 39
Figure 16 Pivot Table Results in Square Feet (Page 2) .................................................... 40
Figure 17 Areas of Change and No Change ..................................................................... 43
Figure 18 Golf Course to Open Space .............................................................................. 45
Figure 19 Size of Change Pairs in Acres .......................................................................... 47
Figure 20 Areas Where Parks Changed to High-Density Residential .............................. 48
Figure 21 Plans for Four Land Uses in 1973 Become Two in 2017 ................................. 49
Figure 22 Distribution of 1973 Housing Densities ........................................................... 50
viii
Figure 23 Distribution of 2017 Housing Densities ........................................................... 51
Figure 24 Areas Where Low-Density Residential Changed to Open Space .................... 52
Figure 25 Open Space in Turtle Rock from Google Maps ............................................... 53
Figure 26 Areas of Residential Density Increase with Count of Parcels .......................... 55
Figure 27 Areas Where Residential Density Decreased ................................................... 57
Figure 28 Un-coded Blocks in Pre-1970 Map .................................................................. 58
Figure 29 The Housing Tract of College Park .................................................................. 59
Figure 30 The Irvine Business Complex .......................................................................... 61
Figure 31 Road Parcels That Are Easy to Recode ............................................................ 67
Figure 32 Road Parcels That Are Not Easy to Recode ..................................................... 68
ix
List of Tables
Table 1 Land Use Codes: Corresponding Nomenclature Between 1973 and 2017 .......... 27
Table 2 Comparison of Residential Land Use Codes ....................................................... 29
Table 3 Largest Changes by Percentage of Acreage ........................................................ 44
Table 4 Largest Areas of No Change by Acreage ............................................................ 46
x
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my committee members Dr. John Watson, Dr. Robert Vos, Dr. An-Min Wu and
especially to Dr. Elisabeth Sedano for her patience, guidance and help in finding the right words.
Thanks to Ken Watson, Academic Programs Director, for putting out fires.
Huge thanks to Ellen Bell, Anne Davis Johnson, Gail Nelson, and Mary Susa at the Irvine
Historical Society for their first-hand knowledge of the early events in Irvine, their wonderful
books, pictures and archives, and for letting me study their six-foot tall General Plan maps of the
Irvine Ranch. Thanks also to Historian Alan Hess for explaining how the earliest developments
in Irvine implemented New Town ideas. I would like to thank City Planner Bill Jacobs and GIS
Analyst Dennis Hernandez at the City of Irvine for land use information past and present. I
would like to thank The Irvine Company for digital forms of the Irvine Ranch General Plan and
Land Use maps.
Lastly, thanks to the Newport Beach Central Library for providing a quiet, comfortable
and beautiful place to study, still on the Irvine Ranch, but now part of the City of Newport
Beach.
xi
List of Abbreviations
GIS Geographic information system
HGIS Historical geographic information systems
IBC Irvine Business Complex
UCI University of California at Irvine
xii
Abstract
The City of Irvine is one of the largest and earliest planned communities in the United States. It
began in the 1960s after the University of California agreed to put their newest campus on land
in the Irvine Ranch. The Irvine Company developed a General Plan for a small city of 10,000
people around the university but eventually expanded that plan to include the entire 100,000-acre
Irvine Ranch. Many New Towns movement principles were followed. When the city
incorporated, the new city council did not start from scratch but built upon the Irvine Company’s
master plan. This area was unique for a planned community in that it was huge, mostly
undeveloped, and mostly under one landowner.
GIS is used in this study to digitize and compare the 1973 General Plan of the Irvine
Company with the 2017 land use database to determine if and where land use changes have taken
place. Current parcel data was compared with the 1973 Irvine Company General Plan map to
enable the tracking of changes for each parcel, if any. Extract Values to Points was used to pull
values from the historical map into the current land use database. A pivot table was used to build
a matrix of land use change pairs. The first research objective was to compare these two maps
and locate changes. The second research objective is to see whether there are any trends in land
use changes. This study found an increase in the amount of land dedicated to Open Space and a
surprising decrease in residential density in a few parts of Irvine. Also found was a new trend in
land use where residential units are being built inside the Irvine Business Complex. The resulting
database could be used for future studies concerning one of the biggest and oldest planned
communities in the United States.
1
Chapter 1 Introduction
Irvine is a large city in the middle of Orange County along the southern coast of California.
Beaches are close by to the southwest and foothills close by to the northeast. Two big centers of
culture, Los Angeles and San Diego are just an hour’s drive away. The City of Irvine is
outstanding for many reasons. It has been named one of the Safest Cities in America for 11 years
in a row (de Crescenzo 2015) and the schools are ranked among America’s best (Irvine Unified
School District 2016). Irvine is known for its 57,000 acres of wildland preserves, hiking and
biking trails, open space, and numerous parks including the Great Park which draws visitors
from all over the county.
This project looks at the history of Irvine as a master planned community and how the
land use element of the General Plan may have changed. Irvine was originally planned by
architect William Pereira using New Town principles. A geographic information system (GIS) is
used to extract information from an historic map and analyze comparisons with current land use.
Other elements of the General Plan such as transportation or waste management are not part of
this study, only the land use element.
Chapter One gives a brief background for this study. The history section explains how
Irvine was transformed from one huge land parcel into a city. Basic principles of the New Towns
urban planning movement are then touched on. The study area section puts the city of Irvine in
geographic context and the final section explains the goals of this study.
1.1. History
The written history of Irvine begins with Alta California and the King of Spain. Juan
Rodriguez Cabrillo claimed what is now California for Spain in 1542. Spain claimed all of what
is now Mexico and the western United States. Between 1784 and 1821, Spain issued 16 land
2
grants in California. When Mexico won independence in 1821, the new country issued over 600
land grants to individuals (US General Land Office 1886).
James Irvine came to California during the Gold Rush where he and two partners bought
some of the Spanish/Mexican ranchos in Southern California. The first ranchos were large grants
of land often granted to the men who had helped Spain explore California. The Rancho Santiago
de Santa Ana was granted by the Spanish King to Jose Antonio Yorba and Juan Pablo Peralta in
1810 and confirmed by Governor Arrillaga of Mexico after that country won independence from
Spain (Cleland, 1966). Mexico granted the deeds for the Rancho Bolsa de San Joaquin to Jose
Andres Sepulveda in 1842 and the Rancho Lomas de Santiago to Teodosio Yorba in 1846. By
1876, James had bought out his partners and become sole owner of the 101,026-acre Irvine
Ranch created from these three ranchos. James Irvine believed that land was wealth and that one
should never sell land. In 1886, “land baron James Irvine traded his 108,000-acre ranch for a six-
foot plot,” as the Irvine Company’s Historian Jim Sleeper (1973, 85) put it.
James Irvine II took over at a time when Southern California was undergoing significant
change. When the County of Orange was founded in 1889, the Irvine Ranch represented nearly
25% of the new county’s 786 square miles (Brower 1994, 4). In 1894, James Irvine II
incorporated the ranch lands as the Irvine Company, cut back on cattle ranching, and expanded
growing food crops. The ranch produced oranges, avocados, walnuts, sugar beets, and olives. By
1911, Irvine was the world leader in producing lima beans (D. Kane 1996).
The founding of the city of Irvine begins in part with the University of California. In
1957, with the population Orange County growing rapidly, the University of California was
looking to build a new campus in the county. It chose a site on the Irvine Ranch. It hired the
architect William Pereira to plan the new campus and a surrounding university town, both on
3
Irvine Ranch lands. Pereira envisioned the college town to go with the new university based on
ideas he learned from studying other great university towns like Oxford and Heidelberg (Forsyth
2005). Some of the characteristics of a great university are a location close to an urban center,
faculty and student housing nearby and a physically attractive location (D. Kane 1996).
With the population explosion after WWII, the need for housing in Southern California
created a great opportunity for the Irvine Company, which shifted from an agricultural concern
to a real estate developer. It hired William Pereira to design residential tracts, and in 1966 and
1967 the villages of University Park and Turtle Rock were built (Bell 2011). At the time, nearby
cities in Orange County, including Santa Ana and Tustin were looking to expand their
boundaries. To stop other cities from annexing Irvine Ranch land, the Irvine Company and the
residents of its newly built villages sought to incorporate.
Pereira created a master plan for the entire Irvine Ranch. He laid out a planned city
according to New Town Movement principles. In February of 1971, the County of Orange
Planning Commission accepted the master plan, and in December of 1971 the City of Irvine was
incorporated (D. Kane 1996). Figure 1 shows the boundaries of the City of Irvine at
incorporatino in 1971, the Irvine Ranch, and Orange County.
4
1.2. The New Town Movement
The New Town movement focused on building a community that provided for a full
range of human needs: a variety of housing, nearby employment, education, shopping,
recreation, open space, and culture. There was to be a balance of jobs and workers in varied
occupations, different economic and social groups, and attention paid to preserving open space
(Watson 1964). The structure is often several villages, each providing all these services, with
several villages together forming the city. Irvine functions as a collection of villages each with its
own shopping center so residents need not travel far for groceries or basic services. There are
Figure 1 The City in 1971, the Irvine Ranch and Orange County
5
twenty-five villages in Irvine. Two of the biggest villages are Woodbridge, with around 25,000
residents, and Turtle Rock, with about 10,000 residents.
The idea behind the villages concept is that each should be an identifiable unit and should
create a strong sense of place. Each village has a distinct character because of the landscaping,
signs, gateways, architectural styles and natural features such as berms or waterways. The
villages of Irvine connect to form a city via a grid of wide tree-lined avenues. One of the
principles of the New Town movement that did not survive is the plan for a mass-transit system
across the center of the city, gathering the residents from the center and taking them to jobs in
the business parks on either side of the city.
1.3. Study Area
At incorporation, in 1971, Irvine was 28.3 square miles with a population of 20,156. By
2016, the area had grown to 66.6 square miles and the population expanded to 258,386 (City of
Irvine 2016b). Pereira’s original estimate for the Irvine Ranch was for a final population of
around 400,000 residents.
The land use baseline for this study is the Irvine Company’s 1973 General Plan for the
entire Irvine Ranch at that time, which was about 100,000 acres. The City of Irvine incorporated
at the end of 1971 where the boundaries of the planning area encompassed only the City and its
sphere of influence. The sphere of influence is the area over which the City has some degree of
influence. It represents the potential boundaries of the City which have been agreed to by the
Local Agency Formation Commission and by adjacent cities (City of Irvine 1984, i).
By December 1973, the 1973 General Plan covered far more land than was included in
the Irvine city limits at the time of incorporation. “The planning area…consists of the
incorporated area of the City of Irvine, the sphere of influence defined for Irvine by the Local
6
Agency Formation Commission and the coastal region of the Irvine Ranch” (Wilsey and Ham
1973, i-3). This planning area was described as 100 square miles. (Wilsey and Ham 1973, 2-31).
It included the Coastal Region which was later dropped from the planning area. In 1977, the
official planning area can be seen extending northeast into the foothills (Figure 2).
The City of Irvine has made over 30 annexations and detachments of land since
incorporation. There have been annexations and detachments of less than an acre and there have
been large annexations. All this activity has grown the city from 28.184 square miles to 66.001
square miles. The land use database from the City of Irvine used in this study covers the entire
sphere of influence - 74 square miles. The city’s demographics website says the incorporated
area is 66 sq. mi. and the sphere of influence is 74 sq. mi. (City of Irvine 2016b). The sphere of
influence is the white area inside the blue City limits (Figure 3) in the map from the Orange
County Local Area Formation Committee(OCLAFC 2008). The entire 8 square miles inside the
sphere of influence, but outside the incorporated city, is coded as Open Space.
7
Figure 2 The Recommended Plan of 1977
8
Figure 3 The Incorporated City versus the Sphere of Influence
9
1.4. Research Goals and Methods
This study explores the land use changes in the City of Irvine, California using a
historical map, a current parcel database, and GIS. Surprisingly, extensive research found no
other studies where GIS has been used to study and quantify land use changes over a long
historical period from a community’s original master plan. Researchers interested in the
development of Irvine might like to know if there have been many changes to the original
General Plan for Irvine since it became a city in 1971 or has the master plan been followed
exactly.
The General Plan map from 1973 was chosen because it is the earliest, dated, General
Plan land use element map available after the incorporation of the city at the end of 1971. The
2017 parcel data with land use codes was acquired on January 27, 2017 from the GIS department
at the City of Irvine. The spatial and temporal scales of this study are limited to the City of Irvine
in 1971 and two years, 1973 and 2017.
The research question is whether the current land use in the City of Irvine matches the
intended land use for Irvine as evidenced in the Irvine Company’s 1973 General Plan. To find
parcels where the current land use is different from the plan in 1973, an image of the 1973
General Plan map of the Irvine Ranch was imported into ArcMap and georeferenced. A parcel
map from the City of Irvine was used to extract land use codes from the 1973 map to one
centroid point in each parcel of the City of Irvine layer. Then the land use codes were compared
to see which parcels had a change of land use between the two years’ General Plans. Tracking
those changes with a geographical information system helps to quantify, describe, and visualize
those changes.
10
Chapter 2 Background and Literature Review
The City of Irvine and the New Towns movement have been studied numerous times. Irvine has
been looked at as a master planned community, one of the first and largest in the US. The
original General Plan for Irvine was based on New Towns principles such as shops and services
being nearby in the local village. This study pulls information from an old map to compare with
current data to help develop the narrative of the City of Irvine. GIS, as a tool, can add to the
historical narrative for a specific place (Raymond 2011).
2.1. Irvine in the Spotlight
The master planned community of Irvine is a valuable opportunity as a case study
because it was one of the first and largest master planned communities. The original Irvine
Ranch had over 100,000 acres which gave planners a huge blank canvas to work with and it was
all under one owner, the Irvine Company. Ray Watson (1964) believed the City of Irvine was
internationally known as the most successful New Community of the century. Almost all the
New Town projects of the 1960s and the 1970s went bankrupt (Garreau 1991). Irvine, however,
is one New Town project that not only survived but is growing continuously.
Irvine as a planned community has been studied extensively since the 1960s. It was part
of the National Science Foundation’s New Communities USA study by sociologists Burby and
Weiss in 1976. Burby and Weiss reported that, regardless of planned or unplanned communities,
residents appreciated neighborhood pools, utilities being underground, and culs-de sac. Irvine
rated well in resident satisfaction in this study because of the design and planning, the extensive
and varied landscaping, and the recreational facilities nearby. Diane Kane’s (1996) study
compared two of what she considered to be the most successful 1960s New Towns, Westlake
and Irvine, both in California. Kane delved deeply into the politics behind creating both
11
communities and at their adherence to New Town principles. Ann Forsyth (2005) compared the
success of Irvine with two other New Town developments in 2002 and detailed their
development in a book. She compared the Irvine Ranch development with the planned
communities of Columbia in Maryland and The Woodlands in Texas. She evaluated the quest to
use New Town (she calls it “New Community”) designs to avoid the worst problems of urban
sprawl.
Irvine has also been the subject of research where New Town principles were more of a
backdrop than the focus. Maor (2011) showed how some New Town principles in a
neighborhood in Irvine made for stronger place-attachments for residents compared with an
otherwise similar neighborhood in the nearby city of Fountain Valley. Residents in the Irvine
neighborhood of Woodbridge knew the name of their tract and recognized the edges of it
whereas the residents of the tract in Fountain Valley did not even know their neighborhood had a
name. Piggot (2009) explored the transformation of suburban political culture using Irvine as an
example of a New Town development. He found that suburbanization has no necessary
connection to political conservatism and with Irvine’s close connection to a big university and
adherence to the New Town ideals, the voters were less politically conservative than expected.
The current study looks at another aspect of the City of Irvine - land use change over time in a
master-planned community.
2.2. Urban Planning and The New Town Movement
The history of urban planning in the New World goes back a long time. “The Laws of the
Indies” were a set of guidelines signed by King Phillip II of Spain in 1573 “to instruct Spanish
Colonists on how to create and expand towns in Spanish America.” These rules for a city
planning process represented some of the first attempts at General Plans in America. The oldest
12
planned community being St Augustine, Florida which was laid out in 1603. (National Park
Service).
In the late 1800s, Ebenezer Howard developed the Garden City Movement as an
alternative to urban sprawl. Garden cities were planned, self-contained communities with a
balance of residences, industry, and agriculture all surrounded by corridors of nature (D. Kane
1996). There would be small villages with schools, churches and shops, surrounding a bigger
city center where government offices and industry were located. The New Towns movement of
the early 1900s built upon this Garden City Movement. It is sometimes also called the New
Communities movement.
The aims of the New Towns movement were to avoid the problems of big cities and those
of rural small town through advanced planning. Those goals included 1) providing a sense of
community identity, 2) preserving open space for nature, with trails for biking and walking, 3)
promoting mass transit, 4) providing housing at a wide variety of social and economic levels and
5) planning for jobs to be nearby (Wakeman 2016). There was to be a mix of land uses to
encourage interaction between different social, economic, age and racial groups, and to provide
open space for recreation (Forsyth 2005). Unlike Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities, New Town
proponents wanted to bring back the dense city center to create a sense of community and place
identity. These new communities would be planned as pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods that
would encourage walking and mass transit (D. Kane 1996).
William Pereira was the architect who created the master plan for the entire Irvine Ranch
which he finished in 1960. This was “potentially the largest new community in the United
States” (Wilsey & Ham 1973, i-1). Pereira had a large, blank slate upon which to test these New
Towns ideas for building convenient, healthful, efficient, and attractive communities. The City of
13
Irvine was built with many hallmarks of the New Town movement. For example, every housing
tract has a park, every village has a school, and there are 54 miles of off-street bicycle trails (City
of Irvine 2016b). Each village was given a distinct look by giving the residences a certain
architectural style and by using a different set of trees, shrubs and flowering plants in the
landscaping. Early plans also had mass transit corridors, but the mass transit was never built. The
corridors remain should there be enough people for a mass transit system in the future.
A General Plan for a city is a master plan of all the elements that will make up the city.
The General Plan for the City of Irvine contains sections for land-use, transportation, cultural
resources, public facilities, conservation and open space, waste management and other elements.
The City of Irvine describes the “Land Use Element” of their General Plan as:
The Land Use Element seeks to protect and enhance the quality of life in the
community. Land use policies determine how land is developed in the community,
ranging from an office building or a single-family home, to the number of parks and
open space areas in the City. Land Use policies also guide and resolve many land
use issues and constraints to define the quality of life in the City. City planners
today strive for a balance in land use with one-third in residential, one-third in non-
residential and one-third of the land left in open space and recreation (City of Irvine
2015, 2).
There have been several comprehensive updates to the City’s original General Plan since
1971. A city’s General Plan needs to provide for safety, public facilities and infrastructure, parks
and recreation, housing, education, business employment, health and medical, homeowners’
associations, and cultural amenities. The overall land use planned for Irvine is one-third
residential, one-third non-residential use and one-third open space or recreation. (City of Irvine
2016a).
14
2.3. Extracting Data from Old Maps
The use of GIS for historical research falls into two categories: using a GIS to build a
historical/geographical database and using GIS as an aide in historical research (von Lunen
2013). When working on reconstructing the past, historical maps are sometimes the only source
of certain pieces of information (Rumsey and Williams 2002). At the larger end of the scale,
there many country-wide historical GIS (HGIS) databases being developed all over the world
(Knowles and Hillier 2008). Smaller projects often deal with just one city or even just one
section of a city. Rosen (2015) geocoded old Sanborn Fire Insurance maps to create a geocoder
database of pre-1908 San Francisco. The GIS was necessary for georeferencing the old maps to a
current base map and storing the address information for each location. Another study zoomed in
on just one neighborhood: land parcels in four historical maps, from as far back as 1764, were
digitized and compared to test the persistence of land use types by parcel in the Minorcan
Quarter of St. Augustine, Florida. (Baldwin 2014).
Urban and planning historians do not use GIS very often (Hillier, 2010). A survey of 348
articles in the Journal of Urban History and the Journal of Planning history showed that only 47
had new maps and less than half of those had maps created by a GIS. This is unfortunate since
GIS is quite useful for integrating different datasets that might otherwise be difficult to study
together (Kemp 2009; Gregory 2014). It is not easy for human eyes to compare historical maps
with digital maps and find patterns or detect differences. To enable the computer to do these
tasks, the historical maps must be converted to digital data.
2.4. Building Historical Narratives
Historians use narratives to construct the story of a place and GIS can help to build that
narrative. Bodenhamer (2010) points out that a location is not just a place for something to
15
happen but is a “significant product of and determinant of change.” The historical narrative of a
place seeks to connect events and develop a meaningful story providing perspective to help
readers understand that place. A GIS not only keeps track of what happened, where and when,
but it can store attributes of each event which enables analysis of the connections between events
and the effects of each attribute. The study of the regrading of the Denny neighborhood used GIS
to explore and re-create the erasing of a large hill in the middle of Seattle, Washington in the
early 1900s (Raymond 2011). Raymond used Sanborn insurance maps (historical maps), city
engineering records, county assessor records and other data to create datasets. He made a blocks
layer to use as a baseline and an historical buildings layer with attributes such as height, use,
footprint, and year built so he could track these buildings over the years covered by the case
study. Having all the buildings data in one geodatabase made it easy to select only those
buildings for the year(s) of interest. Once they could view the data visually, they could see
patterns that were not noticed before such as the relative proportion of space dedicated to a type
of use. For example, before cars there were 27 structures in Seattle for “stables,” but by 1900
most were gone.
2.5. Using GIS to Track Land Use Changes
Many researchers have found geographical information systems useful for tracking land
use changes over time. GIS has been used to trace types of development of Long Island City over
a 59-year period (Mamer 2015). A point was digitized for every spot that contained a building in
any of the five time periods, and the study then tracked shifting uses between cultural, industrial,
residential and other categories. This data enabled tracking where industrialization grew and
finding the trends for each use type. A project in Slovakia compared current data with digital
layers prepared from four historic maps dating back to 1782. Thirteen land use types were
16
condensed into five for the project and then the maps were digitized. The purpose was to
compare track and compare land use changes during three different political periods. They had to
watch for features that disappeared over time or had their names changed during the 224 years
(Kanianska et al. 2013).
Land use change studies using historic maps often must manually digitize the old map. In
studying land use change along the coast of Devon, England, Comber et al (2016) digitized the
survey maps from 1965 according to what different individual surveyors recorded. They used
this data to track the impacts of different land management regimes by putting the data in a
change matrix to quantify class-to-class land use changes. A group from Arizona State
University analyzed old maps to see if the data supported a common historical narrative. For this
study, the researchers made parcel-level digitizations of three old Sanborn maps covering almost
50 years to study the growth patterns of early Phoenix, Arizona (K. Kane et al. 2014).
Many studies have used GIS to study land use changes and many have studied the
master-planned communities of the 1960s and 1970s. This paper, for the first time, brings GIS,
tracking land use changes and the study of a master-planned community all together in one
study.
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Chapter 3 Methodology
The purpose of this study is to see how closely Irvine’s original land use plan was followed. A
hard-copy of the 1973 Irvine Ranch General Plan map served as the baseline for the original land
use plan, and a 2017 City of Irvine parcel shapefile served as the current land use data. First, this
chapter discusses how and why the 1973 map was chosen as the baseline for historical data.
Then it describes processing the data layers. The chapter then discusses the land use codes used
for each period and the process of selecting compatible codes for comparison. Finally, the
chapter describes the process by which historical and current land use codes were compared by
location.
3.1. Research Design
This study assesses land use change by comparing spatial data in City of Irvine’s General
Plan in 1973 with spatial data from the same locations in 2017. The land use map created for the
Irvine Ranch in 1973 was imported as a PDF into ArcMap 10.5 and converted to polygons that
could be compared with 2017 City of Irvine land use data to see if the land use codes had
changed over time.
3.2. Data Sources
This study compares current land use data against the intended land use for Irvine from
the early days of its cityhood. Current land use data exists as parcel polygons created and housed
in the City of Irvine’s GIS. Historical data of the city’s early General Plan did not exist as spatial
data within a GIS. A historical map needed to be input into a GIS. The first step in this process
was to choose the best historical map for consumption by a GIS, described in section 3.2.1. The
process for inputting the chosen historical data into a GIS is described in section 3.2.2. The early
18
land use data employed are described in section 3.2.3. Finally, the process of consolidating land
use codes from each period and assigning appropriate code to each polygon, both historical and
current, is described in section 3.2.4. The last section, 3.2.5, discusses how the land use codes
were matched between the two years.
3.2.1. Choosing the Historical Irvine General Plan Map
This section describes the process for choosing the 1973 General Plan map as the
baseline historical data for this project, as opposed to other maps from that time. Several
historical maps of the General Plan exist. The Raymond Watson collection at UCI (Watson
1964) contains a map in the booklet “Irvine General Plan 1970” (Figure 4) but it has no colors
for the different land use codes and does not have as much detail as the 1973 map.
19
Figure 4 Irvine General Plan of 1970 From the
Raymond Watson Collection
20
The Irvine Historical Society has two large wall maps of the Irvine Ranch. Each map is s
about six feet tall and, therefore, difficult to work with (Figure 5). They are so large that one-inch
on the map represents 2,000-feet on the ground. One map is The Irvine Company’s General Plan
in 1973, and the other is an aerial photograph with major features labeled. The aerial photograph
is dated 1998. They are hanging side by side in the museum so it is easy for visitors to compare
them.
The Irvine Company very kindly provided seven PDF images of General Plan land use
maps covering a range of dates. One map is undated but probably from before 1970 judging from
the contents of the map (Figure 6). Note that this map does depict the environmental corridors
which were a big deal to The Irvine Company’s Richard Reese who said, in 1970, "Just as Paris
is known by its boulevards and Venice by its canals, the City of Irvine will be known by its
environmental corridors (Irvine World News 1970, 2).” There was to be one North-South
environmental corridor and one East-West environmental corridor. This map has a separate icon
in the legend for “Environmental Corridor.” In the historical map chosen for this study, the
environmental corridors are still shown on the map but no longer listed in the legend. Another
Irvine Company image is a 1973 land use map for the entire Irvine Ranch. The other five maps
provided by the Irvine Company are much newer, spanning 1990 to 2015.
The City of Irvine’s original filing of a General Plan in 1973 with the County of Orange
contains three different land use plans (Wilsey and Ham1973). With the main roads already in
place, the University of California at Irvine already established, and several housing tracts built
by 1970, the new city’s General Plan had to resemble the General Plan developed by The Irvine
Company. All three options in the original filing were based on the Irvine Company’s General
Plan. The Moderate Land Use Plan (Option 1) describes a total population in the city of 199,302
21
with an additional 74,316 residents in its sphere of influence. The Maximum Land Use Plan
(Option 2) would have a city population of 221,895 and a sphere of influence population of
166,891. The third option, the Minimum Land Use Plan (Option 3) preserves 63% of the land in
open space or agriculture and has the fewest people with a final population of 176,801 in the city
and only 367 in the sphere of influence. Also of note, these three options cover the entire Irvine
Ranch which is nearly 100,000 acres yet the City of Irvine itself was only 28.3 square miles. The
plan they finally adopted had dropped the coastal section below Bonita Canyon road but still
included all the land southeast to El Toro and north east into the foothills.
The City Council did not approve a land use plan until December of 1977, six years after
incorporation. They chose none of the above options but, instead, a compromise between
Options 1 and 3 where the total final population would be 214,000 (Figure 2) by 2010 (City of
Irvine 1978). This official General Plan for land use has many similarities with the June 1973
General Plan by The Irvine Company (Figure 7). The main differences in the city’s plan are that
some non-major roads take different routes and the north-south environmental corridor is gone.
The Irvine Company’s General Plan map from 1973 (Figure 7) was used as the historical
starting point for several reasons. The main reason is because this plan was William Pereira’s
original vision for the New Town master planned community on the Irvine Ranch. Another
reason is this map is dated. Many of these early maps had no dates on them, but this one is dated
“June 1973” in the lower right corner. Also, the level of detail in the chosen map is much finer
than the others which, along with the color-coding of the map according to land use, made this
map the most accurate available for the early 1970s. This is not one of the maps that the City of
Irvine files with the County of Orange in 1973 but the basis upon which each option was built.
22
Figure 5 Six-foot-tall 1973 General Plan Map
23
Figure 6 Pre-1970 General Plan Map of Land Use
24
Figure 7 1973 General Plan of the Irvine Ranch
25
3.2.2. Importing the 1973 Map Into a GIS
The 1973 image from the Irvine Company needed many several steps to be ready for
analysis. The PDF image was converted to a TIFF format because ArcMap can display a PDF
but not extract data from it. The TIFF was then added using the same projection as the ESRI base
map, Lambert_Conformal_Conic and NAD_1983_StatePlane_California_VI_FIPS_0406_Feet.
The 1973 map image was then georeferenced to match the base map. First, the scale had
to be adjusted to fit the city’s outline on the base map and the image had to be tilted. When
shown by itself, the Irvine Ranch is usually depicted with the foothills in the north east at the top
of the page. The Irvine Ranch sits in the map of California depicted at an angle. This meant the
image needed to be rotated and shifted until the streets on the 1973 map lined up with those on
the base map. Several ground control points were chosen at street intersections for the rubber
sheeting process. Freeways were not used as control points since they have widened considerably
since 1973. Finally, the image was rectified and the georeferencing saved. Georeferencing was
carried out at a scale of 1:125,000. The Root Square Mean Error was 35.
3.2.3. Land Use Classifications in the 1970s
The Land Use Element was the first part of the new city to be detailed in the General Plan
that the City of Irvine filed with the county. The three land use plan options described in section
3.2.1 all have the same land use codes. These are the same as in the Irvine Company’s 1973 map
(Figure 8) but the Irvine Company map has additional codes for Village Commercial,
Agriculture, UCI, Nature Center, Wildlife Habitat and Airport.
26
3.2.4. Land Use Codes in 2017
The parcel shapefile from the City of Irvine’s GIS department contained 61,773 records.
It does not contain cadastral data nor zoning data, but records how each parcel of land is being
used as of February 4, 2017. The land use attribute is titled “Feature” and uses four-digit codes to
indicate a land use category. The attribute table includes tract numbers and planning areas and,
importantly, Shape_area and Shape_length of each parcel.
The City of Irvine’s current Land Use Element has 71 different land use codes. The codes
are arranged by categories such as Open Space, Residential, Institutional, and Public Services.
There are two odd categories in the 2017 attributes, Military and Agriculture. There were two
military bases on land that once belonged to the Irvine Ranch but there were no military bases
inside the City of Irvine. The current land-use map now has a category of “Military” but there is
a high school on that lot. Why is it coded military and not educational? The other oddity is the
agriculture code. As late as 1960 the Irvine Ranch had over 4,000 acres in Oranges and over
7500 acres in grains (Cleland 1966). Thus, why did the 1973 Irvine Company map not have any
category for farming or agriculture? The land that is now coded “Agriculture” is on the old El
Toro Marine base.
Figure 8 Land Use Classifications from the Irvine Company’s 1973 Map
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3.2.5. Matching 1973 and 2017 Land Use Classifications
Land use classification schemes used by the Irvine Company in the 1973 General Plan
map and those used in the 2017 parcel data have some slight differences. Classification changes
between 1973 and 2017 are detailed in Table 1. The land-use category with the most changes
since 1973 is the Parks & Open Space sector. All the park categories from 1973 now fall under
Recreation. There is a new category of “Great Park” for the park being built on part of the old
Marine Corps Air Station El Toro base. The old Wildlife Preserve has a new code Preservation.
The old Upper Bay Area is now under Water Bodies. The 1973 category of Cemetery is gone
because there has never been a cemetery in the City of Irvine. The category may come back as
the city council has recently approved a veterans’ cemetery near the old El Toro Marine base
(City of Irvine 2017a). “Recreation, Sport and Amusement” is under “Commercial” because this
category is for money-making recreation such as amusement parks and miniature golf courses.
The Irvine Business Complex is under the main category of Industrial because “typical uses are
professional/medical offices, industrial manufacturing, research and development, support
service retail, restaurants, multifamily housing and hotel/motels (City of Irvine 2015, 7).
Table 1 Land Use Codes: Corresponding Nomenclature Between 1973 and 2017
1973 Classifications Codes 2017 Classifications
Residential
Estate 2100 Estate
Low Density 2200 Low Density
Medium Density 2300 Medium Density
Medium High Density 2400 Med High Density
High Density 2500 High Density
Commercial
Regional 4100 Commercial
General and Community 4100 Commercial
Specialty 4100 Commercial
Recreation, Sport, Amuse. 4100 Commercial
Industrial
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General 5100 Industrial
Manufacturing & Research 5100 Industrial
n/a 5200 Irvine Business Complex
Institutional
General & Utilities 5400 Institutional
Civic Center Site
Alternatives
5400 Institutional
Elementary School 6100 Educational
Junior High School 6100 Educational
High School 6100 Educational
Junior College 6100 Educational
Private College 6100 Educational
Open Space
Regional Park 1510 Recreation
Community Park 1510 Recreation
Neighborhood Park 1510 Recreation
Golf Course n/a n/a
Wildlife Preserve 1300 Preservation
Cemetery n/a n/a
Other n/a Other Agriculture
n/a Landfill
n/a Military
The Residential classifications are basically unchanged. Both years under study had five
codes for residential density. The only difference is in the definitions. In the 1973 codes, the next
highest density started where the previous one left off. In 2017, all residential classifications
begin at zero dwelling units per acre (Table 2). For example, Medium Density in 1973 was for at
least six but no more than 10 dwelling units per acre whereas in 2017 Medium Density means
any number from 0 up to and including 10 dwelling units per acre. Ground truthing a few
housing tracts shows that, at least for the area under study, the original 1973 residential density
definitions were followed.
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Table 2 Comparison of Residential Land Use Codes
1973 units per acre 2017 units per acre
Estate Density 0.1 to 1.0 0 to 1
Low Density 2 to 5 0 to 5
Medium Density 6 to 10 0 to 10
Med-High Density 11 to 25 0 to 25
High Density 26 to 40 0 to 40
Many of the records in the 2017 parcels layer were recoded. First, the land use codes used
in 2017 were consolidated from 71 into 16 codes. The reason for consolidating all but the
residential codes, is to avoid tracking minor changes such as changing a school from Elementary
to Middle School. Also, most of the categories changed and expanded since 1973. Consolidating
the seventy-one codes for 2017 enabled them to be more effectively matched with the twelve
1973 land use codes. This study is looking for changes between categories, not changes within a
category, except for residential density. Therefore, all natural open spaces such as water
channels, marshes, basins and wildlife preserves were coded 1300 for Open Space. The various
levels of parks, for example community parks and neighborhood parks, became 1510 for Parks.
The only residential categories to be combined were those for high-density residential.
Apartments and condominiums were put into 2500, the High-Density Residential code. All
commercial and industrial codes were consolidated into 4100 for “Commercial” and 5000 for
Industrial, except for a new category 5200 for IBC Industrial, which puts residential units and
industrial buildings together. Educational parcels from grade school to university level to
administration were all combined into code 6000 for Educational while all other institutions
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became code 5400. The final group of land use codes, freeways, toll roads, easements, are now
code 8000 for this study. Land use codes with no parcels within the 1971 city limit were omitted.
The second recoding involved roads and landscaping. These were recoded because there
were no minor roads on the 1973 map and to get meaningful pairings with 2017 there should be
no minor roads inside housing tracts in the current year’s data. All the different types of roads
became 3100 for Roads. Roads inside a housing tract or inside an office park were recoded to
match the surrounding parcels. Landscaping strips were the third group to be recoded to match
the parcels they were attached to. For example, the landscaping surrounding a high-density
housing tract should be coded as high-density residential.
3.3. Data Processing
Three layers of data were used in the processing, the 1973 Irvine Ranch map image from the
Irvine Company, a parcel shapefile for 2017, and a 1971 city limit shapefile, the latter two from
the City of Irvine GIS Department. Section 3.3.1 describes extracting land use codes from the
1973 polygons layer into points inside each 2017 parcel. Checking the geometry of the 2017 file
and using the historical map to clip this data to the city’s 1971 boundary is described in 3.3.2.
3.3.1. Extracting Data from Historical Map
The next step was to extract land-use codes from the 1973 map. There were 61,773
parcels in the City of Irvine in 2017 but in 1973, there were probably only a few thousand
parcels. It is assumed that none of the 1973 parcels were joined or combined between 1973 and
2017. Since the city was growing and developing, the parcels of 1973 either kept the same
boundaries or were divided into smaller parcels over time. To verify this assumption, the 2017
parcel layer’s outlines were thickened and the polygons were made hollow. A visual check of
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each of the 2017 parcels through to the 1973 layer was done to verify there were no parcels from
2017 which had two different colors in 1973, and therefore two proscribed land uses.
Two fields were added to the 2017 map’s attribute table. The fields were named
“Longitude” and “Latitude” and were of the type Double. The Calculate Geometry tool in the
Data Management toolbox was used to calculate the X and Y coordinates of the centroid on each
parcel. This tool added the X, Y coordinates of each parcel’s centroid to the 2017 map’s attribute
table. This table was then exported to a new table and added to the 2017 map. Display XY Data
was used to make a new point layer of parcel centroids. The Extract Values to Points tool
requires the source layer to be in raster format so a new raster layer was made from the 1973
layer with a cell size of 150 feet. The Extract Values to Points tool from the Spatial Analyst
toolbox was used to bring a land-use value from the 1973 map raster data into the 2017 map’s
attribute table for each parcel’s centroid. The Extract Values to Points tool took a long time to
run, but a new field named RasterValu was added containing 1973 land use codes.
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Unfortunately, the quality of the 1973 map was not so useful at the scale necessary
(Figure 9). When Extract Values to Points was run there were 257 different values for land use
with 6595 records having a RasterValu of “255.” Only around 25 different values of land use
codes were expected.
The problem is the quality of the graphics. The 1973 map was not designed to be used at
such a large scale by something as exact as a computer. When enlarged to the scale where
individual house parcels are visible, the graphics were such that ten houses in a row could be
assigned ten different land use codes even though they were all the same (Figure 10). In the
picture below, every visible parcel (outlined in blue) of this housing tract should have the same
land use code. However, GIS will pick up one value for brown, one value for dark brown, one
Figure 9 Inconsistent Coloring of Same Code Parcels
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value for each of the greens and so on. This picture alone would generate 15-20 different values
based on color when there should only be one value.
Round two with the 1973 map was to manually digitize polygons based on the land use
colors in the map. A new vector layer was created using Auto Complete Polygon in Create
Features. Making polygons following the sections of different color patterns in the source map
made it possible to make a layer where each polygon contained a single, solid color. This enables
the Extract Value to Point tool to pick up the same value for every point over the same polygon
and, therefore, the same land use section. The polygons were digitized at a scale of 1:8000 and
only parts of the map within the 1971 city limit were digitized. Initially, the main roads were not
digitized but polygons for roads were added later. This led to many slivers and other topology
Figure 10 Fine Detail of the Inconsistent Coloring.
34
errors. Having the first set of polygons created by Auto Complete made inserting the roads
polygons more error prone. Check Geometry and Fix Geometry were run on the new polygon
layer. A topology layer was generated to enable fixing of errors such as slivers, overlaps, gaps or
polygons that self-intersected.
Schools were given special treatment. Schools on the 1973 plan, represented by a green
circle and a letter in a blue box, were randomly placed within the housing tracts (Figure 11).
Figure 11 Green Circles for Schools in the 1973 Map
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When making the polygons layer, the polygons for the schools were created in the same location
where schools existed in 2017 (Figure 12). The focus of this study is how many acres of land is
being used for education and not if the proposed schools were built in the exact locations as on
the General Plan. At least 2 of the proposed schools were never built.
After all the parcels were drawn, the attribute field for land use in 1973, “LU1973,” was
manually populated based on a visual comparison of the graphics in the parcel with the legend at
the bottom of the original map. Once all the 1973 parcels had land use codes, unique colors were
assigned to each code. To check the accuracy of coding by hand, one code at a time was made
colorless to verify that all sections of the original image showed through with the same pattern.
Figure 13 illustrates how code 4100 was made hollow to verify that every parcel for 4100 has the
same 1973 graphic. A new raster was then created for use by the Extract Values to Point tool.
Figure 12 Green Polygons in Actual 2017 School Locations
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The final product of digitizing the 1973 Land Use General Plan from the Irvine Company
is shown in Figure 14. Only those areas within the 1971 City of Irvine boundary were included.
Each different land use code has a different color. The large Irvine Business Complex stands out
in yellow in the upper left of the map. The University of California at Irvine is clearly visible as a
large section of cobalt blue in the lower left. The large housing tracts of Northwood,
Woodbridge, and Turtle Rock are represented by ovals aligned down the center of the map from
the north east down to the south west. The one remaining environmental corridor is visible
running through the center of the city connecting the two business complexes, the regional
commercial center, and the residential areas. The business complex opposite the Irvine Business
Complex is called the Irvine Spectrum. This complex and the Spectrum Entertainment Center are
not part of the city yet in 1973 but they can be seen on the gray base map by following the
environmental corridor to the south east where the freeways meet. The city planners wanted the
main traffic arteries running top to bottom and left to right in this new city.
Figure 13 Verifying Coding of 1973 Polygons
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Figure 14 Digitized Version of 1973 General Plan Land Use
38
For the second extraction attempt, the Feature to Point tool was used on the 2017
database. The Feature to Point tool uses the center of gravity of a polygon to create a point for
that polygon. The option of “Inside” was checked to keep the points inside their polygons. A new
feature class of points was created for the 2017 database. Extract Value to Points was used to
pull values from the 1973 polygon raster layer into the new points layer. This time there were
only 13 different land use codes. Code 0 was assigned to all parcels that did not get a 1973 value
since they were outside the 1971 city limit and therefore had no polygons created. The points
layer, with LU1973 and LU2017, was joined with the 2017 polygon layer to join the land use
data with the parcel area data. Field Calculator was used to move the 1973 values into a column
in the 2017 layer.
3.3.2. Preparing the 2017 layers
Much work needed to be done on the 2017 parcels layer but not the city limit layer. The
GIS department at the City of Irvine supplied a shapefile of 61,773 parcels with a land use code
for each parcel. The city’s shapefile also contained the area for each parcel. The 1971 shapefile
for the city limits was imported and made hollow with a thicker outline. The 2017 parcel file was
imported and checked for errors with the Check Geometry tool. Several things needed repaired
such as slivers and parcels with the error “Must not self-intersect.” The Repair Geometry tool
corrected the “Must not self-intersect” errors and all but the tiniest slivers were manually
repaired. The current land use codes were then copied to another column for back up and future
reference. After the points values were added via a join, the join was undone. Next, the size of
the 2017 layer was reduced to contain only parcels inside the 1971 layer, using Select by
Attribute and selecting for LU1973 greater than 0. This means that only those parcels with a
value extracted from the 1973 polygons layer remained in the dataset. The resulting 2017 dataset
39
had 32,773 records. The Select by Location option did not work, because when the city boundary
coincided with the edges of a row of parcels, ArcMap appeared to randomly assign parcels inside
or outside the study area along that line.
3.3.3. Finding Land Use Changes
To find where land use differed between the two years, the layer that now had both the
land use code for 1973 (LU1973) and for 2017 (LU2017) was exported to Excel. This table also
contained area, in feet, for each parcel which was used to measure the size of land use change. In
Excel, the pivot table tool was used to tally pairings between codes in the 2017 columns and for
1973 in rows. Land use in 1973 is on the x-axis while land use in 2017 is on the y-axis. Raw
results tabulated by square feet (Figure 15) and (Figure 16). Some pairings did not occur so the
cell is blank. For example, there were no parcels with a value of 1510 in 1973 that changed to
2100 in 2017.
Figure 15 Pivot Table Results in Square Feet (Page 1)
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The pivot table results show pairings between land use codes from 1973 and from 2017.
For example, the pairing between code 1300 in 1973 and 1300 in 2017 was over 10 million
square feet. This indicates that over 10 million square feet did NOT change land use codes
between the two years. Another example explains how the results look if there was a change.
Looking where the 1973 code of 1510 pairs up with the 2017 code of 1300 indicates there were
1,913,520.0367 square feet that changed between 1973 and 2017. The blank cells in the pivot
table indicate that there were no parcels with the pairing of those two codes. All cell values were
divided by 43560 to convert the values from feet to acres.
Figure 16 Pivot Table Results in Square Feet (Page 2)
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Chapter 4 Results
Comparing land use codes between the 1973 General Plan and the 2017 land use database
reveals several interesting developments. Overall, there were more acres of changed codes than
acres that remained the same code. The hypothesis that residential density would only increase
over time did not prove true. Several pairs of land use change codes were selected for a more in-
depth study. Of special interest were the pairs involving housing. The most changes by acreage
were in the housing sector. There were also new codes added for the Irvine Business Complex
allowing residences into the business park. These three new IBC land use codes were tracked in
this study by the “IBC” code where the older parts of the business complex were tracked by the
“Industrial” code.
4.1. The Big Picture
Although some of the land use change pairs between 1973 and 2017 affected no acres, a
great many change pairs did involve significant acreage. The land use codes related to housing
had the most changes by acreage with the change pair of Medium Density Residential to Low
Density Residential reaching almost 2000 acres. The 1973 land use category with the fewest
acres of change was High Density Residential, while the 1973 land use category with the fewest
acres of change by percentage of total acres in a land use category was Institutional at 17.5%
changed.
The direction of some of the changes was surprising. Lower density residential would be
expected to be changed to higher density residential over the decades as more people move to
Irvine or find jobs in Irvine and wish to live in the city. However, the biggest change involving
42
the residential land used codes was the huge number of acres changing from Medium Density
Residential to Low Density Residential.
The data is presented in a table in Appendix B showing land use change pairs in acres.
Below the actual acres are percentages of the1973 land use area changed.
4.1.1. Largest Areas of Change and of No Change
About two-thirds of the acreage in this study changed land-use codes between 1973 and
2017 (Figure 17). This was a much greater amount of change than was expected. The expectation
was for some of each residential category to move to a denser category. Little change was
expected in any of the non-residential categories. However, of the 17,290 acres in the 1973
General Plan, 11,425 acres had changed land-use codes and 5,864 did not. The biggest single
parcel to be re-coded (shown in yellow) was on the University of California at Irvine campus
where land previously planned as Medium Density Residential was re-coded to Educational.
What exists on the land in 2017 is student housing, so this is a matter of reclassifying the land
use and not of changing how the land was to be used.
Another interesting occurrence in Figure 17 is the loss of land along the southwest border
of the city. The land inside the blue 1971 city limit line, but not colored green or black, was lost
in two resolutions. The Southern Boundary Re-Organization resolution in 1997, (City of Irvine
1997), traded many parcels back and forth between Irvine and the neighboring city to the south,
Newport Beach. The net loss to the City of Irvine was 61 acres. In 1998, the Bonita Canyon
Detachment (City of Irvine 1998) caused the city another net loss of 460 acres. These resolutions
re-aligned the boundary between the cities of Irvine and Newport Beach along the San Joaquin
Hills Transportation Corridor which was built in 1996.
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Figure 17 Areas of Change and No Change
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4.1.2. Land Use Codes with the Largest Changes by Percent of Acreage
Even though changes to land use in the various residential categories was expected to
have the most changes, the land use category with the most change by percent of acreage was
Golf Course (Table 3 Largest Changes by Percentage of Acreage Almost half (45.4%) of the
1973 Golf Course land is now categorized as Open Space. These 234 acres that changed are at
the San Joaquin Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary and its neighbor, the Michelson Water
Reclamation Plant between Campus and Michelson Drives. The next biggest changes were in
residential and will be discussed in section 4.2.
Table 3 Largest Changes by Percentage of Acreage
Percent of a land use area that changed and what it changed to
1 45.4 % of Golf Course area changed to Open Space
2 34.8 % of Medium-High Density Residential changed to High Density Residential
3 34.5 % of Medium Density Residential changed to Low Density Residential
4 26.9 % of Low Density Residential changed to Open Space
5 26.0 % of Parks changed to Golf Course
6 23.7 % of Institutional changed to Commercial
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This corner of Irvine experienced quite a few changes. What was to be a golf course is
now designated Open Space, in pink below (Figure 18). The blue “U” area designates the
Michaelson Water Reclamation Plant though that has expanded. The housing and retail sections
of this block were not built and are now also part of the water reclamation area. Used water starts
the reclamation process at the Michaelson plant and eventually goes into these ponds. All this
water attracts birds and other wildlife so the Irvine Ranch Water District set this up as a wildlife
sanctuary so people could hike and go birdwatching.
4.1.3. Largest Areas of No Change
Only two land use codes remained mostly unchanged (
Table 4). Seventy-eight percent of Open Space (234 acres) remained Open Space and
sixty-eight percent (1008 acres) of Education is still used as Educational. Nine elementary
Figure 18 Golf Course to Open Space
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schools on the 1973 map were never built, probably due to the City of Irvine downsizing the
final population total for the city. Fewer residents means fewer schools are needed.
Table 4 Largest Areas of No Change by Acreage
Percent of land use area where no change occurred
1 78.0 % of Open Space remained Open Space
2 68.4 % of Educational remained Educational
3 40.6% of High Density Residential remained High Density Residential
4 36.9 % of Roads acreage remained Roads
5 35.1 % of Park area remained Parks
6 33.6 % of Golf Course area remained Golf Courses
7 32.0 % of Low Density Residential remained Low Density Residential
4.2. Digging Deeper - Changes by Land Use Code
Although 120 out of 192 possible land use change code pairs had at least a few acres of
change, only a few were chosen for a closer look. 166 change code pairs contained fewer than
150 acres of change. The largest acreage for one change pair was 1944 acres for Medium
Density Residential changing to Low Density Residential (Figure 19).
47
4.2.1. Open Space
Most of the Open Space land stayed the same, but this is also where the single largest
parcel that changed codes occurred. Open Space was the land use code with the least change by
percentage of acres. Only 22% changed on Irvine’s General Plan between 1973 and 2017. Nearly
all the change, 21.5%, occurred in just one area, the University of California at Irvine’s
arboretum. The plot was recoded from Open Space to Educational. This is just an artifact of
recoding. Currently there is nothing there but an open field, but it abuts the 12.5-acre arboretum
and the buildings for the UCI North Campus. This plot has about 2600 feet of prime real estate
frontage along Jamboree Road, a major thoroughfare of the Irvine Business Complex. In August
1992, the Irvine city council passed resolution 92-128 which "allows 650,000 gross square feet
of non-residential development (office, research and development, and support retail) and 300
dwelling units on UCI’s North Campus” (City of Irvine 1992). As of the date of this study, it is
still an open field.
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Others
Med High to High Density Res.
Med Density Residential to Parks
Med Density Res. to Open Space
Low Density to High Density Res.
Med Density to High Density Res.
Low Density Res. to Open Space
Med Density Res. to Education
Med to Low Density Residential
Acres
Change pairs
Size of Change Pairs in Acres
Figure 19 Size of Change Pairs in Acres
48
4.2.2. Parks
For Parks, 35.1% of the acreage stayed the same. The largest change, at 26%, was a
change to a Golf Course. This change was the Strawberry Fields Golf Course which opened in
1997. The second largest change to Parks, at 10%, occurred where Parks changed to High-
Density Residential (Figure 20 Areas Where Parks Changed to High-Density Residential)
Former park areas, in small bits here and there all over the city, were changed to High-Density
Residential. This helps a little with Irvine’s affordable housing problem.
One area formerly coded as Parks was confusing. Highlighting only the changed acres
showed only a portion of the Park Lane housing tract had been planned as a park (Figure 21).
Figure 20 Areas Where Parks Changed to High-Density Residential
49
What was going on? In 1973, there were three separate plots planned for that block, one
Medium-High Density Residential (in red), one park (in olive), and one retail (in mauve). The
shopping center was never built. What was built was only the park and the high-density
residential so the park expanded northeast to include all the area which had been planned as
retail, and a section of the original park area got added to the original high-density residential
plot. This entire area was part of one of the original environmental corridors that didn’t get built.
4.2.3. Residential Density
The distribution of housing among the five residential density land use categories
changed noticeably between 1973 and 2017 (Figure 22). The percentages for each residential
category were calculated based on the total acreage in this study which was 17,290 acres. In
1973 the Medium Residential Density category encompassed 32.6 % of all the acres in the study
and the High Density Residential was only 0.25 %. There were no acres of the Estate Residential
Figure 21 Plans for Four Land Uses in 1973 Become Two in 2017
50
Density in the study area back in 1973. The “Other” category is for all the other land use
categories in this study such as Industrial or Educational. This section looks specifically at the
Residential sector.
By 2017 the distribution of acreage among the residential density land use categories had
changed (Figure 23). Now, the largest share of acreage is in Low Density Residential which had
been at 15.9 % but is now at 17.6 % and an increase of 2.3 % of the total acreage in the study.
The other large increase was in High Density Residential. From almost nothing in 1973, 0.25 %,
to a significant 12.1 % in 2017, this category had the biggest increase at 11.85 %. Also of note in
comparing the two charts is how the share of acreage among the residential categories is more
balanced. In 1973, the land distribution ranged from 0 % to 32.6 % among the residential
categories. By 2017, the same categories now only range from 0.15 % to 17.6 %.
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
Estate 0 % Low 15.9 % Medium 32.6 % Med-High 5.9 % High 0.25 % Other 45.35%
Acres
Residential Density Category -
Percentage based on total acres (17,290) in study in all categories
Distribution of Housing Densities by Land Use Categories -
1973
Figure 22 Distribution of 1973 Housing Densities
51
4.2.4. Low Density Residential
Most of the change to the 1973 code for Low Density Residential went to Open Space
and High Density Residential. Almost a third, 32%, of the original Low Density Residential
acreage stayed Low Density Residential but 26.9 % changed to Open Space. Three areas make
up the bulk of this Low Density Residential change to Open Space. They are highlighted in pink
on a portion of the 1973 General Plan provided by The Irvine company (Figure 24).
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
Estate 0.15 % Low 17.6 % Medium 4.4 % Med-High 0.9% High 12.1 % Other 64.85 %
Acres
Residential Density Category -
Percentage based on total acres (17,290) in study in all categories
Distribution of Housing Densities by Land Use Categories -
2017
Figure 23 Distribution of 2017 Housing Densities
52
The first part is the addition of two large lakes into the Woodbridge residential
development. On the 1973 map there is no provision for any lakes. When Woodbridge was
constructed, both a North Lake and a South Lake, encompassing 55.9 acres, were included for
recreational activities. The second part is the Open Space within the Turtle Rock development
(Figure 25). This open space does not have any name such as preserve or wilderness. According
to people who have lived there it is unbuildable open space that people are discouraged from
entering. All the extra open space makes the homes there feel more exclusive.
Figure 24 Areas Where Low-Density Residential Changed to
Open Space
53
The third section is an area called Quail Hill. It is the large pink section in the upper right
of Figure 24. Quail Hill was planned, in 1973, as Low-Density Housing, but the land is now part
of the Irvine Land Conservancy and is used for hiking. In 1989, Irvine adopted a plan to
permanently preserve 9,500 acres of open space. Quail Hill was part of this Irvine Open Space
preserve.
Figure 25 Open Space in Turtle Rock from Google Maps
54
4.2.5. Where Residential Density Increased
The areas where residential density went from a lower residential density code in 1973 to
a higher density code in 2017 included six different change pairs (Figure 26). If residential
density was going to change, and increase in density would be expected more than a decrease in
density. Over one thousand of the Low Density residential parcels changed to Medium Density,
Medium-High Density or to High Density with the most, 744 parcels, moving up just one level to
Medium Density.
55
Figure 26 Areas of Residential Density Increase with Count of Parcels that Changed
Codes
56
4.2.6. Where Residential Density Decreased
The parcels where residential density increased are spread out among six different change
pairs, but most of the decrease in residential density occurred in only one change pair, the
Medium Density Residential to Low Density Residential pair (Figure 27). There is no obvious
reason for this change though the pattern of blocks matches up somewhat with the pattern of
clear spaces on one of the Irvine Company’s early maps (Figure 28).
57
Figure 27 Areas Where Residential Density Decreased
58
The clear blocks on this late 1960s map were lots that had been sold off early in the
1900s to help pay for irrigation and other expenses of the ranch. The Irvine Company would not
have had control over how, or if, the farmers would develop those plots. Perhaps that is why the
entire area is coded as Medium-High Density Residential on the Irvine Ranch 1973 land use
map.
Some of these housing tracts were already being built by the date of incorporation.
College Park (Figure 29), a housing tract at the corner of Culver and Walnut near the 5 freeway,
had already been planned and building had begun by December 1971. In the 1973 map, these
homes are coded as Medium Density Residential. Even in the 1977 “final” General Plan
officially adopted by the city council, College Park is still coded as Medium Density Residential.
In 2017, however, College Park is coded as Low Density Residential. There are 835 homes in
178 acres which puts the dwelling units per acre at 4.69. This puts College Park into the Low
Density Residential category.
Figure 28 Un-coded Blocks in Pre-1970 Map
59
4.2.7. Irvine Business Complex
The Irvine Business Complex is one of the largest business complexes in Orange County,
California. Its 2,700 acres extend from the District Shopping Center in Tustin south to the John
Wayne Airport. It is bounded on the northwest side by the Newport Beach Freeway and along
the southeast side by the San Diego Creek. The University of California Irvine and the San
Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary are both just to the east. The complex is within easy reach of three
major freeways, the Newport Beach (55) freeway, the San Diego (405) freeway and the Santa
Ana (5) freeway (Figure 30).
The Irvine Business Complex (IBC) was developed, starting in the 1970s, as a
commercial and industrial center. It was meant to include hotel, restaurant, commercial, retail,
Figure 29 The Housing Tract of College Park
60
industrial and office space. In the 1973 General Plan map, the entire area now covered by the
IBC was coded as Industrial and Commercial. The City of Irvine needed more housing and
workers wanted to be closer to their jobs. In a survey in 2010, 25-40% of the current IBC
residents also worked in the IBC. So, the city created the Irvine Business Complex Residential
Mixed-Use Overlay Zone to allow residential development within the IBC. Over 90 acres, 3.7 %,
of the Industrial area in 1973 has be changed to IBC land use codes which allow residential units.
In this study, all the change is contained in one code “IBC,” but before consolidating codes,
these parcels were classified as IBC Mixed Use, IBC Multi Use, or IBC Residential.
Following New Town principles, the City of Irvine has tried to include parks, sidewalks,
public transportation, varied age and income groups, a mixture of housing types and place
identity with these new residential developments. There is some public transportation in the area.
The Tustin Metrolink train station is only 1.5 miles to the north. In 2008, the iShuttle started
taking commuters to and from the IBC. However, the IBC has not been very pedestrian friendly
and there were no parks. Several streets have no sidewalks. After the city changed the General
Plan for the area to allow residential units, the new areas will have sidewalks. Local parks are
also a new addition to the IBC. The plan is to add new parks such that each resident can live
within ½ mile of a local park. In the northern section of the IBC, residents will have the Bill
Barber Marine Corps Memorial Park, but new parks are needed for the residential neighborhoods
in the southern section of the IBC.
61
Figure 30 The Irvine Business Complex
62
Chapter 5 Discussion and Conclusions
Many land use changes were found comparing the 1973 General Plan land use map of the Irvine
Ranch with the 2017 General Plan land use database. Changes to housing and Open Space are
highlighted in the summary along with a discussion on how the City of Irvine is following New
Town movement principles. There were many limitations to this study which are addressed in
section 5.2. Recommendations for future studies and potential uses of this work are detailed in
the final section, 5.3.
5.1. Summary of Findings
There were some surprises found by this study. Housing density changed in some
unexpected ways and the amount of land devoted to Open Space greatly increased. Since this
study only looked at land use within the 1971 City of Irvine boundary, land use totals and
percentages are not representative of Irvine today for areas outside the 1971 boundary.
5.1.1. Housing Density Changes
There were both expected and unexpected changes in residential density between 1973
and 2017. As expected, several bits and pieces all over Irvine experienced and incremental
increase in housing density. An expected effect of the increase in residential population is a
filling of open space with needed housing. Another result could be an increase in housing density
by replacing houses with apartments. However, the opposite happened in some parts of Irvine
during the years under investigation. Hundreds of parcels around the 5 freeway went from
Medium Density Residential on the 1973 General Plan to Low Density Residential in the 2017
database. Also, many acres designated as residential in the 1973 master plan have become Open
Space.
63
5.1.1. Open Space
Major changes were not predicted in this land use category. The large number of acres
that change from Low Density Residential to Open Space was a big surprise. A cluster of parcels
near Michelson Water Reclamation Plant changed from Golf Course to Open Space. It is
surprising to lose golf course space but for decades there has been a push to save more open
space.
5.1.2. New Town Principles
In many ways, the City of Irvine is still following its original New Town principles. Each
village has some level of place identity through signage, architecture, and landscaping. The City
of Irvine has a large percentage of acres devoted to open space. Every village has a school and at
least one park. Housing ranges from apartments to large estates, though housing affordability
remains a big issue. Business in the city has been very strong at various points in the study
period. For example, in 2005, Forsyth found that there were more than 3 jobs available for every
resident (Forsyth 2005, 89). There continues to be a focus on balance between work and play,
housing and open space, and retail and industrial development.
In Pereira’s plan for Irvine, there was to be a mass transit corridor running through the
center of the city connecting the two business parks. This was based on a master plan for over
400,000 residents. When the total population was reduced in the 1977 vote to adopt a modified
General Plan, there were no longer enough residents to support a mass transit system. However,
the areas where the mass transit was to be built could still accommodate a system, so maybe
someday this city will become less dependent on the automobile.
The village concept was mostly successful. Residents know which village they live in and
often answer the question “Where do you live?” with their village’s name when speaking with
64
other residents of Irvine. With two major freeways running across the middle of the city, there is
a possibility the people in the villages will feel disconnected from the rest of the city. The City of
Irvine has worked to unify the city and bring people from different villages together by offering
hundreds of community classes and events such as exercise classes, free concerts in some parks,
and community outreach meetings on issues like major General Plan updates. The latest Inside
Irvine magazine has over 100 pages of things for residents to do together (City of Irvine 2017b).
Where the City of Irvine noticeably falls short is with affordable housing. Even though
there are a variety of housing types and densities, Irvine is still known for a high cost of living.
At the public meeting for input on the “Overview of General Plan Update” (City of Irvine
2016a), half of the attendees were complaining about the lack of affordable housing. The other
half, of course, were complaining about too much building and the increase in traffic ruining
their quality of life.
5.2. Study Limitations
There were many limitations encountered during this study. Some limitations were
expected such as getting accurate information out of an old map and the databases having a few
typos. Other limitations were not expected such as having parcels of hugely different sizes which
makes comparisons difficult.
5.2.1. Errors
There is plenty of room for errors in this study. Digitizing the areas on the historical map
was done manually so there is likely to be some error in the process. Perhaps a curve would have
been more accurately digitized with 50 points but only 20 were used. Parcels can be given the
wrong land use code both in the City’s parcel dataset and in this study’s digitization of the 1973
general plan map. Digitizing with the Auto Complete option turned on made for many tiny errors
65
when the decision was made to go back and digitize road parcels for the 1973 dataset. There is a
possibility of slight misrepresentations in percentages with the land use change pairings due to
rounding.
5.2.2. Historical Maps
Most of the early General Plan land use maps for the Irvine area were not very detailed as
to the exact boundaries of each type of land use element. The maps from the 1960s were all in
black and white and the 1977 map, which was voted in as the official General Plan land use map,
was all in sepia tones. Historical maps that employed a wide variety of colors are easier to
decipher. The best historical maps for use with a GIS are detailed, clear, without holes or huge
wrinkles and in solid colors.
5.2.3. Parcel Sizes
Parcel sizes in 2017 vary a great deal. The smallest parcel is a 1.59 square foot sliver
while the largest single parcel was 340 acres. This parcel is the residential land on the UCI
campus that was discussed in section 4.1.1. Such a huge variance in parcels sizes might under- or
over-represent some change pairs. Ten small housing parcels changing is very different from ten
huge open space parcels changing. The areas changed can differ by hundreds of acres. Changes
by parcel count are not a reliable indicator of the magnitude of a change-pair’s effect on land use.
5.2.4. Land Use Codes
The 2017 City of Irvine General Plan land use element codes were consolidated to make
this study more workable. There are 86 different land use codes in the 2017 dataset but only 12
were used in the 1973 map. With current codes consolidated from 86 down to 16, there were
potentially 192 change code pairs instead of 1,032. A study not limited to consolidated codes
66
might reveal a different story. This study did not parse out whether changes to High Density
Residential affected more condominiums versus apartments or whether changes to Parks came
from Neighborhood Parks more than from Regional Parks. There could be important stories in
those details.
5.2.5. Problems with Roads
The roads in the 2017 database caused problems. Since the 1973 historical map only
depicted major roads, all road parcels in the 2017 database that were not part of the major roads
were to be recoded to match the type of block or tract they were in. For example, roads inside a
housing tract were recoded with that housing tract’s residential density land use code or roads
inside a business park would be recoded as commercial. In some parts of Irvine, the road parcels
are created so that the entire parcel can be coded with one land use code (Figure 31). In the
picture below, each road parcel in pink is either inside the housing tract or completely outside.
The small entryway road parcels end at the road. This makes it easy to code something as road or
housing.
67
Other road parcels were not easy to recode (Figure 32). Some sections of the 2017 map
were digitized with longer parcels for the roads. Sometimes these parcels started inside a housing
tract, or a business park, and continued outside to the main roads. Sometimes they even kept
going around corners. To separate those polygons into parcels that could be coded differently
would have meant adding new parcels to the 2017 database. The decision was made to not alter
the number of parcels and make note of the error caused by not having all roads coded
appropriately. This means the acres coded as roads will be off and the acres of some of the
residential density codes will be off.
Figure 31 Road Parcels That Are Easy to Recode
68
5.3. Recommendations for Future Research
There are many directions for further research after this study. A future study could
greatly expand the acreage to the current city limit and/or use all the unconsolidated land use
codes. Another interesting direction would be to do similar studies on other large master-planned
communities and compare the results with this study. The database developed here could be used
in studies about Irvine looking for explanations as to why Irvine is one of the safest cities in the
US.
5.3.1. Expand the Datasets
This study focused on the City in 1971 and a condensed set of 2017 land use codes. In
1971, when the City of Irvine was formed, it had only 28.3 square miles but the city has grown to
over 66 square miles and could grow even more. A future study could compare the Irvine
Figure 32 Road Parcels That Are Not Easy to Recode
69
Company’s 1973 General Plan or the City of Irvine’s 1977 General Plan to the current land use
database and see how land use has evolved over time. There were only 12 land use codes for
1973 but 86 different land use codes in the 2017. Expanding the potential 192 land use change
code pairs to 1032 could be more informative but it would be a lot more work.
5.3.2. Study Other Large Master Planned Communities
Several master-planned communities have been built in the United States since the 1960s.
Irvine, as a master-planned community, has been compared with the Woodlands in Texas and
Columbia in Maryland before, but not with a GIS or studying land use changes. Are more
recently designed and built master-planned communities more likely to stick to the original plan
or did other places change more?
5.3.3. Potential Uses of Work
This work could be used as data for studying why and when changes get made to the
General Plans of master-planned communities and which sectors of the community are behind
those changes. The method developed here could be used to study General Plan land-use changes
between other years too. There were other General Plan overhauls for the City of Irvine in 1989
and 1999 also that could be studied.
It would be very interesting to study the relationship between this master planned
community and some social metrics. The City of Irvine has been ranked the safest city in
America several times, and Irvine schools are also ranked as being among the best. Is there a
correlation between this city implementing this master plan based on New Towns ideals and the
achievements in community safety and education?
70
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Appendix A Land Use Code Consolidation 2017
Feature Description Consolidated
Code
New Category
1100 Agriculture 1300 Open Space
1200 UC Natural System 1300 Open Space
1300 Open Space 1300 Open Space
1310 Landscape Maintenance 1300 or adjacent
lot code
Varied
1400 Fuel Modification 1300 Open Space
1510 Regional Park 1510 Parks
1520 Community Park 1510 Parks
1530 Neighborhood Park 1510 Parks
1540 Private Park 1510 Parks
1550 Golf Course 1550 Golf Course
1610 Lakes 1300 Open Space
1620 Reservoir 1300 Open Space
1630 Channel 1300 Open Space
1640 Basin 1300 Open Space
2100 Estate Density Residential 2100 Estate Density
Residential
2200 Low Density Residential 2200 Low Density
Residential
2300 Medium Density
Residential
2300 Medium Density
Residential
2400 Medium - High Density
Residential
2400 Medium -High
Density Res.
2500 High-Density Residential 2500 High-Density
Residential
75
2510 Condominium 2500 High-Density
Residential
2520 Apartment 2500 High-Density
Residential
2600 Common Lots 1300 or adjacent
lot code
Various
2610 Parking 3100 Roads
3110 Public 3100 Roads
3120 Private 3100 Roads
3140 Path 3100 Roads
3190 Abandoned ROW 3100 Roads
4100 Neighborhood
Commercial
4100 Commercial
4200 Community Commercial 4100 Commercial
4300 Vehicle-Related Comm. 4100 Commercial
4400 Commercial Recreation 4100 Commercial
4500 Regional Commercial 4100 Commercial
4600 Retail Office 4100 Commercial
4610 Office 4100 Commercial
4700 Urban Commercial 4100 Commercial
4800 Irvine Garden
Commercial
4100 Commercial
5000 IBC Mixed-Use 5100 Industrial
5100 IBC Multi-Use 5100 Industrial
5200 IBC Industrial 5200 IBC
5300 IBC Residential 5100 Industrial
5500 Health Care 5400 Institutional
5510 Hospital 5400 Institutional
5530 Medical Office 5400 Institutional
76
6110 Elementary School 6100 Educational
6120 Middle School 6100 Educational
6130 High School 6100 Educational
6140 College/University 6100 Educational
6150 IUSD Administration 6100 Educational
6160 Private School 6100 Educational
6170 Child Care 5400 Institutional
6180 Senior Center 5400 Institutional
6190 Church/Temple 5400 Institutional
6210 Public Services 5400 Institutional
6220 City Hall 5400 Institutional
6230 Corp Yard 5400 Institutional
6235 Multi Service Center 5400 Institutional
6240 Police 5400 Institutional
6250 Fire Station 5400 Institutional
6260 Post Office 5400 Institutional
6270 Library 5400 Institutional
6280 IRWD 5400 Institutional
6290 Edison 5400 Institutional
8010 Freeway 8000 Toll
Roads/Easements
8020 Toll Road 8000 Toll
Roads/Easements
8030 State Board of
Equalization
8000 Toll
Roads/Easements
8040 SBE Railroad ROW 8000 Toll
Roads/Easements
8060 OCFCD access roads 8000 Toll
Roads/Easements
77
8070 SCE Easement 8000 Toll
Roads/Easements
8080 Public Utilities Easement 8000 Toll
Roads/Easements
8090 Slope/Drainage Easement 8000 Toll
Roads/Easements
78
Appendix B Land Use Change Pairs in Acres with Percentages of 1973 Area of Change
1973 Land Use Codes
Open
Space
Parks
Golf
Course
Low
Density
Res.
Medium
Density
Res.
Med-
High
Density
Res.
High
Density
Res.
Roads Comm. Indus. Inst. Educ.
Total acres
in 2017
2017
codes
Totals
299.80 704.06 427.53 2753.62 5642.83 1027.08 43.85 1372.5
1
1027.97 2414.84 101.37 1474.61 17290.07
Agri. 0 0 1.02 0 7.85 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8.87
~ ~ 0.20% ~ 0.10% ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Open 233.87 43.93 194.04 740.15 373.41 114.66 9.67 78.02 48.25 14.34 21.76 12.15 1884.25
Space 78.1% 6.20% 45.50% 26.8% 6.62% 11.20% 22.1% 5.6% 4.70% 0.60% 21.50% 0.80%
Parks 0 247.17 0.95 154.65 369.58 63.63 0 51.9 65.14 0.42 0.8 12.04 966.28
~ 35.10% 0.20% 5.62% 6.50% 6.20% ~ 3.70% 6.30% ~ 0.70% 0.80%
Golf 0 183.31 143.77 67.36 148.03 0 0 0.22 43.03 0 0 0 585.72
Course ~ 26.00% 33.60% 2.44% 2.60% ~ ~ ~ 4.20% ~ ~ ~
79
Estate 0 0 0 24.95 0.01 0.16 0 0 0 0 0 0 25.12
Density ~ ~ ~ 0.91% ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Low 0 3.94 0 880.25 1944.93 38.87 0 110.74 16.73 0 0 44.86 3040.32
Density ~ 0.60% ~ 31.90% 34.5 % 3.80% ~ 8.00% 1.62% ~ ~ 3.00%
Med 0 12.30 0 97.60 535.37 64.97 0 29.06 4.45 0 3.63 16.93 764.31
Density ~ 1.70% ~ 3.54% 9.49% 6.30% ~ 2.10% 0.40% ~ 3.60% 1.10%
Med-hi 0 6.8 0 5.78 97.16 21.21 0 7.13 11.99 0 8.97 9.06 168.10
Density ~ 0.90% ~ 0.21% 1.72% 2.10% ~ 0.50% 1.20% ~ 8.80% 0.60%
High 0 71.71 13.81 542.26 627.17 357.04 17.77 107.28 222.60 0 10.18 121.37 2091.19
Density ~ 10.20% 3.20% 19.69% 11.11% 34.80% 40.5% 7.80% 21.60% ~ 10.00% 8.20%
Roads 1.44 37.03 7.72 156.48 260.86 79.36 2.06 506.25 68.92 170.44 6.6 67.3 1364.46
0.40% 5.30% 1.80% 5.68% 4.62% 7.70% 4.70% 36.90% 6.70% 7.10% 6.50% 4.60%
Retail 0 43.13 3.86 0 191.76 101.72 5.64 40.95 264.67 64.87 23.96 62.93 803.49
~ 6.20% 0.90% ~ 3.40% 9.90% 12.9% 2.90% 25.70% 2.70% 23.60% 4.30%
Indust. 0 4.65 18.45 0 0 0 0 47.96 106.66 1991.13 0 0 2168.85
~ 0.70% 4.30% ~ ~ ~ ~ 3.50% 10.37% 82.50% ~ ~
IBC 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 90.7 0 0 90.7
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3.70% ~ ~
Inst. 0 27.64 43.91 14.27 71.77 17.55 0 5.46 55.90 19.45 15.49 95.32 366.76
80
~ 3.90% 10.20% 0.52% 1.27% 1.70% ~ 0.40% 5.40% 0.80% 15.30% 6.50%
Educ. 64.49 13.67 0 10.83 810.16 106.13 4.27 22.16 21.32 2.33 0 1007.76 2063.12
21.5% 1.90% ~ 0.39% 14.3% 10.30% 9.70% 1.60% 2.10% 0.10% ~ 68.30%
Rights 0 8.78 0 59.04 205.00 61.76 4.43 365.37 98.31 61.57 9.96 24.89 899.11
Of Way ~ 1.20% ~ 2.14% 3.6% 6.00% 10.1% 26.60% 9.61% 2.50% 9.80% 1.70%
1973
Totals 100% 99.9% 99.9% 99.9% 99.9% 100% 100% 99.7% 99.9% 100% 99.8% 99.9%
17290
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Goldsworth, Julia Lynn
(author)
Core Title
Exploring land use changes in the city of Irvine’s master plan
School
College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Degree
Master of Science
Degree Program
Geographic Information Science and Technology
Publication Date
09/26/2017
Defense Date
08/25/2017
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
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Tag
GIS,history,Irvine,land use change,master plan,OAI-PMH Harvest
Language
English
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Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Wilson, John (
committee chair
), Sedano, Elisabeth (
committee member
), Vos, Robert (
committee member
), Wu, An-Min (
committee member
)
Creator Email
goldjulie2@gmail.com,jgoldswo@usc.edu
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Tags
GIS
land use change
master plan