Richard Peiser reviews Transforming the Irvine Ranch in the Journal of the American Planning Association

Richard Peiser (2024) Transforming the Irvine Ranch: Joan Irvine, William Pereira, Ray Watson, and the Big Plan, Journal of the American Planning Association, DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2023.2280414

For devotees of new towns, Pike Oliver and Michael Stockstill’s book, Transforming the Irvine Ranch: Joan Irvine, William Pereira, Ray Watson, and the Big Plan, is a must read. The book is a compelling, entertaining, and very accessible account of the beginnings and history of Irvine (CA), one of the United States’ pre-eminent new towns. If any new town was destined to be successful, it was Irvine, with its location on the Orange County coast stretching from Newport Beach to the mountains.Footnote1

The book includes the memoir of Ray Watson, the original planner of Irvine, who served as president of the Irvine Company from 1973 until 1977. Both Oliver and Stockstill worked with Watson, who is a beloved figure in Irvine’s history.

The 110,000-acre ranch was assembled by James Irvine I in 1864 and 1866 in Orange County out of Mexican land grant ranchos. His son, James Irvine II, established the James Irvine Foundation in 1937, endowing it with a controlling interest in shares of the Irvine Company. Oliver and Stockstill tell the story of the new town’s birth, starting with the search for a new University of California (UC) campus in Southern California in the 1950s. Of the 21 sites considered by the UC Regents, only the Irvine Ranch with its single ownership offered the possibility of creating a unique vision of town and gown. Ray Watson underscores the enormity of the decision: “In retrospect a huge step had been taken by the Irvine Company; it was now preparing to not only aggressively attempt to attract the university, but to plan an orderly transition from ranching to urban development” (p. 55).

The book provides a master class in city building: bringing precious water to the new town, developing infrastructure, creating the first neighborhood, providing low-cost housing, building a sense of community, and dealing with neighbors and politics. It recounts the battle over cityhood: how the new town was largely incorporated into the new city of Irvine, which helped to ensure the integrity of the future city plan and give the new town control over its own destiny.

The authors highlight Irvine’s design. Eastbluff, the new town’s first major village, was designed following concepts from Radburn (NJ):

The design of Radburn has a park/greenbelt with the houses facing onto it.… [Irvine’s planners] put the front door on the street and the back door on the park. What we learned from Radburn is…when you have guests or anybody else driving home or visiting, they entered through the back door. (p. 112)

Joan Irvine’s story is woven throughout the Oliver-Stockstill book and makes for compelling reading. Joan was 14 when she inherited 20% of the shares of the Irvine Company from her grandfather (her father died when she was 2 years old). She was featured in newspapers all over the nation as well as Look magazine in 1961 with a photo spread as “Joan Irvine—Golden Girl…on her horse rounding up cattle and appearing domestic at her home” (p. 218).

Joan was the gadfly who ultimately forced the Irvine Company to give up control by lobbying Congress for a change in the federal tax code within the Tax Reform Act of 1969. In the congressional battle, Joan focused on a key provision of the legislation that prohibited any charitable foundation from owning more than 20% of a single business entity. The change in the tax code forced The Irvine Foundation to sell its controlling interest, with Joan as part of the group that purchased it.

Irvine is an exemplar of new town development, notable for its strong employment base and its mixed-density neighborhoods, as well as the unique design that gives residents access to nature trails and open space within a short walk. Oliver and Stockstill pay homage to Irvine’s achievements. Their book is not a critical assessment of Irvine’s limitations, notable in the provision of more affordable housing, but readers will find their book not only enjoyable and hard to put down but also a unique insiders’ perspective of what it takes to build a new town.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard Peiser

RICHARD PEISER holds the Michael D. Spear Professorship in real estate development at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. New towns have been a lifelong research interest.

Notes

1 The introduction to this review appears in Peiser, R. (2023, October 13). The New Town movement: Three towns that helped build Los Angeles, and what they teach us about building cities. Urban Land. https://urbanland.uli.org/public/the-new-town-movement-three-towns-that-helped-build-los-angeles-and-what-they-teach-us-about-building-cities/