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Like the title says: What are some other cites in the US that resemble Irvine, CA in terms of industry, newer housing, cleanliness, QOL (quality of life), etc? Some people like/dislike Irvine, but where are some other cities that feel similar.
Like the title says: What are some other cites in the US that resemble Irvine, CA in terms of industry, newer housing, cleanliness, QOL (quality of life), etc? Some people like/dislike Irvine, but where are some other cities that feel similar.
Some cities that immediately come to mind are as follows:
-Alpharetta, GA
-Boca Raton, FL
-Carmel, IN
-Cary, NC
-Columbia, MD
-Overland Park, KS
-Plano, TX
-Sandy Springs, GA
-Scottsdale, AZ
-Sugar Land, TX
-The Woodlands, TX
I lived in Irvine for most of the '80s and '90s and it's difficult to identify an Atlanta area suburb that is a particularly close match.
Sandy Springs is similar in the sense of being demographically cosmopolitan and a major employment center with no real downtown, but it has much lower density residential areas than Irvine and traditionally a disorganized approach to planning. This has changed in recent years once Sandy Springs incorporated as a city.
Johns Creek (in our northeast suburbs) is similar in terms of having an exploding Asian population and highly regarded public schools, but it has little of the dense multi-family housing that is abundant in Irvine, and is a more residential and less commercial city. Alpharetta does have a small traditional downtown and is burgeoning as an employment hub, and also contains a major satellite campus for Georgia State University.
Reston, VA in the Washington suburbs may be a pretty good match for Irvine - it's denser than the Atlanta metro cities and is very busy and commercial while still having a reasonable amount of public green space. Reston's housing prices would be much closer to the extreme levels in Irvine as well.
Troy is an affluent suburb, but Vancouver is more of a large satellite city, and has a wide range of income levels and many old neighborhoods. Within metro Portland I would think the well-off parts of the Beaverton/Hillsboro area have more in common with Irvine than Vancouver does.
Like the title says: What are some other cites in the US that resemble Irvine, CA in terms of industry, newer housing, cleanliness, QOL (quality of life), etc? Some people like/dislike Irvine, but where are some other cities that feel similar.
Greenwood Village, Colorado and Lone Tree, Colorado: They have the Irvine-style office parks, extremely safe and clean like Irvine.
Chandler, Arizona is sort of like Irvine in my opinion. Although Chandler does have a small rough area unlike Irvine. It has lots of office parks and much of the city has similar housing stock to Irvine.
Other cities that are bit like Irvine with very high quality of life, extremely clean and safe with large office parks with retail.
-West Des Moines, IA
-Draper, Utah
-Bloomington, Minnesota
-Scottsdale, Arizona
-Broomfield, Colorado
I lived in Irvine for most of the '80s and '90s and it's difficult to identify an Atlanta area suburb that is a particularly close match.
Sandy Springs is similar in the sense of being demographically cosmopolitan and a major employment center with no real downtown, but it has much lower density residential areas than Irvine and traditionally a disorganized approach to planning. This has changed in recent years once Sandy Springs incorporated as a city.
Johns Creek (in our northeast suburbs) is similar in terms of having an exploding Asian population and highly regarded public schools, but it has little of the dense multi-family housing that is abundant in Irvine, and is a more residential and less commercial city. Alpharetta does have a small traditional downtown and is burgeoning as an employment hub, and also contains a major satellite campus for Georgia State University.
Reston, VA in the Washington suburbs may be a pretty good match for Irvine - it's denser than the Atlanta metro cities and is very busy and commercial while still having a reasonable amount of public green space. Reston's housing prices would be much closer to the extreme levels in Irvine as well.
From a housing standpoint, Alpharetta, Johns Creek and Sandy Springs have nothing in common with Irvine, IMO, and it goes beyond general housing costs and styles, too.
In Irvine, zero-lot-line single-family homes, whereby the housing structure touches the structure next to it or comes very close to the edge of the property line, are very common. You rarely, if ever, see single-family housing developments in the Atlanta area with mostly zero-lot-line homes, since this issue is largely isolated to the the American Southwest.
Additionally, the larger lots in suburban Atlanta allow for deeper frontage from the road and larger backyards. Coupled with the much more wooded natural setting of the Piedmont region, neighborhoods in suburban Atlanta are more park-like in appearance and, IMO, tend to better assimilate with the natural environment.
Homes in Southern California don't have basements, and most newer homes (i.e., those built in the 1970's or later) don't have accessible attics, either. It seems like most homes in the Piedmont region of the South have basements. For transplants from the Midwest, Northeast and parts of the Intermountain West, this is often a deal-breaker.
In much of Southern California, garages tend to fill the void of basements and attics; however, because the City of Irvine and many HOA communities therein have extremely strict parking ordinances, garages tend to house vehicles instead of other items. Within the region, though, this issue is fairly isolated to Irvine.
Finally, most homes in Irvine back up to an arterial thoroughfare or a busy collector road; that's why 6' cinder-block walls are so common in residential developments of this area (unheard of on the East Coast). In Georgia, housing developments tend to be situated on cul-de-sacs off a collector road with fewer structures overall.
Last edited by Bert_from_back_East; 05-03-2017 at 01:16 PM..
Irvine is a planned city that didn't exist until circa 1970. I think Columbia, MD would be the closest thing to it outside of Cali.
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