Irvine Fastest Growing City in State : Heavy Promotion by Developer Helps Unseat Bakersfield
Irvine, the nation’s largest planned community, has unseated Bakersfield as California’s fastest growing city, according to an economic and demographic index being released today by the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy.
Riding the success of a multimillion-dollar television advertising campaign financed by the city’s largest developer, Irvine Community Development Co., Irvine climbed to the top of the Palo Alto-based research group’s second annual ranking, in part, by shrewdly promoting its moderately priced housing and rapid industrial development.
The oil-rich Kern County city of Bakersfield fell to fifth place because of a slowdown in its key industry--petroleum. Meanwhile, Fresno, a burgeoning agricultural center, moved up one notch from last year to second place.
The economic center’s study, compiled by senior economist Stephen Levy, measures the growth of California cities according to population gains, retail sales growth and recent construction activity. Those indexes generally favor small, self-contained, planned communities such as Irvine, where most of the city’s 80,123 residents work and shop near their homes.
“Irvine just dominated the rankings because as a planned community (it) pushes industrial, residential and retail development simultaneously,” said Levy, “and that’s what it takes to do well in our survey. Bakersfield is in the middle of the agricultural and oil industry and they did not have a good year in 1984; whereas Irvine is in the middle of the high-tech industry, which did pretty well last year.”
Like Irvine, seven of the survey’s top-ranked cities are located in Southern California. Two are located in the northern part of the state and two in the Central Valley region. San Bernardino County had two cities in the rankings--Rancho Cucamonga and Ontario. Los Angeles County had one--Walnut.
The index--which is sold to companies interested in using the demographic data--gives a rough measure of those cities that have the most economically diverse and robust economies. However, some high-ranked cities such as Bakersfield and Fresno still largely remain one-industry towns, officials acknowledge.
“Agriculture is the main industry in Fresno,” said Stafford Parker, the city’s assistant director of development. But he said the city has had a lot of success “trying to sell Fresno in terms of redevelopment activity” to retailing and manufacturing concerns.
Less Room to Grow
By contrast, bigger cities such as Los Angeles have much less room to grow, Levy said, and therefore fared poorly in the study compared to smaller areas.
“Los Angeles is No. 1 in all of the aggregate measures,” Levy said. But it wasn’t ranked in the survey, he said, because “the percentage of increase was not as large as the smaller cities” such as Folsom, where the population and retail sales have jumped 41.9% and 94.1%, respectively, from 1980 to Jan. 1, 1985. The study also points up how little effect a city’s perceived image apparently has on both its population and economic growth.
Although Irvine was ranked by this month’s Parents magazine as one of the nation’s best cities to raise a family, Fresno was rated in 1984 as the worst place to live in America by geographer Robert A. Pierce, a professor at the State University of New York at Courtland.
Pierce’s unflattering ranking of Fresno, based on an analysis of several factors including crime, culture and economics, doesn’t seem to have hurt the city.
“We’ve moved up despite it,” said Fresno’s Stafford. “In fact, I think it may have helped by drawing more attention to the city. People took a (closer) look at us and found that we were a pretty good place to live.”
CALIFORNIA’S FASTEST-GROWING CITIES Figures are for 1984. In millions of dollars
Population gain Retail gain Commercial Top cities since sales since construction 1980 1980 Irvine 80,123 29% $534 153.7% $467 Fresno 274,750 29.5% 1,902 55.9% 235 Pleasanton 40,740 15.9% 213.3 62.5% 186 Palm Desert 15,211 28.9% 188.3 174.2% 133.7 Bakersfield 138,549 31.2% 1,182 38.7% 233 Folsom 15,618 41.9% 68.9 94.1% 84.5 Ontario 108,070 21.7% 494.8 62.7% 153.4 Rancho Cucamonca 65,479 18.5% 140.2 87.8% 119.6 Carlsbad 44,566 25.6% 439.9 67.0% 170.7 Thousand Oaks 94,164 22.2% 664.6 67.2% 118.9 Walnut 17,776 42.5% 18.1 195.5% 70.4
