Their Crystal Ball Shows Us Coping in the Year 2001

In the year 2001, water is rationed in Orange County. The average price of a home hits $360,000. Planning is under way for a high-speed bullet train to serve a new intercontinental airport at Camp Pendleton. Workers live and work in the same high-rise complexes, designed to reduce traffic.

Sound far-fetched?

Not according to Orange County Planning Director Robert G. Fisher, former Irvine Co. market researcher Robert J. Dunham and design consultant Joe Hasulak, who revealed their vision of the county 14 years from now at a recent dinner symposium sponsored by the Building Industry Assn.

Fisher set the stage: 2.6 million people--400,000 more than live here now. A third of the population will be Latino and Asian. The median age will push 40, with a need for additional retirement housing and less construction of entry-level homes for new families.

“We will be growing, compared to today, at a slower pace in absolute numbers as well as in percentages, but that still is obviously a lot of additional people--homes, offices and, more importantly, cars,” said Fisher. “About half of the (population) increase will be from the excess of births over deaths, one-half from in-migration.

“Most of the major development projects in Orange County will be covered by development agreements (with the Board of Supervisors) which are intended to safeguard continued development against the new cities that may have a different view of the value of these projects, or against (slow-growth) initiative petitions.”

Among Fisher’s predictions:

Water will be rationed because politicians from northern and southern California can’t seem to agree on diverting more water from north to south.

A new council of local governments will be created to coordinate major planning decisions on hazardous waste disposal, traffic, air quality, water rationing and child care.

Planning will begin by the year 2001 for a new intercontinental airport at Camp Pendleton.

Travel demand will dictate revival of the bullet train concept, first proposed by a private corporation in 1981, because “we’ve reached the saturation level with airplanes in the sky.”

Fisher said Orange County officials have failed to provide adequate public facilities such as airports and jails because “neighbors (of new facilities) and others simply won’t allow us to build for forecasted growth.”

Dunham, president of the Newport Economics Group, said the county will add 500,000 jobs (100,000 more than the increase in population) by the year 2001, making the commuting problem worse.

Increased construction of high-rise housing also was in the forecast.

“Work spaces and living areas have to be one and the same,” Husalak said. “You have a tremendous traffic problem here. One of the answers--one of the only real, viable answers--is to live and work in the same area.”

Confident that Orange County can weather slow-growth initiatives and recessions, Dunham said:

“We’ve sort of become a victim of our own success. We’re beginning to wonder if we like it that much. . . . (But) if you look back over the decades, there’s only one thing that I can see that has ever brought a halt, and that was high interest rates. The best intentions in the world would not do it.”