Experts Foresee ‘Urban Villages,’ More Tiny Dwellings

Take a look into the future and you are likely to find an Orange County with a bit more of everything: more people, more cars and more congestion.

The squeeze won’t be confined to freeways. You’re also likely to find the typical home so small that the tract homes of today look spacious by comparison.

Experts foresee a growing acceptance of condominiums, apartments and attached housing clusters emphasizing unconventional designs to take advantage of limited space.

They also see more developments designed to allow people to both live and work within the same master-planned communities, or “urban villages.”

So if the past 50 years have seen Orange County change from an oasis of fertile farmland to a haven of housing tracts and shopping malls, real estate experts say the next half-century will bring even greater change as the county matures.

And as Orange County ages, experts say the profile of its residents will change accordingly. Unless government moves to provide some sort of subsidized housing for those of low and moderate incomes, the typical Orange County family of the future is likely to be wealthier and better educated than ever before.

Some specialists see the current housing frenzy becoming the norm, not the exception, as the county continues to attract more business and industry and grows into a more urban community.

The county’s population will continue to explode as more people and businesses locate here to take advantage of top quality schools, a favorable business climate and an attractive locale.

3 Million by Year 200

According to a nationwide study conducted by NPA Data Services Inc. of Washington, Orange County’s population of 2.3 million will swell to almost 3 million by the year 2000, making it the seventh most populous county in the nation.

And that means even more demand for housing.

Market specialists say that one of the first casualties of this steady urbanization may be the single-family detached house that has been the norm in Southern California. In an era of limited resources and skyrocketing prices, only a select few may be able to afford such a luxury.

Detached housing already is out of reach for many people.

Dale Dowers, president of Barratt Irvine, an Orange County division of Barratt America, said that over the past several years the price gap between attached and detached housing has been widening, making it harder for people who buy condominiums ever to parlay their equity into the purchase of a single-family detached house.

“For those who make $50,000 a year and under, it (attached housing) will become the permanent solution to their housing needs,” he said.

Michael Meyer, an analyst with Kenneth Leventhol & Co. of Newport Beach, noted that Orange County is an example of a new type of urban village.

In San Francisco, New York or London, an urban village is “a neighborhood where someone lives above the stores and the pub and there are offices intermingled with houses,” Meyer said.

“In the Orange County version, it means the regional mall with the small shopping center, and then within walking distance are housing units and office buildings.”

Meyer predicted more development of residential and business centers in the John Wayne Airport and South Coast Plaza areas, sites ideally suited to people who want to live close to work, shopping, cultural attractions and freeways.

Experts point to several existing developments as examples of good planning.

The Lakes, an apartment village near the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, is within walking distance of South Coast Plaza and other major employment and retail centers. It offers easy freeway access and a range of entertainment activities for residents.

Promontory Point, a high-density luxury apartment complex overlooking the ocean in Newport Beach, and Fashion Island also are mentioned as examples of the types of development that will proliferate in the future.

Condominium Sales Up

Already, indications are that Orange County residents are being weaned from single-family detached homes. Perhaps because prices have risen so high, condominium sales have picked up dramatically in the last few months.

W. Stephen Johnson, vice president of the Meyers Group, a real estate consulting company based in Corona, said that attached housing, including condominiums, represented more than half the total sales in the county the first quarter of this year.

“Detached housing only represented 47% of the total sales,” Johnson said. “This is the first quarter we’ve seen them flip-flop.”

According to Meyers Group calculations, the median price for new, detached homes in Orange County was $224,900 in the first quarter, compared to $133,900 for town homes, condominiums and other types of attached housing.

“The answer to the question of where can you find affordable housing in Orange County is in attached housing,” Johnson said.

Another result of urbanization is something known to urban planners as “infilling”--the redevelopment of older, existing areas that already offer easy access to freeways and retail and employment centers.

This is already happening in some of the more established sections of Orange County, such as Garden Grove and Placentia, as younger people purchase homes and set about remodeling them. Real estate agents report a flurry of older home sales and renovations in Costa Mesa, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley and Fullerton.

As a result of these changes, people “who set a priority on having the single-family detached housing with a back yard will be forced to move farther and father out away from the coastal areas because they won’t be able to afford to live in cities like Irvine,” said Leventhol’s Meyers.

“But the people who want to stay closer to where they work and the offices and the cultural amenities will forgo the space, and the yard, to be able to live here.”

ESTIMATED POPULATION GROWTH: 1988-2000 Selected Southland counties

County 1988 Est. Pop. 2000 Est. Pop. % Pop. Growth Los Angeles 8,500,000 9,500,000 11.8% Orange 2,300,000 2,860,000 23.5 San Diego 2,300,000 2,860,000 23.5 Riverside 946,000 1,670,000 76.5

Source: NPA Data Systems, Washington, D.C.