COLUMN ONE : Irvine: Capital of Conformity : As the planned community reaches its 20th year, much of the original dream has been realized. But critics contend that there is a stultifying sameness and artificial quality.

It was a grand undertaking. When the best and brightest architects of the 1960s began blending ingredients to create this municipality on the edge of the suburban plain, there was hope and expectation.

This would be a town of the future, a recipe for the modern utopia. A city from scratch. It would be clean, orderly, functional and even fun.

Now, as Irvine and its 110,000 inhabitants march toward the Dec. 28 celebration of 20 years of cityhood, much of the original dream has been realized. With terra cotta roofs ablaze under a cornflower-blue sky and curling lanes of asphalt bordered by freshly clipped fescue, Irvine croons a siren song to survivors of the urban shipwreck.

It is a seductive melody of vanilla-hued townhouses and high-tech jobs, eucalyptus-shaded greenbelts and inviting community pools. Irvine beckons with superlative schools, convenient shopping complexes and booming business parks. Crime provokes few worries. The telephone and power lines are tucked neatly underground.

“We came here because we thought it would be a nice place to raise a family,” said Cheri Bartlett, an Irvine resident since 1970. “We wanted our kids to have some roots--and Irvine has more than met our expectations. It has a lot to offer people, babies to senior citizens.”

Not everyone, however, buys into this vision of the perfect American city. For some, Irvine has become a national metaphor of what the future should not hold.

Architectural critics scoff at the rows of cookie-cutter houses, the monotonic morass of stucco apartments and glass-sheathed high-rises. Sociologists say the place is a largely homogenized enclave where the high cost of admission--the median home price is closing in on $300,000--means that the turnstiles swing open mostly for whites and the well-off.

Even Irvine’s most heady accomplishments have sometimes caused difficulties. Its wildly successful business parks have created a staggering imbalance between jobs and housing, making the city a net importer of employees from other communities. The result is a civic paradox--Irvine is today a magnet for traffic congestion nearly on par with the aging urban areas many residents fled.

That is just the start of the troubles, critics say. There is no downtown, no truly central public place. Out in the neighborhoods, they contend, there is no spontaneity to life.

Conformity is king, with imperious homeowner associations ruling on everything from the color of a house to how your hibiscus is trimmed. The November issue of an Irvine high school’s student magazine features a photograph of a street sign with a car rolling by. A single word is spray-painted on the triangular placard: Conform.

“It’s a very insular, American Dream place,” said Alan Jacobs, a UC Berkeley professor of city and regional planning. “It’s a place totally dependent on the automobile. There are no chance meetings with people. You’re alone in your car with your radio. But in some senses that is consistent with what Americans like.”

In Irvine, critics contend, surprise has been replaced by a stultifying sameness, a confusing, artificial quality. The lakes are sculpted by bulldozers, the grass is always green. Even wildlife do not quite get it. Ducks occasionally belly-flop into chlorine-rich public pools, quacking happily as if this is the way things are done in Irvine.

Inevitably, one-liners have sprung up to describe North America’s largest master-planned community. It is the city under a glass bubble, the jokes go, the community that compares favorably with the Stepford Wives, perfect in a horrifying sort of way.

It is, as Irvine’s old municipal slogan once put it, another day in paradise.

The people of Irvine know about the criticisms. They have heard it all before. But by and large, they greet the barbs with a shrug and a smile. Such critiques, they argue, are only the arrows of outsiders peering in from the ramparts--the Big City architecture critics, the Ivory Tower academicians. Those people have not experienced the happiness of this hometown.

“It’s a comfortable place and it’s not sterile,” said Hugh Hewitt, an Irvine attorney. “For the critics who don’t really study up on it, the sterility argument is a nice cheap score card to use. But as far as I’m concerned, Irvine is the best place to live in California. . . . Irvine works.”

About the size of Boston, Irvine has become the modern-day vortex of commerce in Orange County. Flanked by two flourishing business parks, the city ranks among the top commercial destinations in the state.

The town sits in the geographical center of Orange County. Although all roads do not lead to Irvine, the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways certainly do, and residents boast that it is a short hop to just about anywhere--the beach, regional parks, Disneyland.

It also borders two Marine Corps bases and the refurbished John Wayne Airport. Cuddling up to the coastal hills on the city’s southern edge is fast-growing UC Irvine, a 16,000-student institution earning a reputation as an eminent center for bioscience research and study.

The city has its own nationally recognized child-care program. It has an ambitious effort to encourage bicycle commuting. U.S. News & World Report named Irvine one of the nation’s 10 best places to live. Parents magazine called it one of the three finest cities to rear a family.

Despite its image as a well-heeled burg, upward of 12% of the city’s housing stock has been reserved for people of moderate means. But there are no low-income enclaves, no sprawling tracts of subsidized housing. Instead, each unit is mixed into the community mosaic.

The city is divided into several villages, each one with its own distinct architectural theme, its own parks, its own elementary schools, tennis courts and pools. All staples of modern-day family life are there.

University Park. Woodbridge. Northwood. More than anywhere else, the essence of Irvine is encapsulated in the neighborhoods.

Drive the streets slowly on a warm day and you will see fathers toting their children off to the market, mothers with baby carriages, a white-haired retiree with cane in hand doing laps on a cement sidewalk encircling the grassy knoll of a neighborhood park.

Most people say they know their immediate neighbors. Some say they know everyone on the block. In newly opened subdivisions, block parties are not uncommon. Neighborhood traditions start up. One resident talked about how he and his neighbors will occasionally plaster butcher paper signs on the garage door to announce big events--births, graduations.

There are intangibles at work here, ideals that are hard to pinpoint. Order and control. Quality of life. Protection from a surrounding region increasingly plagued by crime and other urban ills.

It is clear what Irvine is--the marketing of the American Dream on a grand scale. This is “Leave It to Beaver” country, circa 1991.

Of course, times have changed a bit. Today, Ward Cleaver is a high-tech executive who works long hours, June manages a clothing boutique to help cover the monthly mortgage payment and The Beav is on the college-prep path--but also sports an earring.

Life is rarely as carefree as a TV sitcom. Of late, the outside world has begun to seep into Irvine. Neighbors worry about gangs from surrounding cities. Some frustrated Irvine teen-agers have taken to scrawling urban-style graffiti.

As always, city leaders have been eager to head off trouble. The City Council approved a ban on the possession of marker pens used for graffiti. A meeting with police for parents was held at a local school, drawing a crowd of nearly 100. The vow hung in the air like the aroma from the coffee urns--gangs are not going to happen in Irvine.

The citizenry of Irvine is hardly a uniform lot. Though the city remains three-quarters white, it is growing more cosmopolitan. One of five people is Asian. But only 6% of the population is Latino, lagging far behind the countywide total of 23%. Irvine and Orange County share the same tiny percentage of blacks--2%.

That mix is expected to become more diverse. In the schools, one of four students comes from a home where English is not the primary language. University High School has students from 51 countries, some of them refugees from troubled homelands: Afghanistan, South Africa, Iran.

Irvine, as always, is the safe harbor.

Although Irvine features a well-educated population (one of three adults has a college degree) and the university imbues the place with a fair dose of political correctness, the growing influx of newcomers has caused some strains.

Rabbi Daniel Epstein of Beth Jacob Congregation of Irvine recalls a recent Saturday afternoon. He was walking home, outfitted in Sabbath suit, traditional dark hat covering his head. A passenger in a car yelled something at the rabbi. An epithet. Then the car tore off. Who knows if the person was even from Irvine. But it happened in Epstein’s adopted town.

“I wouldn’t want to exaggerate the problem. It’s not a serious problem,” Epstein said. “But it can be frightening.”

Politics in Irvine is a carnival. Republicans outnumber Democrats 2 to 1, but the city in recent years has exhibited a strong dose of yuppie liberalism, a fondness for the trendy cause.

The chief progenitor of Irvine’s leftist movement was former Mayor Larry Agran. Along with a slow-growth majority elected in 1986, Agran championed an agenda focusing on ecology and egalitarianism.

Irvine became the first city in America to ban ozone-depleting chemicals produced by local industry. A curbside recycling program was launched. The city began using reclaimed water to irrigate the greenbelts.

But not everything was a success, or politically popular. Conservatives blanched when an invitation was extended to the Nicaraguan baseball team, earning Agran & Co. an enduring nickname--Agranistas. Others scoffed when the council tried to turn a dog pound into a homeless shelter. A gay rights ordinance was overturned by voters.

Finally, the electorate decided that they had seen enough and in 1990 booted Agran out of office in favor of a more conservative group led by Mayor Sally Anne Sheridan, a realtor. Turned out by voters, Agran turned himself into an alternative-choice candidate for President of the United States in 1992.

The city’s origins date back well beyond its incorporation. In the 1870s, wealthy San Francisco merchant James Irvine assembled a huge tract of land purchased from drought-troubled Latino rancheros.

His heir, James II, created the Irvine Co. before the turn of the century. For years, the company devoted its vast acreage to crops and grazing. But in the late 1950s, the University of California approached with a proposal to build a campus on the land, and the company’s stewards began to talk about building themselves a city.

Today, Irvine tops a list of several so-called “cities of the future” sowed in the 1960s, among them Foster City, outside of San Francisco; Columbia, Md., and Reston, Va. Irvine eclipses them all in sheer scale.

Irvine represented a unique opportunity. A single company owned a huge tract of land, giving it the capability to master-plan every square inch.

While Columbia and some of the others tried to tackle such daunting questions as race relations and loneliness, Irvine’s planners stuck to the basics, drafting a physical plan and leaving the rest to the people who became residents.

Ray Watson, Irvine Co. vice chairman and a leading light in developing the community’s master plan, recalls making a conscious decision not to take “every social problem since Jesus Christ” and attempt to “solve it in two years.”

“What do people want?” Watson said. “They want to have a nice place to raise their family, they want to have a job, they want to be safe, and they want to have a voice in their community. . . . At least we have done that.”

Today, the Irvine Co.--some residents call it simply The Company--controls one-seventh of the land in Orange County, most of the retail leases in Irvine and all of the city’s undeveloped property. The company chairman, billionaire Donald Bren, is ranked among the top 25 richest people in the United States.

Understandably, Irvine has long been labeled a company town. The Irvine Co. owns the local newspaper and the cable television station. In the hierarchy of this city of homeowners’ associations, village associations and city government, many residents consider the company a force to be reckoned with second only to God.

But it has not stopped them from fighting back. Residents sponsored a ballot measure designed to scuttle the 3,850-home Westpark II development, but the measure lost by a thin margin last month after Irvine Co. waged a $600,000 campaign against it. Buoyed by the close vote, residents now talk of new petition drives to block development.

Irvine Co. executives react publicly as if they would have it no other way.

“The essence of democracy is self-governance,” Watson said. “One of the yokes of democracy is that there are sometimes conflicts.”

Watson likes to talk of Irvine as if it is a giant jigsaw puzzle, with the company slowly and carefully filling in the pieces. But make no mistake; Irvine is a work in progress.

A hospital was only recently built and the city has no central shopping mall. Some residents complain that the Irvine Co.’s tight control on the retail mix has created a city that is the world capital of chain restaurants.

A few homeowners contend that the Irvine Co., in its drive to make the city perfect, has succeeded only in creating a town that is dull. Young adults complain about a dearth of bars and nightspots.

But when it comes to tedium, Irvine’s teen-agers say they are the experts. The tidy landscaping and rising property values prized by a parent do not much please the 17-year-old set. Instead, they flee to Newport Beach or Balboa for fun.

“It’s a city under glass,” groused Zach Zietlow, 16, who favors black leather and a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt. “I’ve lived a lot of places, and this is one of the weirdest. It’s boring, it’s dull. There are some seriously demented people here.”

There are also some pretty serious pupils. Nine of 10 high school students in the city end up going to college. The school district’s test scores are among the best in the state.

But some students say it is not enough. In Irvine, the kids gripe sarcastically that they are not street-wise. They are greenbelt-wise.

“I’m afraid if I go out into the world I won’t be prepared for life’s struggles,” said Nazanin Nodjoumi, 17. “They cushion us so much. It’s very unreal, very protected.”

Some adult residents also experience a dose of frustration. While a recent poll by the community newspaper found more than four of five Irvinites love the community, some people say they have arrived only out of necessity.

“This is going to be my second Christmas in the hinterlands,” sighed Elaine Clough, who moved to Irvine from Newport Beach with her children in 1990. “I came here for the same reasons a lot of women leave Newport Beach--a divorce. You vow you never will live in Irvine. But it’s the universe’s way of getting back at you.”

Clough is only half joking. Irvine may have always been a bad dream to her, but now the community provides a welcome stability. She is confident that her home will grow in value. Her children go to a good school. The family has a dog, two cats, a cockatoo, a rabbit and a turtle.

Things could be a lot worse.

“Sure, it’s a default community,” she said. “I didn’t come to Irvine because I thought it was a wonderful place. I came because it was somewhere that would be OK for my children.

“Now I know these people who live in that sea of terra cotta that I used to scorn. And they’re quite interesting people really. You’ve just got to get behind the doors to see the individuals.”

Irvine By the Numbers

POLITICAL AFFILIATION/VOTING

Registered Voters

Irvine Orange County Democrats 28% 34% Republicans 59% 56% Others 13% 10%

How They Voted (November, 1990)

Measure M sales tax

Irvine Orange County Yes 63% 54% No 37% 46%

Prop. 128--Big Green

Irvine Orange County Yes 34% 30% No 66% 70%

Prop. 134--”Nickel A Drink”

Irvine Orange County Yes 32% 28% No 68% 72%

Prop. 140--Term Limits

Irvine Orange County Yes 57% 60% No 43% 40%

Prop. 147--County Jail Bonds

Irvine Orange County Yes 39% 35% No 61% 65%

INCOME

Household Income Distribution (1991 estimated)

Irvine Orange County Less than $25,000 13% 21% $25,000-$49,999 30% 30% $50,000-$74,999 26% 24% $75,000-$99,999 15% 13% $100,000 and more 16% 12% Median Household Income $57,609 $48,993 Average Household Income 65,500 56,857 Per Capita Income 24,785 19,618

HOUSING

Monthly Rent Paid

Irvine Orange County Less than $500 11% 11% $500-$749 15% 45% $750-$1,000 39% 29% More than $1,000 35% 15% Median Rent $913 $728

Home Values (Homeowner self-evaluation)

Irvine Orange County Less than $100,000 1% 2% $100,000-$149,999 3% 7% $150,000-$199,999 11% 18% $200,000-$249,999 17% 22% $250,000-$299,999 20% 17% $300,000 or more 48% 34% Median Home Value, 1990 $294,700 $252,700 Percent Increase 116.1% 133.8%

EDUCATION

CAP Scores (Grade/Subject)

Irvine State Average Average Grade 3 Reading 326 275 Writing 326 277 Math 320 283 Grade 6 Reading 308 261 Writing 313 268 Math 319 270

PERSONAL DEMOGRAPHICS

Racial/Ethnic Composition

Irvine Orange County Anglo 74% 65% Latino 6% 23% Black 2% 2% Asian/Pacific Islander 18% 10%

Note: other less than 1%

Education

Irvine Orange County Median Years of Education 14.4 13.4 College Graduates (% of adults) 34.7% 24.8%

Disposition of Children (under 18)

Irvine Orange County Live with parent(s) 96% 88% Live with other relative 3% 8% Live with non-relative 1% 3% Live in group quarters * 1%

* Less than 1%

Age Breakdown

Irvine Orange County 17 years or younger 24% 24% 18-34 years 33% 32% 35-54 32% 27% 55-64 5% 8% 65 & older 6% 9% Median Age 30.31 30.38

Sources: California Association of Realtors, Real Estate Council, City and Chamber Offices, California State Dept. of Education, Focus: Orange County, 1991, County of Orange Monitoring/Forecasting Services, Orange County Registrar of Voters. Researched by APRIL JACKSON / Los Angeles Times

IRVINE AT 20: A four-day report.

* Today: Residents and critics debate the city’s livability.

* Monday in View: Inside the city, neighborhoods confer status.

* Tuesday in Business: Because the city lacks department stores and specialty shops, shopping can be inconvenient.

* Wednesday in Calendar: The new Barclay Theater is struggling at the box office as it searches for an identity.