They’ll Fight for Their Lives : Despite Encroaching Ills, Many Suburb Residents Vow to Persevere to Save Dreams

They came dreaming of horse trails and baseball diamonds, of single-family homes tastefully designed to blend with the environment.

They pretty much found what they came looking for.

But their delight was hard to keep under wraps. As word of these suburban havens spread, populations swelled. And growth has inevitably spawned more crime, more traffic, and more smog--the very things they sought to escape in the first place.

With alarm, residents who fled urban centers and aging suburbs two to three decades ago feel a sense of deja vu. This time, though, instead of fleeing, they’re fighting.

“We dreamed that we could build our paradise here and enjoy it afterward,” Thousand Oaks Councilwoman Elois Zeanah said. “Well, we’ve built it. Now we have to maintain it.”

That dream has managed to survive, even thrive, for decades in Thousand Oaks and other communities on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Founded in the late 1960s and early 1970s, these beige suburbs attracted upscale refugees who still believed in the boundless possibilities of life in Southern California.

Families fed up with the hodgepodge development and stop-and-go traffic of the San Fernando Valley crept westward to Ventura County and northward to the Antelope Valley. Folks tired of the increasing urban woes of northern Orange County fled southwest to Irvine and master-planned communities tucked into the foothills.

The dream has been good enough to hold on to, despite the doomsday hyperbole of the national media.

The dreamers have suffered through earthquakes, of course, and fires, floods and a stubborn recession. But still they find, in these far-flung suburbs, communities fit for raising kids and spoiling grandkids. They find homes to grow up, grow old and retire in.

They describe their dreams with a buzzword phrase: quality of life.

With that cliche, they encompass everything that has made their neighborhoods so special: clean air, safe streets, good soccer leagues for the kids. Top-ranked public schools. Red-tile roofs and back-yard pools. Family hiking trails, a public golf course, a regional mall.

“It’s Beaver Cleaverville,” said Irvine resident Ron Witter, summing it all up.

Watering his immaculate lawn in the Los Angeles County suburb of West Hills, Todd Nathanson posed no brain-stretching theories about Southern California’s crumbling mythology. He spewed no diatribes about the fading City of Angels.

“The California Dream?” he said, shrugging matter-of-factly. “This is it.”

Nathanson’s blue-and-cream house sits midway between two family destinations: a major shopping center and a craggy hiking trail. In just a few minutes, he can reach the mall rats or the mountain lions, depending on which way he turns from his driveway.

“We’ve got a house, a garden, money, clothes,” Nathanson said, as his 3-year-old daughter, Rebecca, cavorted on the lawn with her stuffed Barney dinosaur. “I don’t need anything else.”

These days, of course, even well-bred suburbs can’t escape the now-standard litany of Southern California ills. They have smog, sometimes even bad enough to force a health warning. They have traffic, sometimes gridlock, on local streets. They have crime--graffiti, theft, now and then a carjacking.

Yet they still have an allure.

“A lot of people sitting in Minnesota on Jan. 1, watching the Rose Bowl parade, see this as a dream,” said Larry Janss, whose family members were pioneer developers of Thousand Oaks and Westwood in Los Angeles County. “A big back yard, a red-tile roof, 2.3 kids, a bicycle in the driveway.”

Above all, the dream revolves around safety. Irvine and Thousand Oaks remain two of the safest cities in the nation with populations above 100,000, according to FBI statistics. Residents don’t leave their doors unlocked, but they do stroll freely on the streets and feel secure in their homes.

A similar peace prevails in smaller communities sprinkled throughout Ventura, Los Angeles and Orange counties.

In Moorpark, for example, where the two-lane freeway winds through breathtaking canyons and curves past acres of orange groves. In Calabasas, where gated communities hide homes with lush lawns and drought-resistant flower beds. In Rancho Santa Margarita, where the annual fiesta rodeo evokes the rustic Old West and gives city slickers a chance to try steer wrestling.

Other suburbs, too, can claim a piece of the dream: Westlake Village and Agoura Hills, Mission Viejo and Dove Canyon, places with good views, nice neighbors and solid schools.

“There aren’t a lot of exciting things to do here, but that’s OK because it’s supposed to be a bedroom community,” said Arnold Berman, 62, a retired school principal who raised his son and daughter in Irvine. “It’s a nice, clean area with good family values.”

In pursuit of clean air and family activities, the dreamscape cities spare no costs.

Irvine, for example, posts its own version of SigAlert signs to warn cyclists when a bike path is closed for repairs. And Thousand Oaks builds playgrounds made entirely from recycled plastic set on squishy cushioning that prevents scraped knees.

What’s more, the neighborhoods stay relentlessly residential, no stores or industries fouling the air or jamming the streets.

From the bedroom window of her Thousand Oaks condo, Lorrette Weber can see a soaring, grassy hill--and sometimes, she glimpses a bold coyote, deer or fawn. “It’s heavenly to look out there,” she said.

Carefully planned “open space,” divided between parks and trails and untamed hills, lets residents enjoy the toasty Southern California weather that lured them west in the first place. For what California Dream could be complete without twisting oaks and swaying palms, postcard sunsets and bright blue skies?

Teresa and Avery Mittman can attest to the powerful pull of California weather. They gave up a shot at homeownership in Kansas to rent a townhouse in Irvine. Though they’ve struggled a bit to scrape by in Orange County, the Mittmans are glad to be rid of snow shovels and indoor gyms, frigid winters and treacherous, ice-laden roads.

As with most of life, the dream has its trade-offs. There may be less traffic in Idaho, but few relish driving in seemingly endless harsh winters. There may be less smog in Oregon, but who wants to spend months indoors waiting out the rainy season? There may be less crime in Arizona, but is that worth enduring 115-degree days?

Te Mittmans proclaim themselves willing to put up with the inconveniences of Irvine--including tough commutes--in order to enjoy the good weather and good schools. And an added attraction for visiting relatives: They’re near all the tourist meccas.

“It’s perfect here,” Teresa Mittman said. “My family can even come vacation while they’re visiting us--they can stay with us and go to Disneyland or Universal Studios.”

Part of that perceived perfection lies in Southern California’s unique terrain.

“I have to laugh when I’m on the freeway and I see a car going one way with a surfboard on top and another car going the other way with skis,” said Thousand Oaks resident Cathy Schutz, a satisfied dreamer.

“If you don’t like the outdoors, you might have different feelings,” she added, “but I would never go back to New England. I’ve never been disillusioned with California. I will stay forever.”

But the enduring allure of these suburbs alarms some veteran suburbanites. Each new family that moves into a community brings more traffic and more trash. And criminals see more potential victims.

To give the new arrivals their spacious two-car garages and sparkling back-yard pools, developers pave over strawberry fields and rip out lemon trees. To pay for their schools and services, politicians must woo big businesses with big sales-tax potential.

“The dream is strangling itself,” Larry Janss said.

Urban planner William Fulton offers a simple prescription.

No longer can suburbanites expect quarter-acre lots and street after street of single-family homes. Even more dramatically, Fulton predicts that dreamers will have to adapt to new neighbors--neighbors of different races, different ethnic backgrounds and different income levels.

“The demographic change in California is unbelievable, and the economic change has been so dramatic that it’s hard to know whether we can continue to support so many wealthy suburbs,” Fulton said.

Already, once-white suburbs have opened up to middle-class families of diverse backgrounds. Irvine’s population is 18% Asian and more than 6% Latino, although less than 2% of the residents are black. In Thousand Oaks, nearly one in ten residents is Latino. And Fulton expects these suburbs to become ever more diverse.

Resisting change, some communities’ stubborn dreamers have walled their tracts off with gates and guards, a trend Fulton calls “cocooning in smaller and smaller cocoons.”

Others plan to get out, to sell their homes in tony suburbs and use the cash to buy huge, unspoiled ranches out in the boondocks of Central California.

After 17 years in Irvine, for example, Roger Rostvold can’t wait to move. Standing on his shaded street, next to his black Peugeot and white Jaguar, he said his dream has gone bust.

“The question of the day is, why would this guy want to leave all this?” he mused.

The answers of the day: fear, disgust and anger. Rostvold’s scared to go to one of his favorite restaurants, where gangbangers mill in the parking lot.

And he’s fed up with the vile graffiti scrawled across freeway sound walls. “We’re counting the days until we get out,” he said.

For every dreamer who quits the suburbs in disgust, however, others remain, determined to preserve their vaunted “quality of life.”

Retired carpet installer Tom Villanueva said he would not consider leaving West Hills, a shaded community of cozy homes impervious to the neon glare and angry horns of nearby San Fernando Valley streets. Here, Villanueva and his wife, Lucille, have found their dream: puttering in the garden, relaxing in the sunshine, chatting with the mailman on his daily rounds.

“We’re pretty content,” Villanueva said, “right where we’re at.”