Less Will Be More When We Destroy O.C.

Enough looking back at the last 100 years. It’s time to look ahead.

Can anyone picture Orange County in 2099?

I can.

It will no longer exist.

At least, I hope not.

No, I’m not predicting a calamitous event, like the Newport-Inglewood fault sending all of us toppling into the sea. Nor will everyone move to Nevada. Nor will Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego counties combine paramilitary forces in mid-century and squeeze us in a giant pincers movement.

To the contrary, my vision is grandly optimistic and imagines Orange County as one of the envied metropolises of the next century.

To achieve that, however, the county must dismantle itself.

It must become a city.

With all due respect to Rancho Santa Margarita, which yesterday became the county’s 33rd city, do we really need another one?

Turning Cities Into Neighborhoods

The county has been mutating since 1878 when Anaheim incorporated. Within 10 years, Santa Ana and Orange came along. Everyone should have stopped there and reconsidered. Instead, we’ve added eight cities since 1970 and four in the 1990s alone (counting Rancho Santa Margarita).

We’re going in the wrong direction.

Why a city?

Here’s why: Athens. Rome. Paris. Venice. San Francisco. London. New York. Berlin.

Each, in its own time and way, has embodied the best in the human experience. Each enriched the lives of people and became beacons of culture and social advancement.

They did it because they insisted on being special. They built museums and opera houses and bridges and universities. Lesser places built them too--but the great cities built them better.

Orange County has Bowers Museum, but why not a Louvre?

Yes, each great city on my list is also flawed. But that’s the beauty of becoming a 21st century city. We study their history. We learn from their mistakes. We perfect the form.

Try this: Erase “Orange County” from your mind and imagine a city, instead. Picture a dynamic, visionary mayor--not five county supervisors and an anonymous chief executive officer whom not two citizens out of 10 could currently identify or recognize.

Erase 33 cities and replace them with one city and multiple neighborhoods, some of which would forge identities as surely as Nob Hill in San Francisco, Greenwich Village in New York, French Quarter in New Orleans.

If Orange County were a city today, its 2.7 million people would make it the fourth-largest in the country. Even allowing for census counts that include expanded metropolitan areas, Orange County would rank 17th.

On sheer size alone, our 790 square miles would make us among the handful of largest cities. My check of the almanac shows only Jacksonville, Fla., with its 758 square miles, as even in the ballpark in the 48 contiguous states. Anchorage is more than twice Orange County’s size, but I’d suggest its chances of becoming a crown jewel in the next century are nil.

As a city, we’d immediately become more interesting. We’d offer an eclectic combination of beautiful seaside vistas, high-tech centers and century-old neighborhoods--all in a city that learned how to celebrate and capitalize on demographic diversity.

We would become a model for the 21st century.

Civic pride alone would fuel great achievements. In ways that Rancho Santa Margarita or Huntington Beach and San Clemente will never do for themselves in the next century, they could contribute to lasting culture and social monuments.

Each would become part of something larger and more meaningful than themselves. We would have the long-awaited “core,” the long sought-after “soul” whose absence is often lamented around here.

It won’t happen soon, but why not by mid-century? Think of nothing less than the glory of ancient Rome, the romance of Paris, the beauty of Bangkok.

The new city would need a new name. I hope it’ll be catchy and futuristic.

Something like . . . Parsonia.

Aha. Parsonia, Calif.

The place to be in the 21st century.

*

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to: dana.parsons@latimes.com