Joel Kotkin, a Southern Californian and noted urbanologist, was a guest on Rick Reiff’s KOCE program “Inside OC” a few months back. Kotkin was promoting his book, “The City: A Global History” (Modern Library Chronicles). Reiff wanted to know whether Kotkin considered Orange County,a collection of decentralized communities lacking a genuine downtown,a city in the classical sense. His answer, as you will see in this excerpt, was yes. Moreover, Kotkin’s remarks suggest that in some ways, post-industrial Orange County is more like the great European cities than most of its older American counterparts. For more about Kotkin, go to www.joelkotkin.com.
Joel, is Orange County a city?
Orange County is a prototype of a new city, and this is the city that is developing all over the world, not just here in the United States.
It’s a city that’s built on the structure of cars and of subdivisions and of suburbs, but has evolved into its own entity. Orange County is really its own entity.
One clear sign of it is that more people come into Orange County to work than people from Orange County go out to work. So from the beginning, that says Orange County is really an economic unit that draws other people in. That’s one of the major characteristics of a city.
Orange County also has its own culture, its own religious community. It’s very much its own unit at this stage of the game, and frankly, a prototype for what you’re seeing around the world.
Why is it then, that even somebody like myself, who buys the idea that Orange County is a city, senses there’s something that seems to be missing?
Well, it’s a different kind of a city, and I think you would say that about Los Angeles 30, 40, 50 years ago. People looked at L.A.,”That’s not a city.”
I gave a speech at the Harvard Global Cities Conference, and the people from London and Boston say, “L.A. and Houston, they’re not cities, they’re not real cities. A real city is defined by looking a certain way.” But I would look at it historically.
Somebody coming from the Italian city-states, looking at the industrial cities of 19th century Britain would say, “That’s not a city. A city looks like this. A city doesn’t look like that.” So every epoch has a different definition of the city, and all of them are the city.
Name a few other of these new cities around the country that are similar to Orange County.
Fort Bend County outside of Houston, around the area known as the Woodlands, really has become its own city. Cobb County around Atlanta now is really more and more its own city, more and more self-sufficient. This is where suburbs, if you want to use that term, are going. They’re becoming their own entities. They are depending less and less on the traditional urban core.
What you see is the development, not just here but in places all over the country and all over the world. It’s very interesting what’s happening in France. My wife’s family is from Paris, and the outer rings of Paris have become, in a funny way, their own city with one of the most alluring big cities of the world at their doorstep.
Here in Southern California, is traffic congestion causing communities to begin looking inward more and developing their own identities?
Yeah, I think traffic is really a key factor. One of the Valley secession leaders said to me, “We have secession,it’s called traffic.”
Essentially, what happens, if you live in the San Fernando Valley, or you live in Orange County, you are really loathe to go to downtown Los Angeles for anything.
That’s why I think some of this vainglorious stuff that they’re trying to do in downtown L.A. is absurd. If they think that people from Pasadena, or from the San Fernando Valley, or the Westside, much less Orange County, are going to go to an ersatz Champs-Elys & #233;es in downtown L.A., they’re insane.
I went to see a play with my wife, “As You Like It.” It took us an hour and 15 minutes, and we live 14 miles from downtown L.A.
So the reality is that these suburban units are almost by necessity creating their own economies, their own services. You get your own doctors nearby. You used to go into downtown to go to the doctor, you don’t do that anymore. The lawyers, the accountants, the shopping,and now, culture.
I think that what’s going on now with the Orange County Performing Arts Center makes it a first-class venue and really there is no reason to go to Los Angeles for performing arts anymore.
In OC you have these different pockets. You have the culture there by the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Anaheim is trying to do a Gaslamp District-type of feel. Irvine is the job center. Is that uncommon?
I think it’s uncommon in the short run. But one of the things I’ve been writing about a lot and it’s in “The City,” is that the idea of downtown where everything comes together,you know, the Petula Clark “Downtown”,is a recent concept.
The word “downtown” didn’t make it into Webster’s until the early 20th century. It was an artifact of an era of industrialization and the use of trains at a particular time.
You go to the great European cities and they don’t have downtowns.
Tell me, what’s downtown Paris? Where is downtown London? There are a bunch of specialized districts which have evolved for their own reasons and they have their own functions.
