University Park | |
---|---|
Neighborhood | |
Coordinates: 33°39′45″N117°48′57″W / 33.66261820253613°N 117.8159448642127°W | |
Country | United States |
State | California |
County | Orange |
City | Irvine |
Area | |
• Total | 595 acres (241 ha) |
Time zone | UTC-8 |
• Summer (DST) | UTC-7 |
ZIP | 92612 |
Area code(s) | 714, 949 |
University Park is a master-planned neighborhood in Irvine, California. It is bounded by University Drive to the south, Culver Drive to the west, and the San Diego (I-405) Freeway to the north. Commercially advertised as Irvine's first "village", the neighborhood was named University Park due to its proximity to the University of California, Irvine. University Park celebrated its 50th anniversary in July 2016. [1]
University Park was built in phases beginning in 1965 shortly after plans for a nearby University of California campus were announced. The neighborhood, whose opening predates Irvine's city-hood by five years, [2] was envisioned to attract buyers from a wide range of demographics and was designed to offer various housing types to meet the diverse needs of its target residents. [3] Designed in collaboration with Peter Walker, Dick Law, and Kalvin Platt of Sasaki, Walker and Associates, the neighborhood utilized the Garden City approach to planning by designing clusters of homes to face publicly-accessible park areas and greenbelts tucked away from principal roadways in order to create a lower dependence on automobiles. [4] These greenbelts were also designed to link neighborhoods and amenities in the neighborhood, including schools, shopping centers, the library, and recreation areas. At the time of its construction, the neighborhoods's planning concepts were considered experimental, such as the use of rectangular cul-de-sacs containing greenery in the center. Home sales initially were slow due to the neighborhood's isolation from other built-up areas and also due to the incompletion of the nearby I-405 freeway. [5] However, upon its eventual completion, the neighborhood contained Irvine's first library, high school, and retail shopping center.
University Park comprises multiple neighborhoods and associations [6] and contains a high concentration of community facilities and amenities. In addition to its greenbelts and bikeways, the neighborhood contains community facilities, parks, schools, religious institutions, a library, commercial centers, adjacency to open space and recreational areas, and access to transportation.
Orange County is a county located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,186,989, making it the third-most-populous county in California, the sixth-most-populous in the United States, and more populous than 19 American states and Washington, D.C. Although largely suburban, it is the second-most-densely-populated county in the state behind San Francisco County. The county's three most-populous cities are Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Irvine, each of which has a population exceeding 300,000. Santa Ana is also the county seat. Six cities in Orange County are on the Pacific coast: Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Dana Point, and San Clemente.
Greater Los Angeles is the most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. state of California, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino County and Riverside County in the east, with Los Angeles County in the center, and Orange County to the southeast. The Los Angeles–Anaheim–Riverside combined statistical area (CSA) covers 33,954 square miles (87,940 km2), making it the largest metropolitan region in the United States by land area. The contiguous urban area is 2,281 square miles (5,910 km2), whereas the remainder mostly consists of mountain and desert areas. With a population of 18.4 million in 2024, it is the second-largest metropolitan area in the country, behind New York, as well as one of the largest megacities in the world.
Laguna Niguel is a city in Orange County, California, United States. The name Laguna Niguel is derived from the words "Laguna" and "Niguili". As of the 2020 census, the population was 64,355. Laguna Niguel is located in the San Joaquin Hills in the southeastern corner of Orange County, close to the Pacific Ocean, and borders the cities of Aliso Viejo, Dana Point, Laguna Beach, Laguna Hills, Mission Viejo, and San Juan Capistrano.
The Irvine Company LLC is an American private company focused on real estate development. It is headquartered in Newport Beach, California, with a large portion of its operations centered in and around Irvine, California, a planned city of more than 300,000 people mainly designed by the Irvine Company. The company was founded by the Irvine family and is currently wholly owned by Donald Bren.
The Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) is the transportation planning commission for Orange County, California in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. OCTA is responsible for funding and implementing transit and capital projects for the transportation system in the county, including freeway expansions, express lane management, bus and rail transit operation, and commuter rail funding and oversight.
Interstate 405 is a major north–south auxiliary Interstate Highway in Southern California. The entire route is known as the northern segment of the San Diego Freeway. I-405 is a bypass auxiliary route of I-5, running along the southern and western parts of the Greater Los Angeles urban area from Irvine in the south to Sylmar in the north.
West Hills is a neighborhood in the western San Fernando Valley region of the city of Los Angeles, California. It is bordered by mountain ranges to the west and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Chatsworth to the north, Canoga Park to the east, and Woodland Hills to the south.
The El Toro "Y" is a freeway interchange in Irvine, California where the Santa Ana Freeway, Interstate 5 (I-5), and the San Diego Freeway merge. South of the El Toro Y, the highway is named the "San Diego Freeway" with the highway designation "I-5." Located in south Orange County, the interchange was named after the nearby city El Toro, and the now-closed Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, located northeast of the interchange.
West Los Angeles is an area within the city of Los Angeles, California, United States. The residential and commercial neighborhood is divided by the Interstate 405 freeway, and each side is sometimes treated as a distinct neighborhood, mapped differently by different sources. Each lies within the larger Westside region of Los Angeles County.
The Southern California freeways are a vast network of interconnected freeways in the megaregion of Southern California, serving a population of 23 million people. The Master Plan of Metropolitan Los Angeles Freeways was adopted by the Regional Planning Commission in 1947 and construction began in the early 1950s. The plan hit opposition and funding limitations in the 1970s, and by 2004, only some 61% of the original planned network had been completed.
State Route 73 (SR 73) is an approximately 17.76-mile (28.58 km) state highway in Orange County, California. The southernmost 12 miles (19.31 km) of the highway is a toll road operated by the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency named the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, which opened in November 1996. The northernmost 5.76 miles (9.27 km) of the highway, which opened in 1978, is part of the Corona del Mar Freeway. SR 73's southern terminus is at Interstate 5 (I-5) near the San Juan Capistrano–Mission Viejo–Laguna Niguel tripoint. Its northern terminus is at Interstate 405 (I-405) in Costa Mesa. The highway's alignment through the San Joaquin Hills follows an approximately parallel path between the Pacific Coast Highway and I-405. Currently, there are no HOV lanes for the three-mile freeway segment, but the medians have been designed with sufficient clearance for their construction should the need arise in the future.
Glassell Park is a neighborhood of Northeast Los Angeles, California, in the San Rafael Hills.
Irvine is the largest city and a master-planned city in central Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on December 28, 1971. The 66-square-mile (170 km2) city had a population of 307,670 at the 2020 census; it is the 63rd most populous city in the United States.
University Hills is a housing development on the campus of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in southern Irvine, California, United States, consisting of 1226 for-sale homes and 384 rental units. University Hills was developed by the Irvine Campus Housing Authority, a not-for-profit corporation under the control of the university. UC Irvine developed the area as "a way to compensate for high Orange County housing costs that can keep a recruit from accepting a job at the university."
Turtle Rock is a neighborhood in the south part of Irvine, Orange County, California, near Concordia University, Irvine and the University of California, Irvine. It is bounded to the north by University Drive and Mason Regional Park, to the east by the Strawberry Farms Golf Club and Ridgeline Drive, to the south by Shady Canyon Drive, and to the west by Culver Drive. Turtle Rock is one of the five "villages" originally forming Irvine; its 1967 founding is commemorated by a sculpture of a turtle in Turtle Rock Community Park, at the corner of Turtle Rock and Sunnyhill Drives. A two-lane internal loop road, Turtle Rock Drive, encircles the village and carries traffic between housing developments and the city's main streets.
Jamboree Road is a 15.8-mile (25.4 km) long major arterial road through Orange County, California, running through the cities of Newport Beach, Irvine, Tustin, and Orange.
The campus of the University of California, Irvine is known for its concentric layout with academic and service buildings arrayed around a central park, and for its Brutalist architecture.
San Diego Creek is a 16-mile (26 km) urban waterway flowing into Upper Newport Bay in Orange County, California in the United States. Its watershed covers 112.2 square miles (291 km2) in parts of eight cities, including Irvine, Tustin, and Costa Mesa. From its headwaters in Laguna Woods the creek flows northwest to its confluence with Peters Canyon Wash, where it turns abruptly southwest towards the bay. Most of the creek has been converted to a concrete flood control channel, but it also provides important aquatic and riparian habitat along its course and its tidal estuary.
Juanita Moe was a major proponent of bicycle trails in the early days of the city of Irvine, California. In the early 1970s Moe started an Ad Hoc bicycle trails committee to promote bicycle trails throughout the New City.
The Inland Empire is a metropolitan area or region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County to the east. The bulk of the population is centered in the cities of northwestern Riverside County and southwestern San Bernardino County, and is sometimes considered to include the desert communities of the Coachella and Victor Valleys, respectively on the other sides of the San Gorgonio Pass and San Bernardino Mountains from the Santa Ana River watershed that forms the bulk of the Inland Empire; a much broader definition includes all of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The combined land area of the counties of the Inland Empire is larger than ten U.S. states—West Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island.