The OC: No Longer Sprawling, Thank You Very Much

Via Andrew Sullivan, the table on the right shows the most compact, least sprawling large metro areas in the United States. New York is number 1, no surprise, and I’ve read enough about the “myth” of LA sprawl that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Los Angeles on the list. But no. Los Angeles ranks 21st. Oddly enough, though, take a look at what region breaks the top ten: Orange County, aka Santa Ana/Anaheim/Irvine.

How did that happen? Orange Country is practically the dictionary definition of suburb, after all. Well, it turns out that scores are based on four factors, and Orange County does very well on three of them: development density, land use mix, and street connectivity. But I still don’t really get this. Sure, Orange County is fully developed, but almost exclusively by low-density housing and low-slung office buildings. Land use mix is probably OK, since Orange County is old enough to have turned into one of Joel Garreau’s “edge cities,” regions that provide both bedrooms and jobs. As for street accessibility, our high score must be a technicality of some kind. Sure, we have lots of four-way intersections, but outside of a few small downtown centers, no one would really consider any of Orange County walkable in the usual urban sense.

So I still don’t get it. But it doesn’t matter. The OC is now officially off limits for your mockery of sterile, suburban sprawl. We’re more compact and accessible than Chicago, Detroit, or Denver. So there. More details here.