Valencia as a Suburb (CH 9)

Valencia is a suburb of a major metropolitan area known as Los Angeles. Valencia is the fourth largest city in Los Angeles County. Victor Gruen, who was a major player in developing American suburbia in the 1960's, was the architect of Valencia. For Valencia, he developed a compact center core with different styled neighborhoods connected by walkways known as the paseos. Valencia was very well planned out. A quote from an article on The economist.com says this about the planning of Valencia: "As one of the town's early planners explained, it would be “an island of reason in the path of metropolitan sprawl." But Valencia did not become the self contained community it was planned out to be. More than half of the residents of Valencia travel over the hill to Los Angeles for work and about the same number of people travel out to Valencia from Los Angeles for work. According to the article on The Economist.com this is an increasingly common pattern. It says that more than 45% of the available jobs are more than 10 miles outside of the city. This has changed the commute from suburb to city to city to suburb or even suburb to suburb.

Los Angeles grew quickly in the 20th century by using railroads and highways for their success. Los Angeles also had water transportation on it's side which helped the city grow even more rapidly. By the early 20th century, Los Angeles rivaled San Francisco as a major port of entry from Japan, and a gateway to the western United States. Los Angeles became the center for many suburbs and nearby towns and was labeled the regional business "Capital" for southern California and beyond. Los Angeles is just under New York in the urban hierarchy.

Valencia is a perfect example of a US edge city or booomburb which is a large and fast growing suburb. This is taken from an article on realtytimes.com and explains what is considered a boomburb. So what is a boomburb? "According to the Fannie Mae Foundation, a boomburb is an area that currently has more than 100,000 residents and has maintained double-digit rates of population growth in each recent decade, but is not the largest city in its metropolitan area. Boomburbs almost never have a dense central business area. And their housing, retail, entertainment, and offices are spread out and loosely configured. " An edge city is also a perfect way to describe Valencia. An edge city is also a great example of the multiple nuclei metropolitan model. Edge cities are large cities usually built by a single developer built near an urban area.

Valencia Transportation (CH 8)

The major freeways around Valencia is interstate 5 Golden State Freeway and Cal-14 Antelope Valley Freeway. Even though Valencia is in Los Angeles County, in and around Valencia does not have as bad of traffic as in Los Angeles. It is fairly recent that Santa Clarita became responsible for local transit, this was taken over by the city from Los Angeles in 1991. The Department of Public Works for Santa Clarita is in charge of monitoring traffic conditions to improve them and they also take care of the roads. The City of Santa Clarita Transit is the bus system in Valencia. There are buses that run between the smaller towns surrounding Valencia and then local buses that go from set focal points within Valencia. There is also what is called a commuter service bus that goes to certain popular business areas like dowtown LA, Century City, Van Nuys, Burbank, etc. It cost a $1 to ride the bus and you can buy a monthly pass for $25. For the commuter bus the fare is anywhere from $3.50 to $4.00 depending on what line you are on and you can buy a monthly pass for anywhere between $142.00 to $160.00. The bus routes also connect into the metrolink system. There is a metrolink station off of Soledad Canyon. The metrolink is the train that runs throughout California. This particular metrolink is serviced bu the Antelope Valley train and runs from Los Angeles Union Station to Lancaster. There is also what is called the Santa Clara River Trail, this is an eight mile paved bike/walking trail that runs through Valencia and connects it with the surrounding towns. This trail is in close connection to the letrlink stations and transit stops which makes it easy for riders to bike to their pick up destination. There are even bicycle lockers at all the metrolink stations.

I would say that Valencia is a pretty well planned out community when it comes to getting around. Not only do they have access to local transportation but there is access to the metrolink. On top of that there is an extensive group of paths used for travel. There is over sixty miles of trails and pasoes used for reacreational and commuting purposes. They can be used to get to the many transit stops or just to get around Valencia to many of the fun destinations like Magic Mountain or Valencia Towne Center. These trails are also used for biking, skating, joggin or walking. These trails are maintained by Santa Clarita's Parks, Recreation, and Community Services.

As far as commuting by air, Burbank airport is the closest airport with LAX not being too far away.