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.
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. 
