RE: Nerdistan

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From: Jim Whitehead (ejw@ics.uci.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 27 2000 - 16:56:48 PST


Well, I do know someone who was given a jaywalking ticket in Irvine. As
someone who was raised in the Boston area, I found this pretty amusing. It
is nice to be able to walk around at night and feel safe, though.

> "nerdistans", like Irvine, an Orange County suburb which is dominated by
> high-tech companies and seems to treat jaywalking as a newsworthy crime.

However, "Orange County" is a county, not a town or city, and the county
itself does not constitute a proper city center, so Irvine cannot be a
suburb of Orange County. Irvine really isn't a suburb of Los Angeles either,
at least not in the traditional sense. I doubt many people living in Irvine
commute up to the Los Angeles city center to work on a daily basis. If you
can afford to live in Irvine, you can afford to live much closer to Los
Angeles. Since Irvine itself has a major job center in the Irvine Spectrum,
as well as many office parks on the Tustin/Santa Ana side, Irvine itself is
a commuter destination. But, Tustin, Newport Beach, and Costa Mesa really
cannot be considered suburbs of Irvine either. Laguna Beach can be
considered a suburb, but of what I'm not sure. It doesn't consider Irvine to
be its cultural center -- much the reverse I think.

In short, the old city center/suburb distinction doesn't provide much
explanatory power when describing Orange County.

- Jim


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