Anaheim
sign an inaccurate portrayal of city
Bradley
Zint
While
taking the bus along Katella Avenue I
look out the window and see a big fat
lie on the border between Garden Grove
and Anaheim. Most people probably don’t
pay attention, but I notice. And it urks
me so.
The lie is a sign, suspended in the air on a pole. It bears the following friendly
inscription: “Welcome to Anaheim.”
The lie is not that the Anaheim sign is located in the wrong place and incorrectly
welcomes people to say, Stanton. It’s that behind the text is an idyllic
picture, a paradise even.
The sign, which is actually Anaheim’s
official city seal, is a pretty picture
of an orange grove complete with
a farmhouse, tower-like things on
the foothills and a view of the Santa Ana Mountains.
Someone please tell me which part of Anaheim looks like that. Someone please
inform me where are the rolling, grass-covered hills teeming with bunny rabbits
and fruit trees.
Oh, wait. Nobody can show me any of those things because Anaheim doesn’t
look like that. It doesn’t even look like that on its best day.
It doesn’t look like that because within the last 50 years or so,
Anaheim and all of north Orange County effectively bulldozed its farmland,
fields and
beauty. In their stead came what I believe to be a nasty replacement.
There is smog that, on most days, covers the mountain views with poor visibility
conditions, ridiculous traffic on roads too small to handle the commuting
population (which explains why it takes me 10 minutes to make a left-hand
turn), liquor
stores on almost every block, industrial parks and a seemingly endless amount
of suburban housing tracts. There is no passive land in sight anymore.
Instead of the idyllic Anaheim I see on that sign while taking the bus,
I see the “real Anaheim.” It’s the Anaheim of paved streets beautifully
decorated from oil stains from leaky cars instead of fertile soil and fields.
It’s the Anaheim with lots of cheap mobile homes and apartments
instead of lots lined with orange groves.
It’s the Anaheim with homeless people sleeping at the bus stops
instead of Old MacDonald inspecting his crops.
You tell me which Anaheim is better.
In the end, I see the welcome sign as a visual euphemism of a past long since
built over.
So why, then, is the city embracing a not-too-distant history that it so
effectively destroyed only a few decades ago? Why does the city make so many
references
to oranges and groves after it built over them?
The references are numerous. A new shopping center is going to be named “Garden
Walk” (a development which will heavily increase the already overcrowded
streets there).
The Amtrak Station at Angel Stadium has a special little garden. There are
numerous logos of an orange along the walls of the Garden Grove Freeway.
And yet, where are the oranges? Where have all the oranges gone?
Anaheim so affectionately embracing its serene agricultural roots after effectively
building over its farmland is like Gettysburg, Pa., embracing its Civil War
history after putting tract housing all over the Gettysburg Battlefield.
But I guess there’s not much I or anyone else can really do about
the matter. History is what it is, for better or for worse.
Because the Los Angeles area, which, believe it or not, includes Anaheim,
has basically exploded in population and housing demand within the past
100 years,
it’s no real surprise that “Los Angelization,” a localized
word for urban sprawl, was bound for the once quiet, agricultural, backwoods
of Orange County.
Los Angelization is what we have here in most of Los Angeles and Orange counties
today: rapid and expansive growth of the metropolitan area without proper
planning beforehand.
This is why we have too many people on too few roads. They served a horse
and buggy or a small automobile and were meant for thousands of people instead
of the millions that are there today.
We have ridiculously long commutes with thousands driving daily from places
like Santa Ana to Burbank or Santa Monica to Irvine, further contributing
to air pollution, car dependency and traffic jams.
What the Los Angeles area should have done during those decades was promote
what is now called “smart growth.”
Smart growth principles include actually planning in advance for future transportation
needs like building sufficient infrastructure, public transportation and
freeways with enough lanes for the rush hour.
Smart growth also promotes keeping things local, meaning people live and
work in the same small area. This combats urban sprawl and is the opposite
idea
of commuting 60 miles to work a day.
In addition, smart growth attempts to preserve natural environments. This
means developers will not tear down all the trees or build on all the open
fields.
So, relating back to my beginning, how could smart growth have been implemented
in Anaheim thus making the “Welcome to Anaheim” sign a little
more realistic, the roads less congested and the air cleaner?
For one thing, there could have been more high-density homes and jobs nearby
so people could walk or bike to work instead of driving.
This would decrease both the traffic and air pollution. Harbor Boulevard
left-turns would no longer be 10 minutes of waiting.
Secondly, instead of urbanizing every available acre, land could have been
set aside for agriculture, natural preservation or passive open space. There
still would be orange groves left. There still would have been fields full
of bunny rabbits to meander about.
Only then would Anaheim actually look like its city seal. Oh well, too late
now.
Bradley Zint is a senior journalism and political science major and the
managing editor of the Summer Forty-Niner.
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