Today these two aspects of the Valley—its success as a place and its limitations—define the current dilemma of its communities. The level of negativism about the Valley grew dramatically over the 1990s based on the declines in public schools, increases in crime, loss of quality of life, and in some cases, fear of ethnic changes.
By the end of the 1990s, according to a Los Angeles Times poll, nearly twice as many Valley residents believed life in their communities had gotten worse rather than better.18 This kind of disenchantment threatens the future of the Valley as much as any single factor. This has manifested itself in out-migration to regions such as the Conejo Valley, the secession movement, and in strong opposition to virtually all types of development and growth.19 Such expressions of concern were seen in the Rose survey,20 which evinced concern about such things as overtaxing the infrastructure, along with concerns over air and water pollution.
These attitudes also affect commercial development. Nancy Tullos, Human Resource Manager at Broadcom, a technology firm that relocated in the late 1990s from Los Angeles to Irvine, recalls how in a previous job for a company located in the San Fernando Valley, she was forced to route their travels carefully so that visitors would avoid adjacent strip malls, decaying barrios and abandoned defense plants. "I used to give them maps to get there so they would not have to come up and see what's on De Soto Avenue," she recalls mirthfully.
Yet in many ways, the potential for outlying areas such as the Conejo Valley, or the Antelope Valley, to serve as escape routes for Valley residents may also be declining. For one thing, rising housing prices and gridlocked freeways have made life in the outlying areas increasingly unpleasant.21 In addition, areas such as the Conejo Valley, indeed the bulk of both Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, have become more and more inhospitable to development. The apparent defeat of the massive Ahmanson Ranch plan, on the north end of Los Angeles County, suggests that the prospect for massive new housing developments in peripheral areas could be dismal indeed.
Although such anti-growth sentiments place great pressures on the Valley, they also provide great opportunities for becoming a new hub of creative growth for the region. With the most rapid population and economic growth occurring on its northern fringe,22 particularly in technology and high-end services, the Valley has emerged as the one place that is relatively convenient to the historic downtown core, the prosperous Westside and the burgeoning suburban Nerdistan on the periphery. Indeed, a 1999 poll of Valley residents found twice as many cited locational convenience as their reason for living there than any other factor.23
The Valley's renewed strength can be seen in its economy. Both job creation and office occupancy have outperformed the rest of Los Angeles.24 This performance contradicts Minnesota legislator Myron Orfield's popular notion—popular at least among policy intellectuals, some politicians and the media— that older suburbs constitute a kind of new victim region, exploited by the expanding, more affluent peripheral suburbs. 25 Whatever its problems, America's Suburb is not in danger of becoming America's next crabgrass slum.26
Much of this vitality stems from the Valley's increasing attractiveness to immigrants and other newcomers to the region. Almost completely white in the 1950s, today the Valley is roughly 50% minority. In the 1960s the Valley was about 90% white, and was nearly 75% white as late as 1980. By 1997, according to County estimates, Latinos accounted for approximately 39% of the Valley population, while Asians accounted for some 10% of the total.27
Perhaps most important of all is the fact that the Valley still maintains a relatively egalitarian character. Where as the L.A. south of the mountains is increasingly a city divided between Westside rich and eastside poor, the Valley remains predominately a middleclass haven. The Valley is not about extremes of either wealth or poverty; only four of Los Angeles' fifty richest people live there, compared to nineteen for Beverly Hills. But then again, the Valley also experiences lower rates of unemployment and houses a relatively smaller fraction of the City's poor. The Valley also has far higher concentrations of selfemployed people in its private sector workforce than the Los Angeles County average. Its average levels of income are slightly higher than the norms for the City or County of L.A.; and its poverty rates, even in the northeast Valley are considerably lower.28,
Although an increasing percentage of residents live in apartments and condominiums, the Valley also still epitomizes hopes for many: the great middleclass ideal of owning a home in a sunny, well-lit, comfortable community. At a time real estate prices on the Westside and the Conejo Valley are well out of the range of all but the affluent, the Valley is still affordable to a sizable portion of Angelenos, with above average levels of home ownership. This applies not only to the most affluent, predominantly Anglo sections of the Valley, but to the heavily Latino, and poorer northeast Valley as well. 29
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