Up Above: The Geography of Suburban Sprawl
in Southern California’s Antelope Valley

Matthew Jalbert

To borrow a phrase from Alice B. Toklas, in the 1980s, everything changed. The Antelope Valley was utterly transformed from a relatively small collection of two diminutive “cities” and a handful of dispersed communities to a vast assemblage of new homes carpeting the desert. Aerospace investment shot up thanks to a major military build-up instigated by the Reagan administration. And the economy shifted again, drawing significant wealth from the metropolis down below. Former residents of the Los Angeles Basin, willing to take on long commutes for the sake of an affordable single-family home, poured into the Antelope Valley. The Valley, and especially the city of Palmdale, became one of the fastest growing regions in California if not the nation. With this growth came a fundamental shift in the Valley’s “character” and in its economic relations both internally and to external sites. This growth—as it is so fresh and so showing of its warts—provides a unique chance to examine the impacts of sprawl in a marginal area.

•••

For years, as we have seen, explosive growth in the Antelope Valley was promoted and thus expected. Beside the various booster books, government agencies issued reports that also foresaw tremendous growth. A 1970 report from the Los Angeles Regional Planning Commission predicted “North County Area Population Expected to Reach 632,000 by 1990!” [Footnote #39] The Valley’s proximity to Los Angeles, its marketable climate, its seemingly inexhaustible water source from the California Aqueduct, and its huge tracts of undeveloped land made it a logical location for epic growth. Indeed, the pattern had already been established in previous spin-offs of Los Angeles. The closest parallel to the Antelope Valley was the postwar suburbanization of the San Fernando Valley. There, the most productive agricultural land in the United States was paved over to make way for the suburban aspirations of thousands of new Southern California residents. As that basin filled in, and as housing prices there were driven up, that compound we call “sprawl” oozed toward the last great expanse of cheap land in Los Angeles County: the Antelope Valley.

If passage of Proposition 13 and a severe housing shortage drove up home prices in the Los Angeles Basin as happened in the 1970s and 1980s, the Antelope Valley was to be the antidote to that phenomenon. Developers were quick to seize on the availability of land and the seemingly limitless tolerance of people for rush-hour commuting. Plentiful water, accommodating local regulatory agencies, and a growing sense of the need to escape from the pollution, congestion, and crime of Los Angeles further catalyzed the coming boom in the Antelope Valley.

As late as 1983, little was being said about the Antelope Valley in terms of growth—no doubt because it wasn’t extraordinary at that point. Lancaster made the news when it initiated a “downtown redevelopment” plan, a project doomed to mediocrity when the coming boom generated retail development in other areas on a scale exponentially larger. In 1985, the Los Angeles Department of Regional Planning estimated the Valley-wide population at 121,632; Lancaster accounted for 53,707 of that, while Palmdale had 13,358. The continuing importance of Edwards Air Force base as an employer is undoubtedly reflected in Lancaster’s larger size.
That same year, though, marked the start of the boom. This is seen most clearly in the number of building permits issued by the city of Lancaster. From a 1982 low of 198 single-family residences, 79 condominiums, and 434 apartments, in 1985 the city issued permits for 1,397 single-family residences, no condominiums, and 1,792 apartment units. The figure for single-family units dipped slightly to 1,134 and 1,252 in 1986 and 1987, picked up to 1,792 in 1988, then exploded in 1989 to 3,344 units [Footnote #40] (tables 1, 2, 3).

Palmdale experienced even more dramatic growth, probably because of its location a few miles closer to new residents’ jobs in the Los Angeles Basin. Its major single-family home-building spurt lagged behind Lancaster’s by a year or two, but eventually its growth would be legendary. Its annual growth, widely reported in national publications, was recorded in high double-digit percentages. From 1980 to 1990, Lancaster’s population went from 48,027 to 97,291, an increase of 103%. Palmdale’s population went from 12,277 to 68,842 between the same two U.S. censuses, an increase of 461%. As population skyrocketed from new residents moving into the area, the cities busily annexed new territory. The 1990 census reports Lancaster’s area at 88.9 square miles, a 140% increase over its originally incorporated area of 37 square miles. Palmdale held 77.8 square miles in 1990, a 1,197% increase over its six square mile original incorporation (tables 4, 5, 6,7).

Growth was never contested in the boom years of 1985–1989. Developers literally lined up at the doors of the Building and Safety office before they opened each day, to have their projects readily stamped “approved.” At the high point of the boom, lines lasted all day long as the Building and Safety permit office rubber-stamped thousands upon thousands of new homes. Annexation into the city came easily. Developers needed merely request annexation of a new subdivision on former farmland (or more rarely on untouched desert), often separated by several sections of undeveloped land. Lancaster and Palmdale eagerly accommodated the developers’ desires to hook into city services. They also eagerly annexed remaining islands of unincorporated County areas that lay within or adjacent to Palmdale’s or Lancaster’s boundaries. All the developer had to do, starting in 1987, was pay the fees for the infrastructure improvements to hook into city services like water and sewage. Notably, the infrastructure and service costs of supporting growth after 1987 were not born entirely by existing residents, but were largely supported by developer fees.

The cities of Lancaster and Palmdale were also adamant about attracting retail establishments to within their boundaries; retail establishments eagerly obliged. Virtually every major national chain now has a presence in the Antelope Valley. California’s first Wal-Mart was built in Lancaster. Retail sales were one of the major ways that Lancaster and Palmdale maintained solvency while experiencing such rapid growth and infrastructure investment. The cities net 1% of the 8.25% County sales tax from retail establishments within their borders. This translates into a multi-million dollar revenue source, the single most important source to those cities. That Lancaster and Palmdale are surrounded by a vast expanse of under-served unincorporated communities works to their advantage; residents of those outlying communities do most of their shopping in the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, boosting the cities’ tax base while costing the cities little.

The single most effective catalyst for the Antelope Valley’s boom in the past 14 years was the affordability of housing. The price of single-family homes in traditional suburbs of Los Angeles, like the San Fernando Valley, increased to where first-time home buyers could no longer afford to buy there (tables 8, 9, 10, 10.5). The Antelope Valley, where land was vastly cheaper than anywhere down below, could boast new homes $100,000 less expensive than comparable homes in the Los Angeles Basin. Southern Californians (like typical Americans), perpetually obsessed with the single-family detached home, flocked to the Antelope Valley. [Footnote #41] A Federal tax structure that rewards not only financing of the construction of single-family homes but so too their purchase also stimulated the desire for homes.

Besides the affordable housing which lured people to the Antelope Valley, there was a perceived sense of being driven from the Los Angeles Basin. The congestion, crime, and gang troubles faced by youth encouraged families to seek refuge in one of Los Angeles’s most distant satellites. Young couples intent on starting families were probably the largest group to move out to the Antelope Valley, followed closely by young families who wanted to move their children away from the “bad influences” found down below. With notorious Los Angeles Police Department Chief William Gates whipping the county into a veritable frenzy over gang activity, fear of these often ultra-violent youth groups sent many Los Angelenos over the mountains. For many new Antelope Valley residents, the social isolation and long commutes were worth the perceived gains in their children’s safety.

NEXT | Bust in the Antelope Valley - Again

© Matthew Jalbert 1995–2002