Chapter 2. Growth of City of Irvine

Irvine at 50: The changing landscape of housing, commuting, and amenities June, 2022

Irvine city boundary changes over time

The history of Irvine is one of constant growth. It has grown from a population of about 10,000 at its incorporation in 1971 to just over 300,000 in 2020. As one way to demonstrate this growth, we map out in Figure 2.1 the changes in Irvine’s boundaries over time as the city has grown.7 In this map, the outline shows the current extent of Irvine’s city boundaries. The green area shows the original boundary at incorporation. The yellow area to the southwest shows the annexation that occurred during the remainder of the 1970s. Note that nearly all of these annexations occurred when the Irvine Company began development on a new village in the city. Smaller areas were annexed during the 1980s and are shown in light orange. These mostly occurred towards the central section of the city. During the 1990s there was considerable growth in the northern section of the city in the dark orange areas. Also, a portion along the southern border was detached in the late 1990s to Newport Beach. Finally, the annexations during the early 2000s are shown in red, and most important is the addition of the land that previously was part of the military base at the El Toro Marine Station. This latter area is part of the Great Park, and the retail and housing that is being built surrounding the park.8

7 Data were provided by the city of Irvine Geographic Information Science (GIS) office. 8 We do not have information on more recent annexations.