Tejon Ranch: California's New 270,000 Acre Master-Planned Community

Tejon Ranch is "so large that many things that need to get from Northern California to Southern California — natural gas, drinking water, electricity, fiber-optic cables, the cars on I-5 — pass through it. The ranch is home to about 14,000 head of cattle, and its agricultural fields yield almonds, pistachios and wine grapes." Located within an hour's drive of Los Angeles, the master-planned community to be located on 11,700 acres of this ranch has just begun to move through the Los Angeles County environmental-review process. Randy Jackson, whose firm Planning Center created the initial master plan for Centennial, explains that the town will look similar to Irvine, CA, or Stapleton, CO. In addition to selling some acreage to developers, the owner of Tejon offered to donate 100,000 acres to a land conservancy, but environmentalists are asking for 245,000 acres.

Ann Forsyth, a professor of urban design at the University of Minnesota, has written extensively about the history and evolution of master-planned cities. She believes that Centennial, "is probably big enough to achieve the most crucial aspect of a new-town plan: enough room for housing and jobs so that city residents can live, work and shop there. Whether the blueprint for a self-sustaining town actually becomes reality is another matter, however."