On December 28th, Irvine will commemorate its 50th anniversary! To mark the occasion, I sat down with two of our City's longtime leaders — Mary Ann Gaido, former Councilmember and current Planning Commissioner and Larry Agran, former Mayor and current Councilmember to discuss highlights from the past five decades. Both Gaido and Agran were integral in crafting and implementing policies that have made Irvine one of the greenest cities in the nation.

Our story begins in the early 1960s when world-renowned architect William L. Pereira, who had designed San Francisco's Transamerica Pyramid and Los Angeles International Airport, was brought in by the Irvine Company (which owned the land) to coordinate the design for the brand new UCI campus and our planned community, which would soon become the City of Irvine.

Pereira's design included a self-contained community of villages, where families could live within walking distance of shops, schools, recreational areas and community parks.