infobong.com

Back in 2001, when I was an editor at a computer magazine, my company had laid off nearly all of the editors at the suburban Philadelphia office. My boss wanted me to move to Irvine and work at one of the main editorial office, and I flew out there in September to check out the town and look for apartments. It didn't take me long to realize that Irvine was not a place for me. I jokingly called it "Plano-by-the-Sea" because of it's bland suburban architecture and lack of independent culture; it was about as different from West Philly as I could imagine. I drove around Orange County quite a bit while I was there, and I stopped by UC-Irvine, thinking that the campus might at least offer some interesting coffeeshops and walks. Sadly, campus seemed to have little going on, and, driving around, it seemed like a "strip-mall campus" where students pull up to class in their cars, unlike other campuses like OU, Penn, or UT, where the layout encourages walks across campus and serendipitous encounters. The Wikipedia entry on UC-Irvine seems to confirm this impression.

Certainly designing campuses to minimize protests is not unique to Irvine. UT's West Mall was restructured to limit the size of groups congregating in the space, and OU's Physical Sciences Center was designed to be used as a stronghold in the event of a riot. The Wikipedia article adds that "Most likely, the design of the campus is simply representative of mid-60s urban design, favoring large open spaces and decentralized facilities over the dense layout of older campuses," which reenforces my impression that the campus was designed like a strip-mall.