6 Beyfield
Irvine, CA 92614

Woodbridge is a large suburban housing development, begun in 1975 ^[1] by The Irvine Company, in the central region of Irvine, California. It covers roughly four square miles and has two large man-made lakes at its center. It contains five elementary schools, two middle schools, Lakeside and South Lake, and Woodbridge High School. The Interstate 405 forms its southern boundary. The final developments in Woodbridge were completed by the mid-1990s.

Style & Layout[edit]

Woodbridge is bisected into two residential segments, called North Lake and South Lake, by a broad strip of retail, commercial and institutional development. Each half of Woodbridge has a lake at its center. The lakes are between three and six feet deep and each is crossed by a large wooden footbridge, owing the village its name. A four-lane circular loop road, Yale Loop, runs around the interior of Woodbridge, connecting all its housing blocks and major streets. The village is walled off from the rest of Irvine by a row of pine trees and a continuous, 20-foot (6.1 m)-high Privet hedge. Woodbridge, for the most part, is uniformly designed in a New England Cape Cod style.

In Great Streets by Allan B. Jacobs (MIT Press), Pinewood (street name) on the Northern edge of the village off the Yale Loop, is cited as one of the great "new urban" streets. Though the suburban style of place makes it difficult to take the "urban" designation seriously, Mr. Jacobs remarks on its gentle curvilinear aspect; there is no other street in Woodbridge that has the same characteristics. The tract in which Pinewood is the only circular street, it is also noted for its relatively profuse vegetation, particularly rich use of pepper trees, and the natural shake roofs which, in other tracts, have been replaced by steel or cement imitating other materials.