Some amazing things happen accidentally, like penicillin and cheese whiz, but Mission Viejo, California (‘Old Mission’ in Spanish) is not one of them. This Orange County city of 94,000 owes its masterful city planning and uniform Spanish architecture to their, er, city father --by which we mean developer--Donald Bren. Back in the historic old days of 1960, Bren decided to develop the “undevelopable” ranch land into a precisely and minutely planned community. Residents are consistently in a delirious haze of happiness so we’re taking that as a sizable indicator as to the quality of life here in the not-so-old Old Mission.
As is common in Southern California, the term “neighborhood” is used loosely and typically, it more accurately means “sub-division”
