“Democratic liberty is far from accomplishing all the projects it undertakes….  It frequently abandons them before they have borne their fruits, or risks them when the consequences may prove dangerous; but in the end it produces more than any absolute government, and if it does fewer things well, it does a greater number of things.  Under its sway the transactions of the public administration are not nearly so important as what is done by private exertion.  Democracy does not confer the most skillful kind of government upon the people, but it produces what the most skillful governments are frequently unable to awaken, namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it, and which may, under favorable circumstances, beget the most amazing benefits.  These are the true advantages of democracy.”  Alexis de Tocqueville

Santa Paula in California is a revelation at risk.

In 1888, Santa Paula was a town built in fact, from the land, by free people who endowed it with means to prosper, adapt, and endure.  Evangelization, exploration, and cultivation had coalesced in the form of globally-scaled citriculture long before terms like globally-scaled were ever imagined.  The fruit of this evolution included a small city at the foot of a mountain called Santa Paula peak, in a land with mountains to spare, in a place where two waters converge, in a county that still carries the name of its mission.

While Santa Paula grew out of the valley, it incorporated revolutionary developments.  Continental rail, petroleum, aviation, film, flood control, electricity, refrigeration, and the automobile were all embraced without diminishment of its urban identity or integrity.  The city evolved very well.

And the city has endured.  The flush of prosperity that vanished with Union Oil and the Santa Barbara spill, and which remains in abeyance while California oil waits upon reserve depletion abroad, has not impaired Santa Paula’s greeting of interstate travel, immigration, or regionalized industry.

The town endures for better days, and the architecture has helped.  The as-yet undefined alchemy of early twentieth century California Victorian building endowed Santa Paula with its current form, which has thus far enabled Santa Paula to constructively incorporate land and industry with dwelling and polity.

There is a kind of Democracy built in to Santa Paula that is worth regarding.  It can creep into the subconscious walking the neighborhoods within the gridiron of the historic center, where the architectural variety that is common to pre-war mixed-use American towns still remains, and takes a variety of forms and styles that have been carefully calibrated to compliment their neighbors.

It becomes evident where the homes of the families responsible for creating Santa Paula’s industry and commerce share streets with the homes of the people responsible for providing its labor and administration.  Its profoundness is revealed by the city’s layout, which compliments the dominant landforms and water bodies, and its gridiron plan, which firmly and clearly orients the city to the land and connects its buildings, and their occupants, to one another.  That connection is reinforced by an architecture of the city that is consistent with and compliments the architecture of the surrounding agricultural valley.

Perhaps most admirably, Santa Paula remains a city built from the prosperity of the land that has maintained respect for that resource through a persistently compact and economical border.  An early emphasis on landscaping throughout the city that was followed with diligent care for trees and gardens weaves the city into the surrounding valley and celebrates its unique cultivation-based prosperity.

The design of Santa Paula, and its successes, reveal something concrete and specific about the way we choose to live together on the land, about the kinds of relationships that we prefer to build between ourselves and the land and amongst one another.  Santa Paula is a place where my five-year-old son can literally walk out his front door and port himself to his neighbor, school, church, park, dentist, city hall, restaurant, doctor, library, bakery, train station.  He already possesses a concrete political realm that cannot be taken from him, and which will help form his idea of what it means to inhabit the world around him.

The goods and benefits that follow from successful urban design are literally free for anyone to enjoy.  Temperate resource consumption, beautiful streets and public spaces, neighbors and neighborhood, are not accidents.  These things result from the choices that the people of Santa Paula have made over time in choosing how to live with one another in this particular place. 

Santa Paula is a city built by free people, cognizant and able, not by machines, policies, or interests.  When the quality of a thing is sufficiently understood and its value apprehended, some of the important questions that follow become: How can we make more of it?, and How can we continue to make it better?

What we have helps reveal what is possible.