'The Safest City In America' Is An Affluent Coastal California College Gem With Trendy Dining And Shopping

While "safe city" and "America" don't often go hand-in-hand, one city is doing its best to grant its residents peace of mind and safety: Irvine, California. Located in Orange County south of Santa Ana and within driving distance of coastal cities, such as the walkable Huntington Beach, Irvine is impressively clean, well-designed, full of as much greenery as it is shopping plazas, has a good university in UC Irvine, and feels generally calm. To that last point, from 2005 to 2023 – 18 years — Irvine was the safest city in the United States.    

We can look to the FBI's annual Crime in the U.S.A. report to see exactly how safe Irvine really is. Looking at 2019, there were 188 violent crimes out of a population of 292,673. By contrast, Santa Ana next door had 1,453 violent crimes out of a population of 333,664. These kinds of numbers have stayed consistent all the way through the FBI's 2023 report (the last published at time of writing). The City of Irvine chalks these numbers up to the city's police force, and that's that. Given such safety, it might seem too much to ask that Irvine is clean, green, and full of good food and shopping options, such as the Spectrum Center. But it's true; Irvine is a good place to live and a good place to visit if you're in Orange County.

Irvine is carved into family-friendly residential neighborhoods that speak to the city's wealth (and go a long way in explaining its safety). The cheapest of these neighborhoods, Oak Creek, still has an average house value of $1.16 million and looks like a finely crafted slice of park-and-green-filled suburbia — the most expensive is Shady Canyon with an average house price of $8.71 million. These neighborhoods are scattered around the city limits and between them sits Irvine's shopping options, dining selections, and UC Irvine, which is practically a separate town. Its nearly 1,500-acre campus even has its own mall, University Center, that rivals typical non-university malls.

Of bigger note than University Center is Irvine Spectrum Center on the city's east side. The Spectrum Center is a glitzy, sprawling SoCal space that feels like walking through a palm tree-lined village. Not that numbers are everything, but the center has 160 combined shops, restaurants, and venues. Options include the usual array of clothing and shoe stores, but also a Dave and Buster's, an improv club, and even a Ferris wheel in one of the mall's plazas. Food choices at the Spectrum Center range from simple fare such as fast food and pizza to fancy grills and a good range of Asian-inspired places. Speaking of Asian-inspired places, one of Irvine's top spots is the Diamond Jamboree shopping center, a nearly 100% Asian plaza packed with every single authentic restaurant you'd want: Japanese curry, Vietnamese pho, Korean barbecue, Hong Kongese dim sum, Tawainese sweets, and much more. 

Because Irvine is in California, getting to the city necessitates one mode of transportation and one mode only: car. You could bike while you're in the city, but you're not going to be biking up or down I-405 or I-5 to get there from John Wayne Airport, no matter that it's ultra-close at less than a 15-minute drive. It's the closest airport by far, although Los Angeles International Airport and the super cool and easy to access Long Beach Airport are also in the general southern Californian vicinity if they suit your plans better. You could get an Uber or taxi from any of them to your destination in Irvine, or rent a car at each airport to get around. If you do want to bike, good news: Irvine actually has hundreds of miles of on- and off-street biking lanes to mix things up, or even get some exercise in between all the driving.

You can also use the iShuttle to poke through Irvine, the city's free bus network that connects to various places, including the Spectrum Center. The Orange County Transportation Authority also has 77 total bus routes laced throughout Orange County that connect to places as far away as Riverside and Yorba Linda or as close as Costa Mesa and Newport Beach.