Chapter 2

Physical Environment

The architectural image of Santa Barbara is the Spanish Colonial Revival style of architecture adopted by city leaders after the 1925 earthquake destroyed much of the downtown commercial district. The domestic architecture of Santa Barbara is predominantly California bungalows built in the early decades of the 20th century, with many Victorian homes adorning the "Upper East" and Spanish style homes designed by well known California architects in Santa Barbara and on estates in Montecito and Hope Ranch. The city has passed ordinances against billboards and regulates outdoor advertising, so the city is relatively free of advertising clutter.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 41.4 square miles (107.3 km²), of which, 19.0 square miles (49.2 km²) of it is land and 22.4 square miles (58.1 km²) of it (54.17%) is water. The high official figures for water is due to the city limit extending into the ocean, including a strip of city reaching out into the sea and inland again to keep the Santa Barbara Airport (SBA) within the city boundary.

Climate

Santa Barbara is a city in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the only such section on the west coast, between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the sea, and having a Mediterranean climate, it is called California's "South Coast", and is also sometimes referred to casually as the "American Riviera." As of the census of 2000, the city had a population of 92,325 while the contiguous urban area, which includes the cities of Goleta and Carpinteria, along with the unincorporated regions of Isla Vista, Montecito, Mission Canyon, Hope Ranch, Summerland, and others, had an approximate population of 200,000.

By the early 1890s Santa Barbara had established its preeminence as a place to live and as a place to winter. The 1893 Baedekers referred to the city as the "American Mentone" and went on to note "It has a well-deserved reputation as one of the most attractive winter resorts in California, due to its mild, dry and equable climate, the beauty of its surroundings, the luxuriance of its roses and other flowers, the excellent bathing beach, and its pleasant society." Santa Barbara enjoyed an equally impressive reputation during the early decades of the nineteenth century when, along with Monterey to the north, it was the most important of the Spanish and later Mexican bastions in California.

A mild climate, and a superb setting, are impressive assets for any place-but these qualities account only in part for the positive aura that the name Santa Barbara has continued to evoke for well over a hundred years. The other ingredient revolves around what man has or has not done to a specific physical environment. The really unique aspect of Santa Barbara and its environs is that man's manipulation of this place has (on the whole) enhanced rather than devastated it-and this has been true from the very beginning.