Diamond Bar, CA

Diamond Bar fills the hilly southeast corner of Los Angeles County's San Gabriel Valley, right where the county line meets Orange County to the south and San Bernardino County to the east. Brea and Chino Hills sit just over those lines, and Walnut and Rowland Heights border it on the north and west. Housing across the city is mostly detached homes built from the 1960s onward, arranged by terrain more than by grid. Some tracts sit low near the main boulevards, others climb the ridges with longer views, and the streets loop and fork to follow the slopes. The city runs about ten parks along with a set of hillside trails. Ronald Reagan Park and Heritage Park, which has its own community center, cover everyday playground and picnic needs, and the Grand View Trail climbs for a look across the valley. Food runs through the shopping centers rather than along a main street. Mandarin Taste on Golden Springs Drive is the Sichuan standby, and Basil and Co. on Palomino Drive covers Thai. The plazas mix Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese cafes with bakeries, and a few of the centers are built around large Asian supermarkets. A normal week of errands here is a loop between centers on the big boulevard and Golden Springs Drive, nearly always by car. The 60 and 57 meet inside the city limits, so Pomona, Brea and the Inland Empire are each a short freeway run away. The hills that give the city its views also limit how its streets connect. Many tracts have only one or two ways out, so morning traffic funnels onto the same few arterials at the same time. Up in the ridge tracts, many back yards look straight across open canyon toward the lights on the next hill.