Fountain Valley is a larger medium-sized coastal city (ie. on the ocean or tidally-influenced rivers) located in the state of California. With a population of 54,995 people and 11 constituent neighborhoods, Fountain Valley is the 141st largest community in California.

Unlike some cities, Fountain Valley isn't mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Fountain Valley are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Fountain Valley is a city of sales and office workers, professionals, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Fountain Valley who work in office and administrative support jobs (16.02%), sales jobs (14.81%), and management occupations (11.79%).

Also of interest is that Fountain Valley has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.

In addition, Fountain Valley is home to many people who could be described as "urban sophisticates." Urban sophisticates are educated, wealthy, executives and professionals, who have urbane tastes in books, food, and travel, whether they actually live in a big city, or choose to reside in a small town. In big or medium-sized cities, urban sophisticates tend to frequent art institutions such as opera, symphonies, ballet, live theatre, and museums.

One of the nice things about Fountain Valley is that is it nautical, meaning that parts of the city are somewhat historic and on the ocean, or touch tidal bodies of water, such as inlets and tidal rivers. Because of this, visitors and locals will often go to these areas to take in the scenery or to enjoy waterfront activities.

"If you live in Fountain Valley, you are going to have to drive to get to work," say area residents. At least that is what most Fountain Valley residents do (97%). Fountain Valley is primarily built for cars, and driving around town will bare this out. Shopping centers, parking lots, strip malls, and wide streets are what you'll find. Sidewalks? Sure. But not everywhere, and walking to most places can be downright scary.

The city of Fountain Valley is a decent size, but despite this, it doesn't have a viable public transit system that people can use to get to work.

Fountain Valley Information and Demographics

The education level of Fountain Valley citizens is very high relative to the national average among all cities (14.96%): 34.36% of adults in Fountain Valley have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.

The per capita income in Fountain Valley in 2000 was $26,521, which is upper middle income relative to California, and wealthy relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $106,084 for a family of four. However, Fountain Valley contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

Fountain Valley is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Fountain Valley home come from a variety of different races and ancestries. The most prevalent race in Fountain Valley is White, followed by Asian. Fountain Valley also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 10.96% of the city's residents. Important ancestries of people in Fountain Valley include German, English, Irish, and Italian.

Foreign born people are also an important part of Fountain Valley's cultural character, accounting for 27.59% of the city's population.

The languages spoken by people in Fountain Valley are also diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in Fountain Valley is English. Other important languages spoken here include Vietnamese, Spanish, and Chinese.