This is nonsense. You can't claim that municipalities are static, when you preface your comment about how the orchards went away. They aren't static. They never were.
When anyone proposes additional housing, all manner of excuses (and ugly accusations) come up: history, neighborhood character, the environment, claims that there are no more places to build, racism, classism, you name it. It's always a smoke screen. They are always lying. Always. None of the people blocking housing care at all about any of those things. It has always been about one and only one thing: the Free Money™. Anyone who says differently is lying.
Are you an aspiring mind reader or do you just enjoy making blanket statements?
I lived in a small 50,000 population Southern Ca. beach town that approved a massive 9000 resident master planned tract home/apartment community in 1999.
Character? It absolutely changed. We went from having essentially no big box stores to a Walmart, which beget more strip mall chains. Previous housing developments weren't on this scale, so yeah I'd argue thousands of semi-generic "tuscan villa" styled homes do change the aesthetics of a town.
Traffic? Went up significantly, as the whole community was built east of the existing city (and beach), meaning the main arteries were now quite full.
Classism/Racism? Doubtful. The town wasn't pristine to begin with. The majority of these new homes were more expensive than the existing housing stock complete with golf courses and swim clubs.
So now what?
More roads got built to alleviate traffic, a new outlet mall, new construction alongside the new roads. It's not helpful to act like these concerns are fake. California is a gorgeous state.
Not everyone wants to carve up every last canyon in the sake of making a miniature Irvine (or any strip mall, master planned lookalike community).