Envisioned as a self‑contained community, Aliso Viejo links its neighborhoods with parks and bike paths and centers civic life around the Town Center. A base of technology, healthcare, and finance employers, plus trailheads into Aliso & Wood Canyons Wilderness Park, make it popular with families and professionals.

Once part of the historic Moulton Ranch—rooted in an 1840s Mexican land grant—the area transitioned from cattle and sheep grazing to a planned community after the Mission Viejo Company acquired roughly 6,600 acres in the late 1970s. The first homes sold in 1982; the city incorporated on July 1, 2001.