Our California Bay Area neighborhood had all of our tulip trees cut down due to some strange infestation of aphids (and juice falling off etc. etc.); as a result everyone's replanted their trees with other varieties which I think could help answer your question:
'Autumn Purple' Ash and 'Autumn Blaze' Maple
- Others are planting Fraxinus Americana 'Autumn Purple' and 'Autumn Blaze' Maple, which both turn out to be huge trees with brilliant fall colors: they're fast growing. We have a sapling autumn purple and it's doing about 3 feet a year.
Chinese Pistache:
- For something not too tall (30' ft at most?), most people in the neighborhood have been going with the Chinese Pistache Pistacia chinensis: it's a solid tree, although male varieties > female varieties since they don't have fruit. It grows about as fast as your average street tree maple, perhaps a bit slower. Wider than it's tall though, I think.
'Autumn Purple' Ash and 'Autumn Blaze' Maple
- Others are planting Fraxinus Americana 'Autumn Purple' and 'Autumn Blaze' Maple, which both turn out to be huge trees with brilliant fall colors: they're fast growing. We have a sapling autumn purple and it's doing about 3 feet a year.
Our city arborists (without any power-line trouble or anything, of course) also mentioned flowering pear, Zelkova, River Birch (Betula nigra), Western Catalpa, Sycamore (which I think are ugly), a couple varieties of elm (Accolade, Frontier, Emerald Sunshine, don't know about dutch elm disease), and red oak. They may be worth a look as all are unique and different from each other.
I daresay the weather's different, don't know how much difference that would make.