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.

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.