it's not the distance, it's the time it takes to get from A to B (during rush hour) and the distinct cultures. The cities all have enough of a distinct vibrant

it's not the distance, it's the time it takes to get from A to B (during rush hour) and the distinct cultures. The cities all have enough of a distinct vibrant culture that locals can differentiate between cities. In another world, these town might just have been different districts in a super city (there is literally no separation between cities; buildings and suburbia go right up to the town borders), but each of the cities used to be separated by miles of orchards and farmlands before the tech boom, so each town had a chance to develop a slightly unique culture (if you think of the finches Darwin discovered in the galapogos islands, it's bout the same). Because the entire area is suburbia, this leads to interesting transit situations. Ignoring public transit for a minute, estimating time to go from A to B becomes less of a function of distance, and more a function of how close each endpoint is to an arterial route. Sometimes, let me throw some numbers at you, to help explain the situation. I work in sunnyvale near highway 101 and maude. I am in the process of moving from Campbell (union and campbell ave, if you want to google map it) to cupertino (homestead and de anza). This reduces my commute from about 14 miles down to about 6 miles. Geographically, I'm going from driving through 5 separate towns (campbell->san jo->sc->cupertino->sunnyvale), to literally just driving across sunnyvale (ok, and a 1/4 mile into cupertino as my car drives not as the crow flies). From the campbell apartment to work with no traffic takes about 20 minutes if you tend to drive at the speed of traffic instead of the posted limit. If I were to commute during rush hour, this would be closer to a half hour or 40 minutes (i've only done it like twice because it is so horrid). From my new apartment to work will take about 10 to 20 minutes without traffic (slower roads, more stop lights, &c.). So despite cutting my commute distance by a factor of roughly 3, I only reduced my time spent commuting by about 0-50%. For reference, going from my campbell apartment to my company's sf hq (soma) will take about 80 minutes when commuting during rush hour on public transit (door to door via the caltrain from tamien to sf). And we haven't even talked about the differences in weather, yet, which due to microclimates can be 10 to 20 degrees different in the space of a few miles.