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San Francisco is the only thing resembling a dense urban core in the area. There are many other nice places in the Bay Area, but very few of which will afford y

San Francisco is the only thing resembling a dense urban core in the area. There are many other nice places in the Bay Area, but very few of which will afford you the archetypical car-less transit-centric lifestyle that many people desire, while maintaining commutability to suburban offices. Many places are anti-urban by choice. At the risk of being a bit flippant, it's not that people find SF so appealing, but that they find everywhere closer to work unbearable. By any measure I can think of SF is a deeply dysfunctional city with incredible failures in basic quality of life - but it is the only city around that even begins to offer a lifestyle that many people want.

mattlong 13y ago
Well put. I too am often shocked by how truly dysfunctional and inconvenient SF is compared other metropolitan areas in the country. Yet I still can't see myself ever living anywhere else in the Bay Area...
colin_mccabe 13y ago
I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. There are many other places in the Bay area that offer dense urban areas. Palo Alto, San Mateo, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz come to mind. I know someone who lives in the south bay and does not have a car. There are places which are very hard to live in without a car (Sunnyvale comes to mind), but different places in the south and east bay are... different. And frankly, there are parts of SF that I personally would find difficult to live in without a car (or at least bicycle), because they're far from effective public transit or commercial areas. BART and CalTrain don't serve the western part of SF at all, and muni is often slower than walking. The south and east bay may not have the same density as San Francisco, but then again, it's far from clear that super-high density is a good idea in a seismically active zone. A lot of people seem to treat the choice as being between super-low density and super-high density. The alternative, medium density, never seems to get much P.R., but it seems like by far the best choice.
- ahomescu1 13y ago
  > Palo Alto, San Mateo, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz come to mind. Palo Alto is a horrible example IMHO. All of the good stuff is on University Ave and maybe California, the rest of it is just residential and not within walking distance. If you don't live close to University, you definitely need a car.
  - x0054 13y ago
    Just curious, but is there some sort of anti-car sentiment in the tech world in the Bay Area? Being from SoCal, I can't imagine living without my car and motorcycle. SF is just absolutely terrible for parking. But I wonder, do tech people dislike cars because they live in SF, or do they live in SF because they dislike cars? Or is it neither?
    - ahomescu1 13y ago
      I'm from Europe, currently living in SoCal. It's just so much nicer to be able to walk/take a bus/subway wherever you need (I went to university in a really dense urban area, never even needed a car). Also, suburbs are too quiet for some people, hectic/agitated city life can be more interesting (during day time as much as at night).
    - colin_mccabe 13y ago
      There has been a movement called the "new urbanism," starting in the 1980s, that emphasized walkable neighborhoods rather than car-focused areas. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism Of course, cars also have an impact on the environment which many northern Californians dislike. Oddly enough, the same people don't seem to mind flying, even though one or two transatlantic flights can emit as much carbon dioxide per person as an entire year of driving. Personally, I like walkable neighborhoods. I would not want to live in a place where I couldn't walk or bike to a downtown area. However, I think the focus on "urbaner than thou" is misguided. I've always liked medium density areas the best.
      - Umofomia 13y ago
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  Speaking as someone whose high school was located in "downtown" Santa Cruz and who went to college at UCSC, I'm very curious how you think Santa Cruz qualifies as a "dense urban area". I'd hesitate to call it "urban".
- tptacek 13y ago
  Are you seriously suggesting that San Mateo and Palo Alto are "urban", in the sense 'potatolicious means, of "offering a lifestyle comparable to that of Seattle, Boston, or Milwaukee"? San Mateo and Palo Alto are suburbs, each with essentially a single suburban main drag†, neither with any significant transit to get from point A to point A' (neither being large enough, as large as, say, Ann Arbor, to host a legitimate point B). I think a reasonable case could be made that Champaign Illinois (which hosts UIUC) is more of an urban area than those two cities. At the very least, I think it's better than San Mateo. I agree that San Francisco sucks (and I lived in SOMA and in Noe Valley, both of which have relatively good [for the area] transit), but it is at least an actual city. The obvious elephant in the room here is San Jose, and it's telling that you didn't mention it, opting instead to pretend that San Mateo was a "dense urban area". San Jose is an urban center. But it's miserable; nobody talks about moving there. The fact is that San Mateo sounds plausible because of its proximity to San Francisco. † For Palo Alto, I mean University; you don't need to point out that El Camino runs through it, I know where to go to find the strip malls. :)
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > The obvious elephant in the room here is San Jose, and it's telling that you didn't mention it, opting instead to pretend that San Mateo was a "dense urban area". San Jose is an urban center. San Mateo, at around 8K/sq.mi., is far more of a "dense urban area" than San Jose, at around 5K/sq.mi. So who is pretending?
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Easy: you are. Lots of people live in San Mateo. It's still a suburb. Evanston and Oak Park are suburbs of Chicago that are denser than San Mateo. So is, for god's sake, Berwyn. To see how silly population density is as a metric for what 'potatolicious is talking about, consider that your metric says that Berwyn and San Mateo are more like cities than Bellevue Washington, which is so independently urbanized that it stretches the definition of "suburb" but has a density of only 3k/sqm. Look at downtown Bellevue in street view on Google Maps. Now go look at Delaware and 3rd in San Mateo. The idea that you might think San Mateo is more of an urban area than San Jose --- I mean this without annoying snippiness in my heart though I know it is, characteristically, going to sound that way --- suggests to me that you haven't been to one of those two cities before. San Jose is self-evidently a real city. (I look forward to you embarrassing me by informing me that you've lived in both).

mattlong 13y ago

Well put. I too am often shocked by how truly dysfunctional and inconvenient SF is compared other metropolitan areas in the country. Yet I still can't see myself ever living anywhere else in the Bay Area...

colin_mccabe 13y ago

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. There are many other places in the Bay area that offer dense urban areas. Palo Alto, San Mateo, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz come to mind. I know someone who lives in the south bay and does not have a car. There are places which are very hard to live in without a car (Sunnyvale comes to mind), but different places in the south and east bay are... different. And frankly, there are parts of SF that I personally would find difficult to live in without a car (or at least bicycle), because they're far from effective public transit or commercial areas. BART and CalTrain don't serve the western part of SF at all, and muni is often slower than walking. The south and east bay may not have the same density as San Francisco, but then again, it's far from clear that super-high density is a good idea in a seismically active zone. A lot of people seem to treat the choice as being between super-low density and super-high density. The alternative, medium density, never seems to get much P.R., but it seems like by far the best choice.

ahomescu1 13y ago
> Palo Alto, San Mateo, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz come to mind. Palo Alto is a horrible example IMHO. All of the good stuff is on University Ave and maybe California, the rest of it is just residential and not within walking distance. If you don't live close to University, you definitely need a car.
- x0054 13y ago
  Just curious, but is there some sort of anti-car sentiment in the tech world in the Bay Area? Being from SoCal, I can't imagine living without my car and motorcycle. SF is just absolutely terrible for parking. But I wonder, do tech people dislike cars because they live in SF, or do they live in SF because they dislike cars? Or is it neither?
  - ahomescu1 13y ago
    I'm from Europe, currently living in SoCal. It's just so much nicer to be able to walk/take a bus/subway wherever you need (I went to university in a really dense urban area, never even needed a car). Also, suburbs are too quiet for some people, hectic/agitated city life can be more interesting (during day time as much as at night).
  - colin_mccabe 13y ago
    There has been a movement called the "new urbanism," starting in the 1980s, that emphasized walkable neighborhoods rather than car-focused areas. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism Of course, cars also have an impact on the environment which many northern Californians dislike. Oddly enough, the same people don't seem to mind flying, even though one or two transatlantic flights can emit as much carbon dioxide per person as an entire year of driving. Personally, I like walkable neighborhoods. I would not want to live in a place where I couldn't walk or bike to a downtown area. However, I think the focus on "urbaner than thou" is misguided. I've always liked medium density areas the best.
    - Umofomia 13y ago
thaumasiotes 13y ago
Speaking as someone whose high school was located in "downtown" Santa Cruz and who went to college at UCSC, I'm very curious how you think Santa Cruz qualifies as a "dense urban area". I'd hesitate to call it "urban".
tptacek 13y ago
Are you seriously suggesting that San Mateo and Palo Alto are "urban", in the sense 'potatolicious means, of "offering a lifestyle comparable to that of Seattle, Boston, or Milwaukee"? San Mateo and Palo Alto are suburbs, each with essentially a single suburban main drag†, neither with any significant transit to get from point A to point A' (neither being large enough, as large as, say, Ann Arbor, to host a legitimate point B). I think a reasonable case could be made that Champaign Illinois (which hosts UIUC) is more of an urban area than those two cities. At the very least, I think it's better than San Mateo. I agree that San Francisco sucks (and I lived in SOMA and in Noe Valley, both of which have relatively good [for the area] transit), but it is at least an actual city. The obvious elephant in the room here is San Jose, and it's telling that you didn't mention it, opting instead to pretend that San Mateo was a "dense urban area". San Jose is an urban center. But it's miserable; nobody talks about moving there. The fact is that San Mateo sounds plausible because of its proximity to San Francisco. † For Palo Alto, I mean University; you don't need to point out that El Camino runs through it, I know where to go to find the strip malls. :)
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > The obvious elephant in the room here is San Jose, and it's telling that you didn't mention it, opting instead to pretend that San Mateo was a "dense urban area". San Jose is an urban center. San Mateo, at around 8K/sq.mi., is far more of a "dense urban area" than San Jose, at around 5K/sq.mi. So who is pretending?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Easy: you are. Lots of people live in San Mateo. It's still a suburb. Evanston and Oak Park are suburbs of Chicago that are denser than San Mateo. So is, for god's sake, Berwyn. To see how silly population density is as a metric for what 'potatolicious is talking about, consider that your metric says that Berwyn and San Mateo are more like cities than Bellevue Washington, which is so independently urbanized that it stretches the definition of "suburb" but has a density of only 3k/sqm. Look at downtown Bellevue in street view on Google Maps. Now go look at Delaware and 3rd in San Mateo. The idea that you might think San Mateo is more of an urban area than San Jose --- I mean this without annoying snippiness in my heart though I know it is, characteristically, going to sound that way --- suggests to me that you haven't been to one of those two cities before. San Jose is self-evidently a real city. (I look forward to you embarrassing me by informing me that you've lived in both).