The San Francisco Bay Area, also commonly known as the Bay Area, is a metropolitan region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses large cities such as San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas. Overall, the Bay Area consists of nine counties, 101 cities, and 7,000 square miles.[3] The nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma.[3][4]
The Bay Area when defined as a Combined Statistical Area, is the sixth largest in the country, with approximately 7.4 million people.[5] The Bay Area hosts many cities, towns, military bases, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a massive network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels and commuter rail. The combined urban area of San Francisco and San Jose is the 50th largest urban area in the world.
San Francisco is the cultural and financial center of the Bay Area, and has the second highest population density of any major city in North America after New York City. San Jose is the largest city in terms of population, land area, and industrial development, and is the center of Silicon Valley, a well-known high technology region. Oakland is a major manufacturing and distribution center, rail terminus/hub, and has the fourth largest container shipping port in the United States. Largely because of San Francisco and Silicon Valley, the Bay Area presently ranks second only to the much larger New York City region in number of Fortune 500 company headquarters. (April 2010 Fortune Magazine) The Bay Area is renowned for its natural beauty, affluence, diversity, and progressive thinking new age reputation.
East Bay
Looking west from the Berkeley Hills. Visible clockwise around the bay from the distant Golden Gate (upper center) are Marin County (Upper Right). Albany (Lower Right), Berkeley (Center and foreground), Emeryville (Lower Left), Oakland (Far Lower Left), South San Francisco (Far Upper Left) and San Francisco (Upper Left)
The eastern side of the bay, consisting of Alameda and Contra Costa counties, is known locally as the East Bay. The East Bay is split into two regions, the inner East Bay, which sits on the Bay shoreline, and the outer East Bay, consisting of inland valleys separated from the inner East Bay by hills and mountains.
- The inner East Bay includes the western portions of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, including the cities of Oakland, Hayward, Fremont, Berkeley, and Richmond, as well as many smaller suburbs such as Alameda, Castro Valley, Newark, Union City, Emeryville, Albany, San Leandro, San Pablo, El Sobrante, Pinole, Hercules, Rodeo, Piedmont, and El Cerrito. The inner East Bay is more urban, more densely populated, has a much older building stock (built before World War II) and a more ethnically diverse population. Oakland hosts the region’s largest seaport and professional sports franchises in basketball, football, and baseball. As with many inner urban areas, the Inner East Bay also features a high incidence of crime as well as other socio-economic problems. According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, more than 50% of all homicides in the Bay Area in 2002 occurred within the city limits of Oakland and Richmond. The homicide rates have steadily increased, as 2005 had the highest homicide rates for both Richmond and Oakland in many years.
- The outer East Bay consists of the eastern portions of Alameda and Contra Costa counties and is divided into 5 distinct areas: Lamorinda, Central Contra Costa County, East Contra Costa County, the San Ramon Valley, and the Livermore-Amador Valley. The word Lamorinda was coined by combining the names of the cities it includes: Lafayette, Moraga, and Orinda. Walnut Creek is situated east of Lamorinda and north of the San Ramon Valley and, together with Concord, Martinez, and Pleasant Hill comprises Central Contra Costa County. The cities of Pittsburg, Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley and the unincorporated areas surrounding them comprise East Contra Costa County. The cities of Dublin, Pleasanton, Livermore, comprise the Livermore-Amador Valley (sometimes joined with the San Ramon Valley and called the Tri-Valley), or more popularly referred to as the Livermore Valley because Livermore is the largest city in the valley. The San Ramon Valley consists of Alamo, Danville, Diablo and its namesake, San Ramon to the south. The outer East Bay is connected to the inner East Bay by BART, Interstates 80, 580, and 680, and State Route 24 via the Caldecott Tunnel. The outer East Bay is particularly rural in Livermore[citation needed], while being part suburban in Pleasanton-Dublin, and its infrastructure was mostly built up after World War II. This area remains largely white demographically, although the Hispanic and Filipino populations have grown significantly over the past 2-3 decades, particularly in the Concord area.
North Bay
Napa Valley is most famous for its wine.
The region north of the Golden Gate Bridge is known locally as the North Bay. This area encompasses Marin County, Sonoma County, Napa County and extends eastward into Solano County. The city of Fairfield, being part of Solano County, is often considered the eastern most city of the North Bay, though due to a stronger cultural and socioeconomic similarity to many East Bay cities, it is also often considered the northern most city of the East Bay.
With few exceptions, this region is quite affluent: Marin County is ranked as the wealthiest in the nation. The North Bay is comparatively rural to the remainder of the Bay Area, with many areas of undeveloped open space, farmland and vineyards. Santa Rosa in Sonoma County is the North Bay’s largest city, with a population of 157,985 and a Metropolitan Statistical Area population of 466,891, making it the fifth largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The North Bay is the only section of the Bay Area that is not currently served by a commuter rail service. The lack of transportation services is mainly because of the lack of population mass in the North Bay, and the fact that it is separated completely from the rest of the Bay Area by water, the only access points being the Golden Gate Bridge leading to San Francisco, the Richmond-San Rafael and Carquinez Bridges leading to Richmond, and the Benicia-Martinez Bridge leading to Martinez.
Peninsula
View of Colma, California, looking down from San Bruno Mountain
The area between San Francisco and the South Bay, geographically part of the San Francisco Peninsula, is known locally as the Peninsula. This area consists of a series of small cities and suburban communities in San Mateo County and the northwestern part of Santa Clara County, as well as various towns along the Pacific coast, such as Pacifica and Half Moon Bay. This area is extremely diverse, although it contains significant populations of affluent family households with the exception of East Palo Alto and some parts of Redwood City. Many of the cities and towns had originally been centers of rural life until the post-World War II era when large numbers of middle and upper class Bay area residents moved in and developed the small villages. Since the 1980s the area has seen a large growth rate of middle and upper class families who have settled in cities like Palo Alto, Woodside, Portola Valley, and Atherton as part of the technology boom of Silicon Valley. Many of these families are of foreign background and have significantly contributed to the diversity of the area. The Peninsula is also home to what used to be one of the deadliest cities in the United States, East Palo Alto. Peninsula cities include: Atherton, Belmont, Brisbane, Burlingame, Colma, Daly City, East Palo Alto, Foster City, Half Moon Bay, Hillsborough, Menlo Park, Millbrae, Pacifica, Portola Valley, Redwood City, Redwood Shores, San Bruno, San Carlos, San Mateo, South San Francisco and Woodside.
San Francisco
San Francisco panorama from Alcatraz.
San Francisco is generally placed in a category by itself in terms of culture and geography, and is known locally as “The City.” San Francisco is surrounded by water on three sides; the north, east, and west. It is the cultural and urban center of the region. The city is a population center in the region, as it squeezes approximately 845,000 people in only 46.7 square miles, making it the second most densely populated major city in North America after New York City.[8] On any given day, there can be as many as 1.2 million people in the city because of the commuting population and tourism. San Francisco has the largest commuter population of any city in the Bay Area. The limitations of land area make continued population growth challenging, and has resulted in increased real estate prices.
Santa Cruz and San Benito
The regional governments in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board include only the nine counties above in their boundaries or membership. (The BAAQMD includes all of the nine counties except the northern portions of Sonoma and Solano; the RWQCB includes all of San Francisco and the portions of the other eight counties that drain to San Francisco Bay or to the Pacific Ocean.)[9] However, the United States Census Bureau defines the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Consolidated Statistical Area as an eleven-county region, including the nine counties above plus Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties. Meanwhile, the California State Parks Department defines the Bay Area as including ten counties,[10] including Santa Cruz but excluding San Benito. On the other hand, Santa Cruz and San Benito along with Monterey County are part of a different regional government organization called the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments.
Some residents of the Santa Cruz Mountains (Boulder Creek, Brookdale, Ben Lomond, Felton, Scotts Valley) do not usually consider themselves to be residents of the Bay Area, rather just of the Santa Cruz Mountains themselves. The Santa Cruz Mountains run along the spine of the San Francisco Peninsula, beginning in San Francisco and continuing down to their terminus near the City of Gilroy, effectively creating the Santa Clara Valley.
The city of Santa Cruz is geographically isolated from the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, and is usually considered a part of the Monterey Bay area since the city lies on the north end of the Monterey Bay. The city is also sometimes regarded as the northernmost point of the California Central Coast, which extends along the state’s coastline to Santa Barbara.
This partial inclusion of these two counties in the Bay Area is one manifestation of a “spillover” where, because of high housing prices in the Bay Area proper, people with Bay Area jobs purchase homes in outlying areas and endure long commutes. This blurs the outer borders of the Bay Area, which now can be said to spillover not only to the south (Santa Cruz, San Benito, and Monterey counties) but to the Central Valley counties of Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Yolo.
Silicon Valley
Looking west over northern San Jose (downtown is at far left) and other parts of Silicon Valley
The communities along the southern edge of the Bay are known as the South Bay, Santa Clara Valley, and Silicon Valley. Some Peninsula and East Bay towns are sometimes included in the latter. It includes the major city of San Jose, and its suburbs, including the high-tech hubs of Santa Clara, Milpitas, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto and Mountain View as well as many other suburbs like Los Altos, Saratoga, Campbell and Los Gatos and the exurbs of Morgan Hill and Gilroy. Generally, the South Bay is Santa Clara County, but the northwest portion of the county (Palo Alto and Mountain View) is often considered part of the Peninsula instead. Home of Silicon Valley, the South Bay was also an early development of working and middle class families who left the coastal cities of the Eastern Bay south of Oakland and Alameda. Large numbers of families during the post-World War era also moved there for the aerospace industry. This area has long been developed and expanded and is often featured as a stereotype of the typical California suburban city. Today, the growth continues, primarily fueled by technology and cheap immigrant labor. The result has been a huge increase in the value of property forcing many middle class families out of the area or into nascent ghettos in older sections of the region.
Befitting of the title Silicon Valley, this region is home to a vast number of technology sector giants. Some notable tech companies headquartered in the South Bay are AMD, Intel, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Google, eBay, and Yahoo!. As a consequence of the rapid growth of these and other companies, the South Bay has gained increasing political and economic influence within California, the U.S., and throughout the world.
San Jose, the tenth largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the Bay Area, is the financial and cultural center of the Santa Clara Valley. It contains many neighborhoods and a large and diverse demographic comparable to San Francisco. San Jose prides itself on being an environmentally conscious city. It is also home to the NHL hockey team the San Jose Sharks. The height of buildings in the Financial District of Downtown is limited because it is situated directly under the flight path to San Jose International Airport. The benefit is, that the airport is quickly and easily accessible from anywhere in Silicon Valley. Over the past several decades, San Jose has experienced rapid growth. To limit the effects of urban sprawl, planned communities were laid out to control growth. Urban growth boundaries have been established to protect remaining open space (primarily in the surrounding hills and southern border) from development. Most new growth has been urban infill in the form of high density housing, further increasing the population density. The growth rate has slowed, but San Jose continues to be one of the fastest growing cities in the United States.
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