Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc
But we can't classify San Jose in 2020 based on its relationship with San Francisco in 1950. It developed well into the automobile/ freeway era so it will never look like San Francisco but it's a full fledged city in its own right at this point. No one would say Phoenix isn't a full fledged major city and it more or less followed a similar growth trajectory as San Jose.
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We can show Baltimore has a very long history of being a big, important, distinct city and the hub of its own urban universe long, long before it was connected to the DC CSA. We can show the same thing of DC proper, of course.
But can we show that for the Bay Area's two most populous municipalities? San Francisco has a long history of being a big, important, distinct city and the hub of its own urban universe long, long before the CSA was formed. San Jose? It has a lot of people living in suburban sprawl within its municipal borders in 2020, but that is a very recent development. It was a small agricultural center through WWII, and only became "big" after vast annexations and the southward expansion of indistinct Bay Area suburban sprawl. I don't say that to criticize the place--I lived there for many years--but to point out that unlike Baltimore, DC, and SF, today's San Jose is not notably historic, urban, or distinctive, and its small downtown is tertiary--at best--to the lives of its own citizens, let alone those of nearby suburbs. One can make an argument for importance, although I should note that in the tech employment context, San Jose loses population on workdays as its residents commute to their tech jobs in other nearby suburbs.
Both CSAs have more than one populous municipality, but I think DC/Baltimore is a bad analogy for the Bay Area in any other significant way.