Naming US metropolitan areas

[Buckeye Native 001]

Originally Posted by JManc

I think at this point, SJ is far more relevant than Oakland. The economic output and innovation coming out of San Jose and surrounding communities has global implications.

It's a bubble, or at least felt that way when I visited in 2013. There's so much money flowing through Silicon Valley you can almost feel it.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

San Jose is a San Francisco suburb. It only exist by the virtue of San Francisco urban core sprawling southwards.

If Brooklyn becomes an independent city, I certainly don't expect to call New York by a bizarre Brooklyn-Queens-New York-Newark MSA or whatever the name.

SF to SJ is almost 50 miles. That's kind of a long hike for a suburb. Even decades ago, people who lived in the SJ area tended to work around there. I had a relative to lived in Sunnyvale in the 60's and 70's and worked right in the area.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by JManc

SF to SJ is almost 50 miles. That's kind of a long hike for a suburb. Even decades ago, people who lived in the SJ area tended to work around there. I had a relative to lived in Sunnyvale in the 60's and 70's and worked right in the area.

You just need to check San Francisco urban sprawl maps decade after decade. No matter how independent, wealthy or populated a suburb is, it doesn't change the fact it just existed because a big older city physically expanded.

It's like San Bernardino-Riverside. It's not like a 4.5 million urban area just appeared from nowhere in the middle of the desert, 100 km away from the shore. It existed there only as a part of a 18 million urban area that grew on the Los Angeles basin.

[iheartthed]

San Jose is a satellite of San Francisco. Oakland is too, but SF and Oakland should probably be one city right now.

[Yuri]

Looks how San Francisco runs out of land in its original county and spills over the southern counties, that start to grow at explosive rates as result of a big metropolis growing over them:

1930: SF: 634,394; SM: 77,405; SC: 145,118
1940: SF: 634,536; SM: 111,782; SC: 174,949
1950: SF: 775,357; SM: 235,659; SC: 290,547
1960: SF: 740,316; SM: 444,387; SC: 642,315
1970: SF: 715,674; SM: 556,234; SC: 1,064,714
1980: SF: 678,974; SM: 587,329; SC: 1,295,071
1990: SF: 723,959; SM: 649,623; SC: 1,497,577
2000: SF: 776,733; SM: 707,161; SC: 1,682,585
2010: SF: 805,235; SM: 718,451; SC: 1,781,642
2019: SF: 881,549; SM: 766,573; SC: 1,927,852

And as in the 2010's we've watched urban renaissance across the US, San Francisco grows faster than its suburbs for the first time, another sign that we are talking about the same urban organism centered at San Francisco County.

[jd3189]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

San Jose is a San Francisco suburb. It only exist by the virtue of San Francisco urban core sprawling southwards.

If Brooklyn becomes an independent city, I certainly don't expect to call New York by a bizarre Brooklyn-Queens-New York-Newark MSA or whatever the name.

I don’t know about that. San Jose, while suburban in layout, is the center of its own economic area, Silicon Valley. Maybe in the past it was just a bedroom community for SF, but now each one fulfills an economic niche in the Bay Area.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by jd3189

I don’t know about that. San Jose, while suburban in layout, is the center of its own economic area, Silicon Valley. Maybe in the past it was just a bedroom community for SF, but now each one fulfills an economic niche in the Bay Area.

Well, facilities of a metro area don't need to be all located on the central city proper. Silicon Valley is an integral part of San Francisco metropolitan area and due the lack of space developed immediately south of it. There isn't a rule preventing suburbs to have strong job markets.

Look at Detroit: I don't have the numbers, but I would guess 85% of jobs of its metro area are outside Detroit city proper. Likewise, it doesn't change the fact Oakland and Macomb counties are only fully urbanized today because Detroit outgrew it city limits on the past.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Well, facilities of a metro area don't need to be all located on the central city proper. Silicon Valley is an integral part of San Francisco metropolitan area and due the lack of space developed immediately south of it. There isn't a rule preventing suburbs to have strong job markets.

Look at Detroit: I don't have the numbers, but I would guess 85% of jobs of its metro area are outside Detroit city proper. Likewise, it doesn't change the fact Oakland and Macomb counties are only fully urbanized today because Detroit outgrew it city limits on the past.

San Jose's analogy in the Detroit area would be Ann Arbor or Pontiac. Pontiac was a distinct urban center from Detroit, but Detroit's sprawl has completely encircled it. Ann Arbor was also distinct from Detroit, but Detroit's western suburbs are now fused with Ann Arbor's bedroom communities.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Well, facilities of a metro area don't need to be all located on the central city proper. Silicon Valley is an integral part of San Francisco metropolitan area and due the lack of space developed immediately south of it. There isn't a rule preventing suburbs to have strong job markets.

Look at Detroit: I don't have the numbers, but I would guess 85% of jobs of its metro area are outside Detroit city proper. Likewise, it doesn't change the fact Oakland and Macomb counties are only fully urbanized today because Detroit outgrew it city limits on the past.

San Francisco and San Jose when factored in as a singular metro is considered the Bay Area, not simply "San Francisco" while "San Francisco Bay Area" will always be correct since that's the name of the bay. Also, SF and SJ are in separate metro areas but share a CSA.

[bossabreezes]

Maybe we can look at SF and SJ kind of like Washington DC and Baltimore.

Part of a general urban network, but maybe not 100% dependent on each other.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by bossabreezes

Maybe we can look at SF and SJ kind of like Washington DC and Baltimore.

Part of a general urban network, but maybe not 100% dependent on each other.

Not really. Baltimore and Washington have been independent cities/metro areas for over than 200 years while their outward growth had touched each other 20-30 years ago., being a 2 million and 3 million people metro areas when that happened.

San Jose didn’t existed independently from San Francisco. It was just a collection of ranches that were engulfed by San Francisco southwards growth.

[craigs]

The problem with analogizing Baltimore/Washington with the Bay Area is that, unlike San Jose, Baltimore was for centuries a big, distinct, important, and historic city in its own right, and the hub of its own metropolitan universe long before it was joined to DC's CSA by way of suburban infill. For much of the nation's history, Baltimore was actually the more important city, and for every census we've completed, it has always been the more populous city (that will change when the 2020 census is completed). That is not true of San Jose.

San Jose came to life as an agricultural hub for the farms, ranches, and orchards that fed San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, etc. Whereas the port city of Baltimore exceeded 100,000 residents by 1840, San Jose still had fewer than 100,000 residents as late as 1950, when San Francisco had 775,357 residents (and Baltimore had 949,708). San Jose only became a "big city" long after it was fully subsumed into the rest of the Bay Area, and its suburban nature even today makes it a distant third when it comes to urban cores in the Bay Area. San Jose was never a historic urban hub that exceeded or even rivaled San Francisco.

San Jose:
1870 - 9,089
1880 - 12,567
1890 - 18,060
1900 - 21,500
1910 - 28,946
1920 - 39,642
1930 - 57,651
1940 - 68,457
1950 - 95,280
1960 - 204,196
1970 - 459,913
1980 - 629,400
1990 - 782,248
2000 - 894,943
2010 - 945,942
Est. 2019 - 1,021,79

[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.

[Yuri]

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.

We could apply this analogy to my city, São Paulo. There are several business nodes scattered all over the urban fabric and no one would regard them as "independent cities" on their own.

The fact of San Jose looking different from central San Francisco doesn't seem relevant either. Parisian suburbs don't look like Paris intra-muros.

And again, if toworrow Oakland County, MI consolidated into an Oakland City, would it suddenly turn into a city in its own right completely unrelated to Detroit? I don't think so. And that's San Jose: a collection of houses, startup warehouses, campus offices, freeways, all resulted from San Francisco's urban growth.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

We could apply this analogy to my city, São Paulo. There are several business nodes scattered all over the urban fabric and no one would regard them as "independent cities" on their own.

The fact of San Jose looking different from central San Francisco doesn't seem relevant either. Parisian suburbs don't look like Paris intra-muros.

This isn't Paris or Sao Paulo. Those cities dominate their respective regions in every possible way, San Francisco does not. San Francisco from a cultural and historical perspective is still the clear dominant force over anything in the region but again, San Jose as a hub of the Silicon Valley has developed into own city with its own economy. It's still close enough to SF where neither exists in a vacuum.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by JManc

This isn't Paris or Sao Paulo. Those cities dominate their respective regions in every possible way, San Francisco does not. San Francisco from a cultural and historical perspective is still the clear dominant force over anything in the region but again, San Jose as a hub of the Silicon Valley has developed into own city with its own economy. It's still close enough to SF where neither exists in a vacuum.

But then it's a matter of definition: is the city of São Paulo the old Downtown, or the Paulista Avenue, or the new shining towers by Pinheiros river 10 km southwest from Downtown?

That's the same with San Francisco: the fact of people being employed in its suburbs doesn't change the fact that's a single urban area, as much as those several nodes are all part of the city of São Paulo and are only there because São Paulo has grown over these areas.

San Jose just happened to have an unusual big city proper, while Oakland County, MI is divided in several cities. In both cases, we're talking about classic suburbs with strong job markets.

[craigs]

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.

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.

[SIGSEGV]

Downtown San Jose looks more like downtown Palo Alto or downtown San Mateo than downtown San Francisco. Oakland has a much more impressive downtown. I know part of that is because of the airport, but it certainly doesn't help San Jose like a big independent place. When I was an undergrad at Stanford, we'd go to San Francisco, Oakland or Berkeley for fun... almost never San Jose, even though it was much closer. It just didn't seem to offer much over say... Mountain View.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by craigs

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.

You could be describing Phoenix or Houston. Younger cities without the benefit of widespread pre-war development are going to have the same dynamic and urban fabric as San Jose. They are going to empty out after weekday business hours (because what else is there to do) and not have the history or charm as San Francisco. Baltimore is just much older thus has history but doesn't make it more of a city than San Jose but in 2020, San Jose is probably more relevant economically.

[ThePhun1]

@craigs

To play the Devil's advocate, you have to start somewhere. All cities started as nothing, so if San Jose or Brasilia, for example, were nothing in 1950 it doesn't preclude them from being something today.

That said population figures skew importance, including when it comes to the Census. San Jose is nowhere close to being the import center of the Bay Area.