SF in ascent • LA in ascent • SF/LA parity (Los Angeles: commuter, money)

[edsg25]

admittedly an oversimplification, but could the history of California's two major metro areas be seen as the following:

San Francisco in ascent…throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, this was "The City"
Los Angeles in ascent….the rise through the 20th century to the nation's second largest city
San Francisco/Los Angeles parity: Silicon Valley spikes the Bay Area economy and it soars

So I'm suggesting that SF was in the beginning the major city, LA surpassed it, and today SF and LA are equals

(by San Francisco and Los Angeles, I am referring to the Bay Area and Metro LA respectively)

[nightlysparrow]

LA Metro: Area: 34,000 sq.miles Population: 18.5 million
SF Metro: Area: 231 sq.miles Population: 4.6 million

SF has no room to expand, mostly due to geography. LA does.

[DriveNotCommute]

Considering that your statements are acknowledged as a gross oversimplification where we don't need to be precise, I would not disagree too much your characterization. Here are my conditions for agreeing:

Ascent, descent and equals at what exactly? Let me interpret this as a contest of popular reputation. That would mean that a little of everything that might matter in different amounts to different people and I'll take a very rough sum of the positive reputations of everything.

In addition as I see it the original Silicon Valley thing was technically not San Francisco. Its growth afterwards did eventually expand into SF proper though and going by your OP, I will replace any instance of "San Francisco" that you used with "San Francisco Bay Area including Silicon Valley." That means stretching out to include San Jose.

In some respects, I think that the SF Bay Area (including San Jose, Silicon Valley) handles more money in today's post-Recession than SoCal combined, but that they are indeed both in the same general global class at the very top.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by nightlysparrow

LA Metro: Area: 34,000 sq.miles Population: 18.5 million
SF Metro: Area: 231 sq.miles Population: 4.6 million

SF has no room to expand, mostly due to geography. LA does.

The government artificially splits our two megacities. It splits the Bay Area into two where Santa Clara County joins Alameda and San Mateo Counties, and splits the LA/SoCal one into three where OC meets LA and where the IE meets LA and OC.

It's really a bunch of BS as we know there are no real boundaries (well, maybe psychological, for some but not all people).

Using the real world scheme and not the artificial government one the numbers for both are upped quite a bit. Of course, SoCal will still come out with a larger population even doing this my way.

The other thing I'd mention is the Bay Area is no more or less constrained for growth than SoCal - as anyone who's ever been stuck on either Altamont Pass or the 91 can attest. The real limit is pain of commute. There is some limit where only the most insane commuter would tolerate the distance / time.

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by nightlysparrow

LA Metro: Area: 34,000 sq.miles Population: 18.5 million
SF Metro: Area: 231 sq.miles Population: 4.6 million

SF has no room to expand, mostly due to geography. LA does.

nightly, i should have made it clear that i meant the entire bay area….silicon valley, san jose, and the rest