Will Chicago feel like a worldly, cosmopolitain city coming from San Francisco? (Cicero: best neighborhood, house)
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I don't think the Bay Area regards itself as an entity. I find the Bay Area separates itself into min-worlds in a way that is far removed from anything Chicago does.
Chicago is a traditional metro area: one central city and all that spreads from it is generically suburban: flat and interconnected, it comes across as a whole.
Not the Bay Area. First of all, that is a huge bay in the middle; nothing like it in a metro area in the United States, not even close (unless you consider Tampa/St. Pete to be "major metro"; I don't). Then add the various ranges of the Coast Range mountains to create more divide.
San Francisco is its own world. There are no real "suburbs" in the Bay Area; only regions. Going counterclockwise around the bay from SF, you hit the different worlds of the Peninsula, SJ/Silicon Valley, East Bay (with another world across the Berkeley Hills east of it sitting there), Wine Country, Marin.
As the 49ers get close to a move down to Santa Clara in Silicon Valley, it appears like they are almost moving out of the area if you are in San Francisco; in a way, it is.
Yes, San Francisco more than benefits from being a small city in a huge metro area (just as Boston does), but the Bay Area can hardly be looked at as a whole the way Chicagoland might be. The culture is far different down there in Silicon Valley than in SF. And it is far more blue collar in Oakland and other parts of East Bay than in "The City" (despite Cal's presence in Berkeley).
And, as noted, many of the regions of the Bay Area see SF as rather provincial.
I see what you are saying. Yet, my assertion is that despite the cohesiveness and the fact that every claims "Chicago". "Chicago" means different things for different people.
So, much that I would say the differences the culture/atitude/personality between different subcultures of Chicagoland are just as big, if not bigger than those between San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Silicon Valley, etc., etc.
There is a bigger city versus suburb divide precisely because the city of Chicago is VERY urban, and the Chicago suburbs are VERY suburban. And I hate to bring up the dead horse of segregation in Chicago (I am NOT trying to start an argument) as that often does, but the very fact that you have your "blue-collared white ethnic Chicago", your "recent Mexican immigrant Chicago" your "black Chicago" and your "yuppie-hipster transplant Chicago" I think points to the fact that you have bigger cultural differences between segments in Chicago.
Whereas in the Bay area, despite the fact that SF is SF, Oakland is Oakland, Berkeley is Berkeley, the lifestyle and attitudes within the Bay area are more similar amongst all those places.
I see what you are saying. Yet, my assertion is that despite the cohesiveness and the fact that every claims "Chicago". "Chicago" means different things for different people.
yes, tex, and you'd be right.
however, i would say a metropolitan area that has a huge and major city in its core (only one) and is relatively flat and interconnected throughout is one with a great amount of common identity.
There is little physical out there to divide Chicagoland and the city has a way of drawing us all in towards the core. Heck, even our transportation system works that way....I can't think of any metro area in which both the highway system and the rapid transit/commuter rail systems are so based on connecting the periphery to the core.
I've lived in SF and in Chicago (briefly). San Francisco was a wondrous place to be young in, and yes, it did, over the years, IMHO, get just a bit too self-consciously hip/precious for my tastes. And too expensive. But the dramatic beauty of the hills/Bay, access to Redwood forests, and skiing in Tahoe kept me content for many years.
In Chicago I lived 2300 near North (West Belden), w/i walking distance to Lincoln Park.
I loved Chicago--it's a cool city with friendly people, lots of culture, good eats. Be warned, though, it gets really, really cold when that "hawk" comes whistling off the Lake. Bring/buy warm clothes, but I suspect you'll enjoy Chicago--it's a world-class city.
I don't think the Bay Area regards itself as an entity. I find the Bay Area separates itself into min-worlds in a way that is far removed from anything Chicago does.
Chicago is a traditional metro area: one central city and all that spreads from it is generically suburban: flat and interconnected, it comes across as a whole.
Not the Bay Area. First of all, that is a huge bay in the middle; nothing like it in a metro area in the United States, not even close (unless you consider Tampa/St. Pete to be "major metro"; I don't). Then add the various ranges of the Coast Range mountains to create more divide.
San Francisco is its own world. There are no real "suburbs" in the Bay Area; only regions. Going counterclockwise around the bay from SF, you hit the different worlds of the Peninsula, SJ/Silicon Valley, East Bay (with another world across the Berkeley Hills east of it sitting there), Wine Country, Marin.
As the 49ers get close to a move down to Santa Clara in Silicon Valley, it appears like they are almost moving out of the area if you are in San Francisco; in a way, it is.
Yes, San Francisco more than benefits from being a small city in a huge metro area (just as Boston does), but the Bay Area can hardly be looked at as a whole the way Chicagoland might be. The culture is far different down there in Silicon Valley than in SF. And it is far more blue collar in Oakland and other parts of East Bay than in "The City" (despite Cal's presence in Berkeley).
And, as noted, many of the regions of the Bay Area see SF as rather provincial.
Perfect post, Bay Area definitely does NOT function as one, it's way more multinodal with people doing their own thing than Chicago is. Chicago completely dominates the region in a way that SF just doesn't. Chicago is a major METROPOLIS, with everything revolving around it, and rather generic for the most part suburbs than the very wealthy and diverse towns of the bay area. The Bay Area is a collection of major cities and plenty of nice quirky/wealthy/artisan/nice DT 20k-100k cities which are much more interesting than those found in Chicagoland, I assure you. Palo Alto, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Sonoma, Napa, Sebastopol, Petaluma, Sausalito, San Rafael, Bodega Bay, Guerneville, San Mateo, Dillon Beach, Martinez, Half Moon Bay, not to mention Oakland and San Jose (significant major cities)...There are no counterparts like this in Chicagoland really, and that is a major difference. But Chicago in general feels significantly more cohesive and makes you feel like you are truly in a different area if living there. Bay Area there is quite a bit more variety of things to do, but you won't ever get that overwhelming big metropolis feel you will in Chicago.
[quote=grapico;22105766]Perfect post, Bay Area definitely does NOT function as one, it's way more multinodal with people doing their own thing than Chicago is. Chicago completely dominates the region in a way that SF just doesn't. Chicago is a major METROPOLIS, with everything revolving around it, and rather generic for the most part suburbs than the very wealthy and diverse towns of the bay area. The Bay Area is a collection of major cities and plenty of nice quirky/wealthy/artisan/nice DT 20k-100k cities which are much more interesting than those found in Chicagoland, I assure you. Palo Alto, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Sonoma, Napa, Sebastopol, Petaluma, Sausalito, San Rafael, Bodega Bay, Guerneville, San Mateo, Dillon Beach, Martinez, Half Moon Bay, not to mention Oakland and San Jose (significant major cities)...There are no counterparts like this in Chicagoland really, and that is a major difference. But Chicago in general feels significantly more cohesive and makes you feel like you are truly in a different area if living there. Bay Area there is quite a bit more variety of things to do, but you won't ever get that overwhelming big metropolis feel you will in Chicago.[/QUOTE]
I wouldn't even consider the Chicago suburbs as all necessarily feeling "generic" although many are like that, many of them feel almost a little "country" or smnall town compared to California suburbs where houses are generally on small lots. So, in the Chicago suburbs people claim a big city as where they are from, yet actually may live day-to-day in a environment that is closer to small town America (except with more money, more foreign born, and where they are all quite close to on another).
You don't have La Grange, Downers Grove, Riverside, Brookfield, Lombard, Palatine, Glen Ellyn, etc., etc. that can somewhat resemble small town america in California metro areas so much.
Perfect post, Bay Area definitely does NOT function as one, it's way more multinodal with people doing their own thing than Chicago is. Chicago completely dominates the region in a way that SF just doesn't. Chicago is a major METROPOLIS, with everything revolving around it, and rather generic for the most part suburbs than the very wealthy and diverse towns of the bay area. The Bay Area is a collection of major cities and plenty of nice quirky/wealthy/artisan/nice DT 20k-100k cities which are much more interesting than those found in Chicagoland, I assure you. Palo Alto, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Sonoma, Napa, Sebastopol, Petaluma, Sausalito, San Rafael, Bodega Bay, Guerneville, San Mateo, Dillon Beach, Martinez, Half Moon Bay, not to mention Oakland and San Jose (significant major cities)...There are no counterparts like this in Chicagoland really, and that is a major difference. But Chicago in general feels significantly more cohesive and makes you feel like you are truly in a different area if living there. Bay Area there is quite a bit more variety of things to do, but you won't ever get that overwhelming big metropolis feel you will in Chicago.[/QUOTE]
I wouldn't even consider the Chicago suburbs as all necessarily feeling "generic" although many are like that, many of them feel almost a little "country" or smnall town compared to California suburbs where houses are generally on small lots. So, in the Chicago suburbs people claim a big city as where they are from, yet actually may live day-to-day in a environment that is closer to small town America (except with more money, more foreign born, and where they are all quite close to on another).
You don't have La Grange, Downers Grove, Riverside, Brookfield, Lombard, Palatine, Glen Ellyn, etc., etc. that can somewhat resemble small town america in California metro areas so much.
i would contend there is absolutely nothing comparable to the Bay Area in the United States. No metro area other metro area is built around a huge body of water. The closest to that concept, Tampa/St. Pete barely registers.
Look at SF itself; no major city in the nation can compare to its issillation. Basically a square, the three sides of the city that make it a peninsula out of the four have only three links with other places: two bridges and BART.
Then throw in mountains that divide like no other metro area. again, as noted, there are no suburbs in the Bay Area; only subregions....SF, the Peninsula, SJ/Silicon Valley, East Bay, Wine Country, Marin, etc.
And while D/FW, M/SP, among others may be built around two cities, only the Bay Area with SF, Oak, SJ is built around three.
There is absolutely nothing like the Bay Area among metro areas in the US.
I recently noticed that a large percentage of homes and apartment buildings in SF have street-facing 1-2 car garages taking up a floor of the building. It really is not nice to look at and kills some of the feel of the feel of the street.
Chicago is a major METROPOLIS, with everything revolving around it
It'll take you less than two seconds to prove this with any map or aerial photograph of Chicagoland. It literally screams its answer.
And if you want even more proof, take a look at an extended map that includes all of Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana. Chicago exceeds Rome in the notion that all roads lead to Chicago.
Rail map anyone?
Chicagoland is the ying to the Bay Area's yang. Nothing like it either. Flat land spread out in concentric circles from its core with no physical barriers in sight. Indeed it is Chicago where the concept of concentric circles came to be. There is no inward/outward scenario that can touch Chicagoland.
Look at New York where rivers, bay, and sound divide and then zero in on Manhattan. This is the only US city with two full powered cores, the original one in Lower Manhattan that, by its location, gave us the word "downtown" although today it functions less as the "real downtown" as the place that replaces it with that title, Midtown.
Downtown and Midtown are miles apart, two different worlds. They're not interconnected and you're not going to walk between them.
Not so in Chicago. Chicago's original core was the Loop and the first concentric circle out of it gives us the Super Loop or whatever you want to call our present, greatly expanded downtown that takes in the Near North Side up to North Avenue, goes west to at least past Greektown and arguably to the UC and terminates south at McCPl.
Past there, from city to suburbs, the concentric circles change as they move outward, reflecting their time of great settlements and their distance from the core.
Chicagoland and the Bay Area are the two points at the opposite end of the continuim.
I personally think small town America is a bit of a stretch even for Chicago suburbs unless of course you consider Sandwich as a sub.
They may not be farm towns exactly.
But in DuPage county where you have working living history farms, horse farms, maple syrup tapping demonstrations as part of the DuPage county forest preserves which are on land that separates towns that have historic centers with local businesses in old brick store fronts with neighborhoods with victorian homes, I don't see how you can argue that it has some of the resemblance of smaller midwestern towns.
No they are not rural. They share many of the same qualities that many midwestern suburban towns that surround cities have.
My point is more that you can not consider DuPage county as a simple extension of Chicago. It has its own character. A character it shares with other suburban counties in the midwest that have the elements of when those suburbs were indeed farm towns.
Just look up, I believe edsg25 even started a thread long ago about "Which suburbs are in their own little world.
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