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Both of you are committed to your Grand Frisco Vision, but neither have explained why there is valley little Silicon Valley in between SF/Oakland and the actual Silicon Valley. If things emanated from the north, where is the tech in Millbrae and Hayward and San Carlos and San Leandro? That airport theory is comical, though. Sounds almost as much of a reach as "a guy from San Francisco founded Stanford."
San Jose proper, on the other hand, was home to FMC manufacturing and IBM research decades before there even was the "Silicon Valley" moniker. Commercial radio and the disk drive were created here.
Except you are wrong, because San Jose did not give rise to Palo Alto or Mountain View or Sunnyvale or Menlo Park or Redwood City or Santa Clara. They all boomed at the same time as sprawl headed south, San Jose just annexed the most land and played a offensive land annexation game which granted it the largest city proper population. There is no denying that. All the communities along the peninsula down to San Jose existed in much the same way San Jose existed. Fastphilly knows what he is talking about. Circumstantial evidence doesn't change this fact. If San Jose never existed I'll be the South Bay would be filled with sprawl the same way it is now.
It does not matter that San Jose did not give rise to South Bay cities directly, rather it gave rise to itself just as all the other South Bay cities gave rise to themselves because of IT development in the Santa Clara Valley.
As Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Mountain View, Cupertino, etc. grew, so did San Jose. They were all in it together. They all grew independent of each other, as well as, because of each other.
Stanford stimulated it, and sustains it, and San Jose's larger population of workers helped the IT companies prosper. San Jose State helped educate those unskilled and semi-skilled future workers.
Again, it is not only inaccurate, but wrong to exclude San Jose from the phenomenon of the Silicon Valley.
It does not matter that San Jose did not give rise to South Bay cities directly, rather it gave rise to itself just as all the other South Bay cities gave rise to themselves because of IT development in the Santa Clara Valley.
As Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Mountain View, Cupertino, etc. grew, so did San Jose. They were all in it together. They all grew independent of each other, as well as, because of each other.
Stanford stimulated it; and San Jose State along with San Jose's larger population of workers helped the IT companies prosper.
Again, it is not only inaccurate, but false to exclude San Jose from the phenomenon of the Silicon Valley.
Yup, like saying San Francisco/Oak had nothing to do with it is accurate either. I'm sure they all had nothing to do with one another. All cities exist in a vacuum. They never influence one another.
You want to say Palo Alto influenced itself, sure that makes sense. If any city started Silicon Valley or is its capital it is that, not San Jose. If anything Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Santa Clara should be thanked for giving rise to San Jose. They certainly are not "suburbs of San Jose" in any sense of the word though.
The reason tech isn't in Milbrae or South City as much is because the South Bay was the next logical place for sprawl to go with cheap and flat land. San Jose gained its population via metro area sprawl while the urban core (SF/Oak) was declining. Just look up the census data or historical city populations. Circumstantial evidence or stories of who you knew doesn't change the data.
San Jose gained its population via metro area sprawl while the urban core (SF/Oak) was declining. Just look up the census data or historical city populations.
This pre-occupation to discount San Jose's role in the growth and development of the Silicon Valley is non-sensicle.
Almost every single one of the Silicon Valley cities is in Santa Clara County.
If all those cities decided to become one city, San Jose, or for that matter, Sunnyvale. The basis for your argument would be even more mute. Simply by being in the same county(Santa Clara County) one can see the connection between all the South Bay cities. Resources were shared like the development of the expressways and roads that connect Silicon Valley cities, the community college system, school districts, and later light rail illustrates the connection apart from other Bay Area cities.
Yup, like saying San Francisco/Oak had nothing to do with it is accurate either. I'm sure they all had nothing to do with one another. All cities exist in a vacuum. They never influence one another.
You want to say Palo Alto influenced itself, sure that makes sense. If any city started Silicon Valley or is its capital it is that, not San Jose. If anything Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Santa Clara should be thanked for giving rise to San Jose. They certainly are not "suburbs of San Jose" in any sense of the word though.
I never said the rest of the Bay Area(San Francisco/Oak) had nothing to do with the growth of Silicon Valley. On the contrary, I spoke of other parts of the Bay Area including other folks in NorCal who were part of the growth.
All those South Bay cities to this day have suburban neighborhoods. So how do you explain my friend who lives in Sunnyvale but works in San Jose, or the many other people who work actually live in these South Bay cities but work in San Jose.
Both of you are committed to your Grand Frisco Vision, but neither have explained why there is valley little Silicon Valley in between SF/Oakland and the actual Silicon Valley. If things emanated from the north, where is the tech in Millbrae and Hayward and San Carlos and San Leandro? That airport theory is comical, though. Sounds almost as much of a reach as "a guy from San Francisco founded Stanford."
San Jose proper, on the other hand, was home to FMC manufacturing and IBM research decades before there even was the "Silicon Valley" moniker. Commercial radio and the disk drive were created here.
How is that airport theory comical. Elaborate?? San Carlos, San Leandro, Hayward and Millbrae were already at a point in development in the 70's that large available land parcels were not available and even if it were so the price of land was much higher compared to the Santa Clara Valley. I remember vividly when Great America opened in the mid 70's and there was nothing around it.
You must have a inferiority complex whenever SF/SJ are discussed.
The reason tech isn't in Milbrae or South City as much is because the South Bay was the next logical place for sprawl to go with cheap and flat land. San Jose gained its population via metro area sprawl while the urban core (SF/Oak) was declining. Just look up the census data or historical city populations. Circumstantial evidence or stories of who you knew doesn't change the data.
San Jose grew through sprawl while San Jose's urban core declined. This area drew substantial immigrants and job-seekers over decades of growth, not by people fleeing San Francisco and Oakland. What a joke of a narrative.
How is that airport theory comical. Elaborate?? San Carlos, San Leandro, Hayward and Millbrae were already at a point in development in the 70's that large available land parcels were not available and even if it were so the price of land was much higher compared to the Santa Clara Valley. I remember vividly when Great America opened in the mid 70's and there was nothing around it.
You must have a inferiority complex whenever SF/SJ are discussed.
1. There is plenty of flat land and open space for tech office parks up the peninsula and down the other side. Plenty of it became sprawl just the same. Why no office parks, too? Already built up, that's ludicrous.
2. This debate arose because several SF folks threw a tantrum and denied San Jose being its own metro area, despite the Census Bureau and this very forum suggesting otherwise. Whose irrational complex should we call into question here?
Most people are describing the whole Bay Area as "Silicon Valley" now. It doesn't take much reading of the local business journals there (SF Business Times, SV BizJournal) to understand that.
Several big trends happening that point to this:
1) Many traditional SV firms opening offices, some large, in SF because that is where many of their employees wish to live (similarly, because so many employees do live in SF, there are 40,000+ shuttle bus riders from the city to the valley and the commuter rail ridership has exploded)
2) The explosion of social media and new-age startups (eg Airbnb, Uber, etc) along with the highest concentration of available VC, in SF, not in the older definition of SV (or separately, not in SJ either)
3) Many startups in SF "outgrowing" the city or opening Peninsula/SV offices for reasons of space needs or desire to be amongst the more established players
4) Many Valley and SF firms opening offices in the Peninsula cities (some which were already considered part of the older definition of Silicon Valley). Sand Hill Rd/Menlo Park is no longer the Valley VC hub as it is too expensive for limited/dated office buildings and many VC firms want to better target today's demographic of tech workers/founders, who prefer city life. Thus downtown Palo Alto has overtaken Sand Hill Rd as the Valley hub of VC/support. Similarly, Redwood City is one of the only truly pro-growth cities in the entire Bay Area, so a ton of new construction has lured many new companies/HQs and apartments.
5) Oakland/Emeryville has become more of a hot spot as part of a greater "Spillover Effect". Already home to a lot of modern day firms (Pixar, Pandora, Maxis, and a host of pharmaceutical/life sciences firms), so many firms that are being priced out of SF/SV are looking to this highly transit connected area with availabilities and lower rents, and are making or contemplating moves.
Overall, it's not too hard to see that technology, life sciences, and general "innovation" tied to 21st century ideas/businesses are what drive the entire Bay Area. Sure there is a large financial sector concentrated in SF, and big corporates dotting the entire landscape, but technology in various forms is now the largest or 2nd largest overall sector in nearly every Bay Area city.
Also, RE: San Jose sub-forum including "Sunnyvale to Morgan Hill", that's not hard to imagine. That's 2 million people in a sub-region (i.e. South Bay) that deserve their own thread. Morgan Hill is a borderline exurb with no commercial and Sunnyvale is a Santa Clara County boundary city, but by no means the boundary for the older definition of Silicon Valley, which includes many towns in San Mateo County, which is part of SF's MSA.
Last edited by anonelitist; 11-27-2014 at 09:23 PM..
1. There is plenty of flat land and open space for tech office parks up the peninsula and down the other side. Plenty of it became sprawl just the same. Why no office parks, too? Already built up, that's ludicrous.
2. This debate arose because several SF folks threw a tantrum and denied San Jose being its own metro area, despite the Census Bureau and this very forum suggesting otherwise. Whose irrational complex should we call into question here?
If San Jose is so separate, let's disconnect it from SF/Oakland by rail (and WHY are we extending BART to SJ in that case???). Let's move the San Francisco 49ers back to the SF MSA. Let's bar South Bay/Bridge and Tunnel (err, whoops, San Jose) residents from coming into Giants games. Let's start charging tolls on the highways just as SF does to its own area residents on the bridges. Let's not share news channels or public channels.
I'm not saying it's not separate to any degree, as it does at least TRY to maintain a smidge of some sort of unique identity, and there are a few things down there to keep residents happy and not having to trek up to SF for everything (eg a couple museums, cultural things, Santana Row/Valley Fair shopping, etc).
BUT, compared to the rest of the list, it's part of a much greater area, an identity credited as Bay Area. It doesn't have its own sports teams and news channels. It shares those with close to 8-10 million people in the area.
It's more akin to Raleigh-Durham than DC-Baltimore. DC and Baltimore are two totally separate cities that have their own sports teams and two separate cultures/identities, that happen to be right next to each other. Raleigh and Durham, on the other hand, are oddly seen as two metro areas by the Census, but they are definitely just one.
At the same time SLC, Raleigh-Durham, Greensboro-Winston Salem-High Point, Greenville-Spartanburg, and LA were split up into different metros, so was the Bay Area. It had to do entirely with technicalities, not necessarily reality.
But nice try.
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