SF vs Center City/Surrounding areas (society hill/University city) Which would you live in? (living, comparison)

[SFdeliveryguy]

Which would you prefer since center city is like half this size of SF.

[kidphilly]

tough call, I live in one of them now but love both

and just to clarify I do believe the population of downtown Philly (CC) is actually greater than downtown SF

But both to me are fairly similar in size of the urban core so again a really tough choice for me even if one is home

[rah]

By most people's definition, "downtown SF" includes the Financial District, Union Square, the Tenderloin, Civic Center, Nob Hill, Chinatown, part of North Beach, and part of SOMA, and has around 100,000 residents (it's impossible to really tell, because downtown SF includes portions of certain neighborhoods/zip codes...and stats are usually broken down by neighborhood or zip code, so it requires some guessing unless you have access to census tract info and add it all up). What's the population of downtown Philly?

But why are we comparing all of SF to just center city philly anyways? Why not entire city to entire city?

[kidphilly]

Well that is according to published data, philly is third behind NYC and Chicago; what you are including goes beyond what the published sources includes; and i actually live in Queen village which is not included but very much a part of downtown. if you were to include Queen Village, Bella Vista, Northern Liberties and The Art museum district I believe Philly is just shy of 160K in the downtown region, if you include University city it is close to 200K but honestly living in Philly and spending a lot of time in downtown SF i think their downtowns are extremely comparable in terms of size and population and am not familiar enough with the neighbohood boundaries of SF to make an equal comparison, by feel they seem similar, would actually say the same about Boston for that matter, maybe DC though a bit more spread out

[a75206]

for scenic beauty right there in the city, SF. Sorry, Philly!

But you have to be able to afford that view of the Bay and all that good stuff...and for that kind of money, you can easily live like a king in the nicest neighborhood of Center City Philly, Rittenhouse Sq...and still perhaps save some money to go visit SF once in a while!

What I'm trying to say is that it's really two different places, on two opposite ends of the country, with two different types of climates... Philly gives you Bos-Wash megacity. Philly also gives you snow in winter and 4 distinct seasons... SF gives you mediterranean in America. You really have to know what you like more, because they're two quite distinct and different places even if they have comparable downtown urbanity.

[Pine to Vine]

CC for me obviously since I chose to live here. Love SF, but it comes down to an east/west coast preference for me: I'm simply an east coast person. Aside from that, I have so much more money to enjoy the amenities here since I have less tied up in my housing. Don't know what neighborhoods you're using to calculate the relative size, but I'm really not a size queen - there is more than enough in CC, the Delaware Valley and Bos-Wash to keep me occupied.

Can see the advantages to each - just comes down to a preference.