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it's almost as if everything outside the I95 loop starts to get rural fast, I remember driving to see a friend locked up in Framingham and just that drive I felt isolated from the city.
It's because there is a layer of Trees to buffer the Highway noisE, so even Woburn or Quincy look suburban/ rural, even though they have 2,500 and 7,600
Because of the Bay Area's topography(hills, water and narrow valleys and necks of land), the region's density spreads out much farther away from the city than most other similarly sized metro areas.
it's almost as if everything outside the I95 loop starts to get rural fast, I remember driving to see a friend locked up in Framingham and just that drive I felt isolated from the city.
I use I95 (prefer to call it RT128) as a demarcation between urban and suburban. It works pretty well, with fairly high and uniform density on the inside, but much lower density surrounding pockets of density on the outside.
The Bay Area definitely feels connected. There's definitely some cultural differences between the four main chunks of the Bay (SF, South Bay/Peninsula, East Bay/North Bay, Marin) but they're definitely all interconnected in terms of development and their economies.
The Bay Area definitely feels connected. There's definitely some cultural differences between the four main chunks of the Bay (SF, South Bay/Peninsula, East Bay/North Bay, Marin) but they're definitely all interconnected in terms of development and their economies.
Agreed. There should be some revisions to the census methodology so that multi-core metros/urban areas get measured more realistically. The SF and SJ MSAs should be combined...as for other Bay Area MSAs (Vallejo, Santa Rosa, Napa, Santa Cruz), it makes most sense staying separate and only included in the CSA. I'd say that the core of the Bay Area, what the SF/SJ MSA should be, has about 6.3 million people (with about 5 million in the core urban area that surrounds the majority of the bay), while the "greater" Bay Area CSA has 7.5 million. As for cultural differences between regions of the Bay, I wouldn't say there's anything too drastic, besides the class and urban vs. suburban vs. rural stuff that you find in cities everywhere.
None.... Boston feels like savannah ga. to me....
SF feels pretty populated but not NYC PHILLY populated.
haha, Savannah? Really?
Anyway, I think cities like Boston and SF give this impression mainly due to the power of their cores. Both have very large, dense cores and have a pretty tenuous hold over their regions. I think that their urban cores give them the feel of a very large city, even if their MSAs don't necessarily reflect that.
Due to its age, once you leave Boston's urban core it becomes much different than most other cities in the nation. Rather than the never-ending blanket of suburbs which are of comparative size and density, Boston has dozens of clusters of independent cities, towns & villages (secondary cities: Worcester, Lowell, Lawrence, Brockton, Providence, New Bedford, Fall River, Framingham, Manchester, and Nashua. Even though is still the Hub, their bodies don't physically connect the way many other satellite cities do with the primary city.
I think the Bay Area is much different because it's considerably more connected. It's very dense throughout, without much drop-off whatsoever. For that reason, I'd say that it's fair to say that the SF Bay achieves 7+ million people as a metro while Boston achieves this as a region.
I dunno, hard to gauge a metro really. They both *feel* like about 5 mil metros to me, both kind of compact actually based on their core cities. If they supposedly feel like 7.5, then Chicago feels like 12-13, b/c to me Chicago easily feels double the size of those cities. I mean regionally though, who cares what it feels like. the numbers are what they are? Bay Area definitely feels bigger than Boston though.
Bay area does not feel connected at all to me. Santa Cruz might as well be another planet. The ring around the bay is very connected. But it just gets too spotty after that for me.
Bay area does not feel connected at all to me. Santa Cruz might as well be another planet. The ring around the bay is very connected. But it just gets too spotty after that for me.
They aren't. This is pretty easily seen by the air. The area that forms the giant "U" or crab claw around the bay is well connected and urban to dense suburban the whole way though. But SC, Sonoma, Napa and even Marin don't really feel connected b/c there is the big water gaps, parkland, and mountains. What it does create is a lot of options of "variety" of scene not found so much in other metros.
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