How influential would you say the San Francisco Bay Area is? (place, bigger)

[RadicalAtheist]

I believe their reasoning would be something along the lines of "Just because."

[Cleverfield]

I think San Francisco is a little too fringe to be considered very influential by most of the US. I think people often view that city as the crazy, hippy, techy, gay mecca, and kind of write it off from the mainstream American psyche.

[kidphilly]

Originally Posted by 18Montclair

As far as relevance and influence today as far as driving the economy and trends, the Bay Area is probably no lower than 2nd

The Bay Area is 2nd as far as corporate concentration and globally recognized corporate brands.

The Bay Area is 1st(by far) when it comes to annual patents issued.

Billions of people around the world access information and project their lives to the rest of the world on platforms that originate in the Bay.

Billions.

Imagine if suddenly Google, Facebook, YouTube, gmail, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Twitter, LinkedIn all decided to shut down. Imagine if that shutdown were accompanied by Apple and Android wireless operating systems also shut down.

All this talk of Riverside and Philly are cute but neither of those 2 places wield the immense global power that Bay Area companies collectively possess.

New York and DC to me are the only other 2 that could reak that kind of havoc in the world.

yeah probably first

[jsimms3]

Originally Posted by Cleverfield

I think San Francisco is a little too fringe to be considered very influential by most of the US. I think people often view that city as the crazy, hippy, techy, gay mecca, and kind of write it off from the mainstream American psyche.

Isn't that an influence though? SF has played an integral role in cultural revolutions since the 1950s. Other cities on this list haven't really, and in fact, one area where Atlanta has is this (with Civil Rights Movement).

Hippies
Hipsters
Beat Generation
Techies
Gay Revolution
Sexual Revolution
Civil Rights to a degree
Environmental Movement

All of these nationally recognized and influential movements were either born here, shared with New York, or came into focus here. Culturally, I would say the city is probably in top 3, easily, for most influential in America. Politically, not so much (though Nancy Pelosi and other Washington politicians are from here). Economically, well that's a long answer. SF bankrolled the western expansion. Literally, LA, Denver, Phoenix, Portland, and Seattle would not exist as they do today without SF's financial backing, which is why it still remains a major financial powerhouse (especially relevant to today's financial sector of small/mid-size PE, VC, Hedge Fund setups and investment banks).

[Deezus]

Originally Posted by jsimms3

Isn't that an influence though? SF has played an integral role in cultural revolutions since the 1950s. Other cities on this list haven't really, and in fact, one area where Atlanta has is this (with Civil Rights Movement).

Hippies
Hipsters
Beat Generation
Techies
Gay Revolution
Sexual Revolution
Civil Rights to a degree
Environmental Movement

The Civil Rights movement wasn't that big a deal in San Francisco. More so in Oakland.

"Techies" had much more to do with Silicon Valley than San Francisco for a long time(San Francisco elites looked down on the tech industry back in the 80s and the city was focused more on finance)--only relatively recently did the tech footprint grow in the city.

"Hipsters" isn't a movement, it's just a name that got back for young people following various trends that gets tacked on to anyone who contributes to gentrification at this point.

All of these nationally recognized and influential movements were either born here, shared with New York, or came into focus here. Culturally, I would say the city is probably in top 3, easily, for most influential in America. Politically, not so much (though Nancy Pelosi and other Washington politicians are from here). Economically, well that's a long answer. SF bankrolled the western expansion. Literally, LA, Denver, Phoenix, Portland, and Seattle would not exist as they do today without SF's financial backing, which is why it still remains a major financial powerhouse (especially relevant to today's financial sector of small/mid-size PE, VC, Hedge Fund setups and investment banks).

That's not really completely true, considering that in Portland and Seattle a lot of the initial capital came from pioneers from New England or other parts of the East Coast. A lot of the west benefited from the need for resources brought on by the California Gold Rush, but San Francisco was just lucky to be large urban center at that point in history in Northern California. Seattle's biggest growth came after the Klondike Gold Rush in the 1890s however. Denver benefited from it's own gold rushes early on and being the major hub for the Rockies and western Great Plains. Los Angeles probably owes more to William Muholland than anyone from San Francisco for it's early growth.

[Trafalgar Law]

Washington's GDP ranks top five in both MSA and CSA GDP. The Bay Area is top five for CSA GDP, but San Francisco-Oakland is out of the top five for MSA GDP.

Is this the reason why people seem to give Washington the pass for top five both ways and rally against San Francisco? I suppose the government.

You have to see the Bay Area as one entity, it truly is one entity, one economy, one place.

[jsimms3]

^^^The banks for gold rush money were in San Francisco. They also helped finance things like the Transcontinental Railroad, and the list goes on. For instance, the principals of the Central Pacific Railroad were SF businessmen, one of whom was the primary shareholder of Wells Fargo at the time (Charles Crocker...another were guys named Huntington and Hopkins...Nob Hill is adorned with several boutique hotels that take on these names).

On to your other points, Oakland is as much a part of SF and the Bay Area as SF is. But while civil rights movements in Oakland were black-focused and led by UC Berkeley organized campaigns, SF civil rights movements at the time were pretty all-encompassing. Civil rights in general has been a focus of liberal Bay Area residents for a very long time.

Hipsters are *supposed to be* the inheritors of hippies. In theory, they should all share a common political belief grounded in that political belief that hippies shared, and other similar generations before them. In reality, however, they are a group of people that share a common dress...which was made popular by "creative types" living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and the Mission in SF. I just listed them even though the concept of hipster is so distorted because many have come to associate SF (and now Oakland) with hipsters much as they do much of Brooklyn. I'd say nowadays, in America, practically 50% of the population is "hipster" using today's lowest common denominator of definition.

[Astorian31]

LOL. I accidentally clicked the wrong choice. Anyway, I would place SF in the top 5/top 10. NYC, LA, DC, Chicago are all definitely ahead of SF. A case could be made for SF being 5 or 6th.

[jsimms3]

I just have to ask, though, is Houston more influential than the Bay Area? Is Seattle? Is Atlanta? Is Dallas? Boston? Philly? Miami? We still haven't heard from the 6-10 crew yet...

[tmac9wr]

Originally Posted by Lets Eat Candy

This forum is weird. I see lots of explanations of why its top 5, but its tied between being a top 5 area/city and merely a 6-10 city without any explanation.

I honestly think its more of a top 5 area myself, but do find some merit behind the 6-10 arguments. If someone can make them.

Because the Bay Area is a unique circumstance. It's a large region which is divided into two MSAs but there's a strong, legitimate argument for it to be considered one.

On a one-on-one MSA to MSA argument, cities like Boston and Houston have legit arguments, but when you include the Bay Area as a whole, the Bay is clearly more important. The explanation behind that is Silicon Valley is part of the Bay Area but it's technically not part of the SF metro. Without this part of the equation, mega companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Cisco, HP, eBay, Oracle, etc. wouldn't be included in the argument for SF.

Originally Posted by jsimms3

I would be curious to hear from the 6-10 camp. If NYC, LA, Chicago, and DC are obviously more "influential" than the Bay Area, what are the other 1-5 more influential metros? This could make for an interesting argument...

As I mentioned before, I think Boston and Houston could make an argument against the SF MSA. I'll let Houstoners state their case, but I'm originally from the Boston area, so I'll give the argument for that area.

As everyone knows, the entire region is a hotbed for higher education, and the economy of Boston is heavily intertwined with these institutions. Harvard and MIT are the two obvious headliners, but the whole metro features top-notch colleges such as Wellesley, Tufts, Boston College, Bentley, Brandeis, Boston University, Northeastern, among many others. As a result, the greater Boston area is a hot bed for startup activity. This is supported by the fact that only the SF Bay receives more venture capital than Greater Boston.

Paired with the venture capital/startup activity is Boston's strong claim to be the life sciences center of the planet. Harvard Medical has several "teaching" hospitals, including two of the best hospitals on the planet: Mass General and Brigham & Women's. On top of that are several major other hospitals such as Dana Farber Cancer, Beth Israel Deaconess, Joslin Diabetes, Mass Ear & Eye, Boston Medical Center, among others. The result of having all of top-notch institutions is Boston receiving the most NIH funding of any city in the nation...for the last 18 years. The only two states to receive more NIH funding than the city of Boston are California and New York.

It's not just hospitals though. The Boston area is arguably the best biotech cluster in the US and may be the #2 tech center in the US behind the Bay Area. The concentration of these industries are in Cambridge and the Route 128 belt. While there's no doubt the Bay Area has by far the most impressive lineup of any area in the world when it comes to tech, Kendall Square in Cambridge may very well be the most impressive lineup of any neighborhood in the world. In an area of little over 1/2 of a square mile, you'll find headquarters, R&D, and innovation centers for: Akamai Technologies, Biogen Idec, the Broad Institute, Whitehead Institute, Genzyme/Sanofi, Novartis, EMC Corp, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Google, Microsoft, Amgen, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Johnson & Johnson, VMware, Shire PLC, Staples. Here's a list, which includes some I may have missed. These are all located in a matter of blocks, with companies often sharing blocks and sometimes even buildings. All of this borders the campus of MIT, who's currently building a 180,000 square foot research center for Pfizer, who will be participating in a 10-year joint venture with them in Kendall Square.

Beyond science & technology, Boston is the #2 financial services center in the USA (#8 in the world). Thanks to giants such as State Street Bank and Fidelity Investments, Boston is one of the elite asset management centers on the planet. Trailing only NYC (with $11.67 trillion AUM), Boston companies manage more than $5.563 trillion. Comparatively, LA and SF are third and fourth with $2.965T and $1.711T (meaning Boston manages roughly $1T more than the two combined).

I'm not sure if I would call Boston's MSA more influential than SF's MSA, but for the reasons listed above and some that aren't, I think the argument exists.