San Francisco's appearance in Google Maps (San Jose, Long Beach: versus, centers, beach)

[WithDisp]

Why is it when you load up a map of the USA and slowly zoom in towards California, San Francisco appears on the legend first- despite having a lower population than San Jose?

This is as opposed to Texas, where Houston loads before Dallas & Austin (most dense city and capital city).

Can anyone think what data order these load in? Or was San Francisco purposefully 'elevated' in order because people have heard of it?

[NativeOrange]

I don't think population has much of a difference as notoriety. For instance, in SoCal, you will see Long Beach, Santa Ana, Anaheim and Newport Beach. The former 3 make sense as they are the two most populous OC cities and one is a major satellite city of LA. Newport Beach on the other hand is surrounded by two larger cities (Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach), but they aren't even shown until you zoom further.

[04kL4nD]

SF is 8 miles away from the East Bay, which has more people than either SF or the South Bay.

[WithDisp]

... but east bay isn't a city- nor do South Bay centers come up.

I see the Newport Beach, though we're talking somewhat similar numbers.

It's bizarre they'd implant subjective data in the map system.

[bentobox34]

It's not limited to the SF/SJ distinction. The next city that appears after SJ is Palo Alto, then Santa Rosa, then Napa, Healdsburg and Berkeley. Palo Alto is the 28th largest city in the Bay Area.

I took a look at the NYC metro area and the first city that appeared after New York was New Haven, CT (pop. 125k). The next group of cities to appear were Stamford, Beacon (pop. 15,541), Poughkeepsie, Princeton and Trenton. Newark (the second largest city in the metro area) appears in the next zoom; Jersey City (the third largest city in the metro area) takes two further zooms to appear.

Originally Posted by WithDisp

It's bizarre they'd implant subjective data in the map system.

No it's not. All maps contain subjective data. In this case it's probably based on how often people search for map data about particular places.

[GatsbyGatz]

San Jose has a larger population number because it has a huge land boundary (176.526 square miles). San Francisco is nearly four times as densely populated as SJ. The point I'm trying to make is that SF is much more populated, square mile by square mile, whereas San Jose is largely a sprawl. Of course, SF's cultural importance alone is enough to warrant the priority on Google Map.

[WithDisp]

Originally Posted by GatsbyGatz

San Jose has a larger population number because it has a huge land boundary (176.526 square miles). San Francisco is nearly four times as densely populated as SJ. The point I'm trying to make is that SF is much more populated, square mile by square mile, whereas San Jose is largely a sprawl. Of course, SF's cultural importance alone is enough to warrant the priority on Google Map.

I've already contrasted that with Dallas & Houston.
Houston comes up first despite not being as dense.

Maps measure distance and show population. Not cultural importance.
, aside from Capital cities- which SF is not.

[bentobox34]

Originally Posted by WithDisp

Maps measure distance and show population. Not cultural importance.
, aside from Capital cities- which SF is not.

Red highlighted text is your own subjective criteria. There is no "objective" reason maps should be designed to prioritize population over other criteria.

Maps are always designed to optimize the visibility of information expected to be important to viewers of the map. Therefore they always exaggerate certain features, e.g. roadway widths on road maps, geographic features on geographic maps, etc. There is no such thing as a "pure" map.

[Sierrajeff]

Originally Posted by bentobox34

There is no "objective" reason maps should be designed to prioritize population over other criteria.

Maps are always designed to optimize the visibility of information expected to be important to viewers of the map. Therefore they always exaggerate certain features, e.g. roadway widths on road maps, geographic features on geographic maps, etc. There is no such thing as a "pure" map.

Indeed, this is precisely the point. San Jose may have more people, but of the set of people (from around the entire world) looking on Google Maps at the Bay Area, how many are looking for San Francisco (or at least have heard of San Francisco) versus looking for or have heard of San Jose? People around the world know of San Francisco - I'll wager that even a lot of people from San Jose, if they're travelling Europe or Asia, will say that they're from "San Francisco" or "the San Francisco Bay Area" before they'd say they're from "San Jose" - and the former are more likely to get nods of recognition from the listener, too.


And this is nothing unique to the Bay Area. Boston itself is a fairly small city, about the same population as San Francisco in fact. But you'll see it on maps long before you see some other, larger cities such as Columbus OH or Jacksonville FL - precisely because it's better known. By showing Boston before Jacksonville FL, or San Francisco before San Jose, the map maker is simply satisfying the largest demand and need - not making a subjective value-laden judgment.

[WithDisp]

Originally Posted by Sierrajeff

And this is nothing unique to the Bay Area. Boston itself is a fairly small city, about the same population as San Francisco in fact. But you'll see it on maps long before you see some other, larger cities such as Columbus OH or Jacksonville FL - precisely because it's better known. By showing Boston before Jacksonville FL, or San Francisco before San Jose, the map maker is simply satisfying the largest demand and need - not making a subjective value-laden judgment.

If the decision is not based on quantitative data, then it is a subjective value-laden judgment.