Suburbs of San Francisco and Oakland

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by jman650

I agree that is pretty lame if someone does that, but I can't think of a time I've heard someone do that. I can definitely speak on the San Mateo example, b/c that's where I grew up. Everyone I knew would identify with San Francisco when out of town b/c we all knew that no one would know where San Mateo is. Actually anyone I know from the entire Peninsula would know to identify with either SF or SJ depending on where they were from. I'm not sure where you're getting this idea exactly. Do you know many people who actually would state their address city to someone they knew would never have heard of it?

Yes, I have heard this exact usage when abroad. Although I agree it's less likely to occur with someone from the Peninsula. More likely with South and East Bay folks and at times North Bay folks.

[rah]

Originally Posted by Joe_Ryder

And yet the daytime population increases by over 10k people each working day.

And SF's grows by 200,000+ every work day. Every work day SF has a Fremont dropped into it...that's pretty significant.

As far as Oakland being a suburb of SF, it definitely was in it's beginnings. Nowadays its much too big and is certainly important enough in its own right that I could never consider it as such (and its been that way for what, 40, 50 years? maybe longer? Someone more in the know could say..). After spending the last few years educating myself on all sorts of urban areas and related stuff, I now think of SF and Oakland, and other close-in East Bay and Peninsula cities as basically being one single city. If SF hadn't shot it's self in the foot (i guess that depends on point of view) by drawing small boundaries in the 1800's and if the Bay weren't there, it would probably be one city.

[Joe_Ryder]

Originally Posted by rah

And SF's grows by 200,000+ every work day. Every work day SF has a Fremont dropped into it...that's pretty significant.

As far as Oakland being a suburb of SF, it definitely was in it's beginnings. Nowadays its much too big and is certainly important enough in its own right that I could never consider it as such (and its been that way for what, 40, 50 years? maybe longer? Someone more in the know could say..). After spending the last few years educating myself on all sorts of urban areas and related stuff, I now think of SF and Oakland, and other close-in East Bay and Peninsula cities as basically being one single city. If SF hadn't shot it's self in the foot (i guess that depends on point of view) by drawing small boundaries in the 1800's and if the Bay weren't there, it would probably be one city.

Agreed. It's a metro area. I was only responding to another poster's claim that Oakland had no commerce at all. Any city that has a positive population growth during the day is obviously generating money. Apparently the poster who thinks Oakland has no commerce has never heard of the Port of Oakland. All one has to do is to notice the non-stop lines of trucks coming and going 24/7. If that's not commerce, I really don't know what is.

[rah]

^ yeah definitely. The second part of my post wasn't really directed at you, but just my thoughts on how the region operates...I was reading some inane comments on Sfgate from tons of people who seem to think neighboring cities such as Oakland and SF are WILDLY different or something, and it got me thinking...

What if SF had actually decided to adopt a borough system, and also didn't cut it's self off at its current southern border way back in the day? I know its all just hypothetical guesswork, but lets just say "San Francisco" might have included what is now SF, Daly City, Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, Colma, Brisbane, Sausalito and Tiburon, and possibly South San Francisco, San Leandro, El Cerrito, Richmond, San Bruno, etc...maybe even farther out, who knows. And this central city of San Francisco would alone make up a much larger portion of the metro in terms of population (and geographic size) than it now does, obviously. As it is, i would guess the Bay Area probably isn't drastically different than it would have been had that happened (im sure public transportation would be much better overall as more funds could be appropriated for it due to the larger population, and one governing body/transit agency to deal with instead of multiples)...if all the aforementioned places consolidated tomorrow would much really be different in the operation of the area/day-to-day life of anybody, other than having one central government instead of tons of smaller neighboring ones? I'm guessing not.

[krudmonk]

Transit would be better. That's for sure.

[gogetta]

Originally Posted by krudmonk

Since you're going by area codes, wouldn't Marin fall under SF?

Absolutely! SF and Marin make up the 415, thus Marin is a suburb of SF. To that previous poster Santa Rosa is the greater bay area and doesn't really have any true suburbs as it is fairly suburban itself.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by rah

What if SF had actually decided to adopt a borough system, and also didn't cut it's self off at its current southern border way back in the day? I know its all just hypothetical guesswork, but lets just say "San Francisco" might have included what is now SF, Daly City, Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, Colma, Brisbane, Sausalito and Tiburon, and possibly South San Francisco, San Leandro, El Cerrito, Richmond, San Bruno, etc...maybe even farther out, who knows. And this central city of San Francisco would alone make up a much larger portion of the metro in terms of population (and geographic size) than it now does, obviously.

It probably would have ended up like a hybrid of NYC and LA. I'd imagine there would be a more centralized regional identity instead of the balkanized hyper localism we now have.