Is the city of Santa Clara a suburb of San Jose (or San Francisco)? (Oakland: employment, neighborhood)

[Jericho-79]

Hey there Bay Area residents. I've been wondering about something as it relates to Silicon Valley.

Is the city of Santa Clara a suburb of San Jose or San Francisco?

On the map, Santa Clara is right next to San Jose on the South Bay. However, San Francisco is the main city in the entire metro region.

The reason I'm asking is that I currently live in the city of Arlington, Texas, which is a suburb of Dallas in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. Usually, outsiders (especially during the recent Super Bowl) would refer to Arlington (where the Cowboys play) as simply "Dallas".

Similarly, outsiders refer to Glendale, AZ (where the Cardinals play) as simply "Phoenix," and Miami Gardens, FL (where the Dolphins play) as simply "Miami".

On the other hand, outsiders typically do not refer to East Rutherford, NJ (where the Giants play) as "New York". The same thinking applies to Foxboro, MA (where the Patriots play) not being called "Boston," and Landover, MD (where the Redskins play) not being called "DC". It appears that East Rutherford, Foxboro, and Landover are "independent" cities totally separate from New York, Boston, and DC, respectively.

So can people refer to Santa Clara as "San Jose"? Or can people refer to Santa Clara as "San Fran"?

Or is Santa Clara a completely "independent" city that should not be associated with San Jose and/or San Fran?

[mstnghu2]

Santa Clara is definitely a suburb of San Jose. San Jose is its own metro area (like Oakland), but is part of the San Francisco Bay Area region.
Honestly, for me I can tell somebody's not from the area when they refer to the whole region as "San Francisco". I was recently in line at a Subway in Fremont to order lunch and I overheard a guy behind me on his cell telling the person on the other end that he was in San Francisco...I was thinking to myself uh, you're actually in Fremont buddy- big difference. It's the Bay Area. San Francisco is a large city within the region.

The SF Bay Area is different than many other metros in that it's anchored by three large cities which all have their own suburbs. SF is literally a world of its own, culturally, politically, architecturally, etc. Even the weather (the Bay Area is full of micro-climates) is different than most parts of the Bay Area. SF is the only true urban environment in the entire Bay Area in my opinion. Locally, if somebody says to another Bay Area resident that they live in SF, it usually means they live in the actual city of SF...or occasionally bordering cities like Daly City, South SF, etc. I live in Newark and I'd never say I live in SF. I say Bay Area.

I lived in Santa Clara for awhile (I was actually born there) and if I was travelling anywhere outside the Bay Area, I'd just say I was from San Jose. When I lived in Milpitas, I said the same thing. It's definitely not SF. San Jose's population surpassed SF in the 80's and the economy in the SJ metro area is as important if not more than the SF metro area.

[zitsky]

I don't think the suburb idea applies very well to the Bay Area. If you tried to say Mountain View was a suburb of San Jose, I'd laugh in your face. It also doesn't seem right to say Oakland or Burlingame are suburbs of San Francisco.

Maybe someone can explain to me why the suburb idea applies??

[mstnghu2]

Originally Posted by zitsky

I don't think the suburb idea applies very well to the Bay Area. If you tried to say Mountain View was a suburb of San Jose, I'd laugh in your face. It also doesn't seem right to say Oakland or Burlingame are suburbs of San Francisco.

Maybe someone can explain to me why the suburb idea applies??

That is a pretty good point since the Bay Area is a big blob of sprawling development that's anchored, but not necessarily directly influenced by, three large cities. I'd say that if anything Santa Clara is a suburb of SJ. It's definitely not a suburb of SF, since the city it borders is bigger than SF. So, I guess for lack of a better description, it's a suburb of a bigger suburb.

[Radical347]

Like mstnghu2 says...Santa Clara is definitely a suburb of San Jose, in fact, you can call it San Jose and that wouldn't sound too off. Same with most of the other cities in the area. Most of the South Bay is one big blob and San Jose, by far, is the biggest city of them. You can just call the entire thing San Jose.

It doesn't *quite* work the same way up in SF, though. While Burlingame, along with most of the peninsula, is definitely a suburb of SF (contrary to what zitsky says), it doesn't work to simply refer to it as San Francisco. He's right about Oakland not being a suburb of SF though, because Oakland is kind of its own area, and Oakland is pretty big too. However, for some reason it seems to work to call Berkeley a suburb of SF rather than a suburb of Oakland.

[sjnative]

Santa Clara is its own municipality- it has its own government, police & fire depts, etc. See it here: City of Santa Clara : Departments & Services

It's difficult to call SC or any city in the south SF Bay Area a "suburb" or not because the whole concept of a suburb is based on the northeastern U.S. infrastructure in which there are very distinct, old, dense metro areas which are surrounded by sprawling residential areas.

The Silicon Valley is much different. There are almost no industrial areas and the commercial areas aren't contained to any metropolitan core/s. Rather, they are spread out around the valley, mostly along its northern portion where it borders the bay.

That said, almost no city is a suburb of another. San Jose is the most expansive, most populated city in the SV and has the most dense downtown with the tallest buildings. However, to consider all the other cities "suburbs" of SJ is to be obtuse.

The SV is its own metropolitan area in a newer sense of the term.

[mysticaltyger]

Jericho....I think all the previous posts answered your question very well.

The only thing I could add is that in many respects the employment centers in Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, & Palo Alto are more concentrated than they are in San Jose. So you have a situation where a lot of San Jose residents commute to these other cities for work. In that sense, San Jose is a suburb of these smaller cities.

[Jericho-79]

According to Wikipedia, the incorporated city of Santa Clara is a "high-tech hub" with San Jose as being the "main city" in the South Bay. However, Wikipedia doesn't specify whether Santa Clara is a direct suburb of San Jose.

In contrast, Wikipedia calls the city of Arlington a suburb in the DFW metro area.

So a suburb can be a city, town, or community that is directly affacted by a major US city?

[sonarrat]

I would say that Santa Clara is a suburb of San Jose, except that the two are very similar in many ways. Some of the differences:

- Santa Clara has a city-run electric plant.
- Santa Clara has most of its major retail along either El Camino Real or Stevens Creek Boulevard. San Jose's is scattered all over the place.
- Santa Clara's downtown is old and kind of forgotten.

None of those things really scream "suburb" to me.

[esmith143]

Originally Posted by Jericho-79

According to Wikipedia, the incorporated city of Santa Clara is a "high-tech hub" with San Jose as being the "main city" in the South Bay. However, Wikipedia doesn't specify whether Santa Clara is a direct suburb of San Jose.

In contrast, Wikipedia calls the city of Arlington a suburb in the DFW metro area.

So a suburb can be a city, town, or community that is directly affacted by a major US city?

There is an important difference between San Jose/Santa Clara and DFW.

DFW is a metro that is dominated by its two central cities, and it has a cultural identity that is defined by these two.

In contrast, San Jose is not a defining/dominating city. From the cultural standpoint, Santa Clara is part of an entity called "Silicon Valley". San Jose is the largest city in the neighborhood, but it's not part of the Silicon Valley, or just barely a part of it.

In terms of the number of Fortune 1000 tech company headquarters per capita, Santa Clara is approximately tied with Sunnyvale and closely followed by Mountain View. San Jose is way behind.

It would make more sense to describe Santa Clara as a suburb of Sunnyvale. San Jose is just a big city that happens to be nearby.