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View Poll Results: Which one do you pick?
Greater Las Vegas 10 28.57%
Greater Orlando 14 40.00%
Riverside/San Bernardino (the Inland Empire) 11 31.43%
Voters: 35. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 10-19-2018, 08:42 PM
 
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So all this because someone says Riverside/San Bernardino is the 5th best place in California.

Funny.

Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 10-19-2018 at 08:57 PM..
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Old 10-20-2018, 01:37 AM
 
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Orlando has the best weather out of the three (hurricanes aside). Least brutal heat. Also, best scenery out of the three.
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Old 10-20-2018, 10:16 AM
 
Location: In the heights
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Facts Kill Rhetoric View Post
So all this because someone says Riverside/San Bernardino is the 5th best place in California.

Funny.
He's in some ways accurate though--the Inland Empire's growth is mostly as exurbs of Los Angeles. It's not really a 5th best so much as just more of the growth of Los Angeles itself. Like I said before, almost all growth is clumped to the slivers immediately adjacent to Los Angeles and Orange Counties. The counties in Southern California are huge and because we chunk MSAs by counties, these are for all intents and purposes just part of the Los Angeles and Orange county urban expanse save for fairly isolated communities in the rest of these massive counties. You can even see that split because there are large topographical and biogeographic splits that separate the exurbs of Los Angeles in these countries from the rest of the county. Something like over 90% of the population of San Bernardino County population live in the 400 something square miles next to or near Los Angeles County in a county that is 20,000 square miles; Riverside is a bit more split because there is a somewhat significant, though still much less populous than the LA exurb portion, population living in the Coachella Valley part.

I wouldn't be surprised if the two simply become part of the MSA in the near future since it's the parts bordering Los Angeles and Orange County that are seeing the massive growth. Sacramento, on the other hand, is removed enough and distinctive enough on its own from the Bay Area where I can't see it becoming part of SF's MSA anytime soon.

Last edited by OyCrumbler; 10-20-2018 at 11:30 AM..
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Old 10-20-2018, 10:39 AM
 
Location: St Simons Island, GA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by murksiderock View Post
Hardly a factual or even a popular sentiment. But its your thread guy, I made my statement on it and your tastes/likes-dislikes are as valid as anyone else's...
There might be an argument for ranking Sacramento over the Inland Empire, but Bakersfield and Fresno? LOL. Personally, I'm not even sure San Jose edges it out.

Mountain out of a Molehill.
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Old 10-20-2018, 11:18 AM
 
Location: San Diego, CA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MrJester View Post
Orlando has the best weather out of the three (hurricanes aside). Least brutal heat. Also, best scenery out of the three.
Orlando having the best weather is very, very, debatable. Not everyone likes stifling humidity like you seem to so much. The week I spent at Disneyworld a few summers back was the most uncomfortable I’ve probably been in my life. I’ll take the IE with their heatwaves over Orlando anyday, Vegas I’ll pass. You can make a better argument for Orlando with winter weather, but then you lose access to snow like you do with the IE. You have access to snow in Vegas, but I find it too cold there in the winter.

If best scenery is green at eye level, then yes Orlando will win. Personally I don’t know how that can compete with pine covered mountains surrounded by palm trees that are snow capped in the winter. Heck even in the dead of summer when the smaller mountains are mostly brown I’ll still take that. Driving from the airport to Disneyworld I found it to be rather boring not seeing anything that even remotely resembled a hill, but that’s just me.

I’m not gonna pretend that I know a lot about Orlando, as I’ve only been there once. I will say what little I did see I liked, and can see the appeal of the place. Personally I’d take the IE for its location in Southern California, and it’s proximity to the beach and mountains. If it was in Nevada or Arizona I’d might rethink my choice.
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Old 10-20-2018, 11:55 AM
 
Location: In the heights
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Also, as the OP mentioned rail transit, I’ll add that the Inland Empire currently has 16 commuter rail stations with 4 lines that taps into a much larger system that also serves Los Angeles and Orange County. There’s a slate of projects and some funding to improve the speed and frequency of the system.

Meanwhile, the LA Metro Rail Gold Line is currently undergoing an extension that will have a station in Montclair in San Bernardino County.
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Old 10-20-2018, 11:58 AM
 
4,147 posts, read 2,905,929 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TacoSoup View Post
Orlando having the best weather is very, very, debatable. Not everyone likes stifling humidity like you seem to so much. The week I spent at Disneyworld a few summers back was the most uncomfortable I’ve probably been in my life. I’ll take the IE with their heatwaves over Orlando anyday, Vegas I’ll pass. You can make a better argument for Orlando with winter weather, but then you lose access to snow like you do with the IE. You have access to snow in Vegas, but I find it too cold there in the winter.

If best scenery is green at eye level, then yes Orlando will win. Personally I don’t know how that can compete with pine covered mountains surrounded by palm trees that are snow capped in the winter. Heck even in the dead of summer when the smaller mountains are mostly brown I’ll still take that. Driving from the airport to Disneyworld I found it to be rather boring not seeing anything that even remotely resembled a hill, but that’s just me.

I’m not gonna pretend that I know a lot about Orlando, as I’ve only been there once. I will say what little I did see I liked, and can see the appeal of the place. Personally I’d take the IE for its location in Southern California, and it’s proximity to the beach and mountains. If it was in Nevada or Arizona I’d might rethink my choice.
Brown barren hills during the typically rainless California summers are more scenic than the swamps, bayous, and pine forests of Orlando, just because Florida is flat?
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Old 10-20-2018, 12:10 PM
 
Location: Atlanta
9,818 posts, read 7,820,546 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TacoSoup View Post
Orlando having the best weather is very, very, debatable. Not everyone likes stifling humidity like you seem to so much. The week I spent at Disneyworld a few summers back was the most uncomfortable I’ve probably been in my life. I’ll take the IE with their heatwaves over Orlando anyday, Vegas I’ll pass. You can make a better argument for Orlando with winter weather, but then you lose access to snow like you do with the IE. You have access to snow in Vegas, but I find it too cold there in the winter.

If best scenery is green at eye level, then yes Orlando will win. Personally I don’t know how that can compete with pine covered mountains surrounded by palm trees that are snow capped in the winter. Heck even in the dead of summer when the smaller mountains are mostly brown I’ll still take that. Driving from the airport to Disneyworld I found it to be rather boring not seeing anything that even remotely resembled a hill, but that’s just me.

I’m not gonna pretend that I know a lot about Orlando, as I’ve only been there once. I will say what little I did see I liked, and can see the appeal of the place. Personally I’d take the IE for its location in Southern California, and it’s proximity to the beach and mountains. If it was in Nevada or Arizona I’d might rethink my choice.
If all you saw was the Airport, Disney and the ride between them you didn't really see Orlando.
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Old 10-20-2018, 01:26 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler View Post
I wouldn't be surprised if the two simply become part of the MSA in the near future since it's the parts bordering Los Angeles and Orange County that are seeing the massive growth. Sacramento, on the other hand, is removed enough and distinctive enough on its own from the Bay Area where I can't see it becoming part of SF's MSA anytime soon.
This is how I see California:

01. Los Angeles - San Francisco: the "faces" of their metropolitan regions and really all of California. The most popular cities. The most urban cities. The most economically vital cities. The most visited cities. The most iconic cities. The true global cities. Both share real megacity-like issues too with the runaway housing prices, traffic, congestion, some would say overpopulation, and outdated infrastructure (both cities need better transit systems). I would argue overexposure in the media too, which is both a good and bad trait.

02. Orange County - San Jose MSA: often either the braintrust or the bank account of the metropolitan region (or both). Rich, educated, high life expectancy, low crime, more integration, tech savvy, probably the two highest priced real-estate markets in the United States (sans areas in Greater New York), massive Vietnamese ethnoburbs, far more suburban-centric and both are quintessentially Sunbelt in design, so on and so forth.

03. Long Beach - Oakland: Industrial, gritty, seaports, distribution centers, that U.N. type of diversity, vastly overshadowed by Los Angeles/San Francisco, solid and study downtowns along the waterfront, probably the type of localities where a concept like "bus rapid transit" would make a ton of sense. You can easily bypass the need to expand rail in these two cities and instead build a dedicated lane for BRT, both cities have the factors in play to lend to a massive high-occupancy system.

04. Inland Empire - Sacramento: Sacramento is the state capitol but that and the Inland Empire's less noticeable individual identity due to more intangled sprawl connections with Los Angeles are the big differences. The suburbs, sprawl, most of their amenities, most of the retail chains are largely one in the same. The Inland Empire is larger, more economically vital, has more fun events like Coachella, has the Temecula Wine Country, and multiple general aviation airports, commuter rail lines, and highways -- some of these a function of it being larger than Sacramento. Mountains are more "immediate" in the Inland Empire whereas they are a drive from Sacramento, the ocean is 30 miles closer to the Inland Empire. In the case of both, they are situated directly east of the San Francisco-San Jose-Oakland and Los Angeles-Orange County-Long Beach agglomerations and directly west of the Las Vegas/Reno areas, respectively. Due to Los Angeles' larger physical population and being 30 years ahead of the northern portions of California in sprawling into the interiors of California, the Inland Empire has more direct and urbanized access into Los Angeles than Sacramento does for the San Francisco Bay Area. UC-Riverside and UC-Davis are likely comparable schools from an academic point of view. The highlight characteristic for both places is this line: "you can get in a car and be a short drive to (insert some city/state park/national park/geographical feature/special event here)." It isn't so much highlighting what is in them but highlighting more of what's near them -- with emphasis on location. That and both are cheaper locations than areas directly to their west, which is probably the biggest driver in both of their growth this decade.

05. Bakersfield - Fresno: The former is the oil and gas center for the state of California, it retains a high degree of Southern culture from the American South, country music is popular there, Southern accents are common, and is the least urbanized of the California major 8, by a hair against Fresno. It's northern counterpart counters by being the center of the state's agriculture industry, retaining a strong Midwestern sort of vibe and culture throughout the city and metropolitan area, even its segregation patterns and crime trends tend to look identical to several Midwestern cities. Both are fast growing cities of California's interior.

06. Santa Barbara - Monterey Bay Area: Ah, the cute little smalltowns. These are the Hallmark Postcard background settings of Northern California and Southern California. Very expensive and highly sought-after locations that still preserve the best features of California without the redundancy that exists in most other parts of the state that are incredibly overpopulated with growing pains to account for and increasingly more so. Smaller, less congested, less traffic, less crowds, less pollution, less corruption, less of everything which amount to a high standard of living.

07. Las Vegas - Reno: Neither are in California. However both are overrun to the core with Californians, probably the two most likely destinations for former Californians. Both are essentially an extension of California for all intents and purposes. Reno is to Northern California what Las Vegas is to Southern California. Reno is probably one of the top three gaming destinations in the United States, its entertainment offerings are likely well above the cut for a place of its size and could be regional draws. Las Vegas, the bigger brother, is much larger and its entertainment offerings are global draws.

I'm not here to pass this off as a fact, just painting the picture of California that is in my head.

San Luis Obispo is neutral ground, it is right on the border of North and South and culturally it acts as a neutral ground where California's culture shifts between North and South. I think of it as the potential epicenter of California's barbecue food scene though (the tri-tip). Northern California doesn't have an answer for San Diego. I used to think it was Sacramento before I visited it, then I went to Sacramento and saw it, and it turned out I was giving Sacramento far too much credit, and that it doesn't match-up well against San Diego. Sacramento and Inland Empire are comparable, however, because both are largely just places to live and work, heavily suburban with small but improving urban cores, with limited entertainment of their own but an ideal location to find that so called entertainment elsewhere going in either the east or west direction.

The way I see it, both sides of California have largely remained analogous of each other. What the North has on the South is far larger land area, primarily due to the Northern parts having two-thirds of California's landmass. In contrast, while the South has much less landmass, it has far more populated cities and more cities (the North doesn't have a counter for San Diego).

Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 10-20-2018 at 02:43 PM..
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Old 10-20-2018, 02:53 PM
 
Location: In the heights
36,911 posts, read 38,826,491 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Facts Kill Rhetoric View Post
This is how I see California:

01. Los Angeles - San Francisco: the "faces" of their metropolitan regions and really all of California. The most popular cities. The most urban cities. The most economically vital cities. The most visited cities. The most iconic cities. The true global cities. Both share real megacity-like issues too with the runaway housing prices, traffic, congestion, some would say overpopulation, and outdated infrastructure (both cities need better transit systems). I would argue overexposure in the media too, which is both a good and bad trait.

02. Orange County - San Jose MSA: often either the braintrust or the bank account of the metropolitan region (or both). Rich, educated, high life expectancy, low crime, more integration, tech savvy, probably the two highest priced real-estate markets in the United States (sans areas in Greater New York), massive Vietnamese ethnoburbs, far more suburban-centric and both are quintessentially Sunbelt in design, so on and so forth.

03. Long Beach - Oakland: Industrial, gritty, seaports, distribution centers, that U.N. type of diversity, vastly overshadowed by Los Angeles/San Francisco, solid and study downtowns along the waterfront, probably the type of localities where a concept like "bus rapid transit" would make a ton of sense. You can easily bypass the need to expand rail in these two cities and instead build a dedicated lane for BRT, both cities have the factors in play to lend to a massive high-occupancy system.

04. Inland Empire - Sacramento: Sacramento is the state capitol but that and the Inland Empire's less noticeable individual identity due to more intangled sprawl connections with Los Angeles are the big differences. The suburbs, sprawl, most of their amenities, most of the retail chains are largely one in the same. The Inland Empire is larger, more economically vital, has more fun events like Coachella, has the Temecula Wine Country, and multiple general aviation airports, commuter rail lines, and highways -- some of these a function of it being larger than Sacramento. Mountains are more "immediate" in the Inland Empire whereas they are a drive from Sacramento, the ocean is 30 miles closer to the Inland Empire. In the case of both, they are situated directly east of the San Francisco-San Jose-Oakland and Los Angeles-Orange County-Long Beach agglomerations and directly west of the Las Vegas/Reno areas, respectively. Due to Los Angeles' larger physical population and being 30 years ahead of the northern portions of California in sprawling into the interiors of California, the Inland Empire has more direct and urbanized access into Los Angeles than Sacramento does for the San Francisco Bay Area. UC-Riverside and UC-Davis are likely comparable schools from an academic point of view. The highlight characteristic for both places is this line: "you can get in a car and be a short drive to (insert some city/state park/national park/geographical feature/special event here)." It isn't so much highlighting what is in them but highlighting more of what's near them -- with emphasis on location. That and both are cheaper locations than areas directly to their west, which is probably the biggest driver in both of their growth this decade.

05. Bakersfield - Fresno: The former is the oil and gas center for the state of California, it retains a high degree of Southern culture from the American South, country music is popular there, Southern accents are common, and is the least urbanized of the California major 8, by a hair against Fresno. It's northern counterpart counters by being the center of the state's agriculture industry, retaining a strong Midwestern sort of vibe and culture throughout the city and metropolitan area, even its segregation patterns and crime trends tend to look identical to several Midwestern cities. Both are fast growing cities of California's interior.

06. Santa Barbara - Monterey Bay Area: Ah, the cute little smalltowns. These are the Hallmark Postcard background settings of Northern California and Southern California. Very expensive and highly sought-after locations that still preserve the best features of California without the redundancy that exists in most other parts of the state that are incredibly overpopulated with growing pains to account for and increasingly more so. Smaller, less congested, less traffic, less crowds, less pollution, less corruption, less of everything which amount to a high standard of living.

07. Las Vegas - Reno: Neither are in California. However both are overrun to the core with Californians, probably the two most likely destinations for former Californians. Both are essentially an extension of California for all intents and purposes. Reno is to Northern California what Las Vegas is to Southern California. Reno is probably one of the top three gaming destinations in the United States, its entertainment offerings are likely well above the cut for a place of its size and could be regional draws. Las Vegas, the bigger brother, is much larger and its entertainment offerings are global draws.

I'm not here to pass this off as a fact, just painting the picture of California that is in my head.

San Luis Obispo is neutral ground, it is right on the border of North and South and culturally it acts as a neutral ground where California's culture shifts between North and South. I think of it as the potential epicenter of California's barbecue food scene though (the tri-tip). Northern California doesn't have an answer for San Diego. I used to think it was Sacramento before I visited it, then I went to Sacramento and saw it, and it turned out I was giving Sacramento far too much credit, and that it doesn't match-up well against San Diego. Sacramento and Inland Empire are comparable, however, because both are largely just places to live and work, heavily suburban with small but improving urban cores, with limited entertainment of their own but an ideal location to find that so called entertainment elsewhere going in either the east or west direction.

The way I see it, both sides of California have largely remained analogous of each other. What the North has on the South is far larger land area, primarily due to the Northern parts having two-thirds of California's landmass. In contrast, while the South has much less landmass, it has far more populated cities and more cities (the North doesn't have a counter for San Diego).
That's an interesting breakdown of the area. Some parts of it ring true to me, but other parts seem off. In regards to this topic specifically and the Inland Empire, the part that seems off is where the equivalency is trying to be drawn. There's certainly regional breakdowns in Los Angeles that people recognize and the Inland Empire is a real term denoting the two counties, but the way LA really clumps is by the various valleys and basins where people live and how wide and developed the passes between those clumps are. Not of this topic, but this is true of other parts of California as well. There is no real distinction between Inland Empire and Los Angeles sort of clumps and where they meet in many portions are a single sort of geographical entity. Remember that these county lines were drawn quite a while ago and many of them take in a massive swath of land. California's certainly boomed and developed massively over the past century, perhaps more so than any state, but county lines which the MSAs are based on, haven't been redrawn for over a century. I get why on a very surface level why you're drawing an analogy for the IE to Sacramento, but I think a closer inspection will likely bring you to the same conclusion as mine.

As for the original question, I'd probably pick the Inland Empire--or Los Angeles, really.

Last edited by OyCrumbler; 10-20-2018 at 03:08 PM..
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