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Have you been to Chicago? On what planet is the built form in Chicago "a world class architectural marvel"?
Chicago is a great town, but the average built form isn't particularly notable, at all. SF at least has a very unique built form. Preferences are obviously subjective but there's no debating that SF has a more unique built form.
Your ignorance is showing. Chicago is one of the most architecturally significant cities in the world for twentieth century architecture. It is the birthplace of the skyscraper, plus the first ever glass and steel towers are built there and it is home to many of the most important buildings of most of the leading architects of the twentieth century.Google Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, for starters. The built form of SF is pretty enough, but no architecture buff makes a pilgrimage to SF to study buildings.
-Pacific Ocean, beautiful coastline, mountains/snow within drivin distance, 2nd most dense city in U.S,a good mix of towering skyscrapers and victorians, diversity(including outer bay cities),WAY BETTER WEATHER,higher salaries,fresher produce...and its in Cali not the midwest
I'll just second this, because it's pretty much my feel for it.
I've lived on nob hill and the sunset district of San Francisco and old town and wrigleyville in Chicago. Why suffer through winter? But for you and what you want to do I vote Chicago. If you spent three months in Sonoma and aren't in love and are still considering Chicago that says a lot to me.
Yea, I think it'd be great if Chicago did some urban engineering marvels like it has done in the past, but directed towards the harsh winters. It'd be interesting if Chicago made an even better underground city than that of Montreal to better deal with the winters.
It can't really be quantified with numbers. The difference is both aesthetic and cultural. It's subjective, obviously. To me, SF felt RELATIVELY dull and provincial. It didn't have the fun, big city vibe of places in the east.And aesthetically, the city was less attractive to me, although as I've said the surroundings are beautiful. The built form isn't as exciting as Chicago, which is a word class architectural marvel.
By the way, I'm not hating on SF. It's a neat place and obviously people live there for a reason. But the boosterism of some people in this thread is silly.
Edited to add: re. climate - I grew up near Seattle and while I enjoy mild weather, San Francisco is too mild. Seattle didn't have cold, foggy summers like San Francisco. I know you can leave town and be in 100 degree weather, but who wants to have to drive to escape grey cold fog? I looked up climate statistics, and it looks San Francisco in the summer is around the same temperature as Chicago in late April. No thanks.
SF is definitely provincial. Horribly provincial. It's frustrating to many who live there.
"Didn't have the big city vibe of places in the east"???? Aside from NYC, what places in the NE have a bigger city vibe than SF? Lol obviously we're not talking about the SE here, and regarding fun - are you seriously trying to say a city like Boston is more "fun" than SF? omg (I guess it depends on your definition of "fun")
I can see why you and many others don't like the aesthetics of the city, though. I can agree to that - I prefer the aesthetics of NE cities myself, however, I still do appreciate the uniqueness of the aesthetics of SF.
I also missed seasons when I lived in SF. These are mostly valid points.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NOLA101
Chicago is a bigger city than SF. It has more culture, more nightlife, more almost everything. It's just generally a larger type of city.
SF is more unique, more refined, more affluent, more distinctive, but Chicago is a bigger type of city.
But larger doesn't necessarily equal better. In terms of culture, I'm pretty sure despite the size difference, there is little difference in quality or scope/nature of cultural offerings between the two cities. SF is the cultural hub of a region almost the same size as Chicagoland, and it has had a similar timeframe to craft its offerings (i.e. 1850-2014). Cultural offerings are different and if the two could combine them it would be prettty marvelous, but whatever one city doesn't have, the other does, and they have a very similar scope of offerings. (I mean consider that the Bay Area has more professional sports teams than Chicago does! though before you jump on me, Chicago is undoubtedly a far superior sports town)
More nightlife - again, the important nightlife in Chicago is in an area that contains a similar population as SF and hosts regional visitors from an area with a similar population as the Bay Area. I don't think there's much of a difference in the "amount" of nightlife unless you're counting the number of neighborhood bars in farther out hoods, in which case admittedly you'd have to count up bars in neighboring Oakland and San Mateo Counties to match up. Concentration of nightlife is similar, as well, perhaps even more concentrated in SF though with inferior transit connectivity between nightlife hubs (considering 2 of Chicago's "el" lines run 24 hours and hit up lots of the nightlife areas, which mostly run parallel to the lake going north/northeast).
Same goes for urban shopping - Chicago and SF are on par in every way and are the clear #2s behind NYC, with Boston trailing and then everybody else. It's proof the city limits population doesn't matter. SF only has 840,000 people but serves an affluent region of 8 million (and frankly Sacramento as well), plus has a dominating amount of international tourism. It allows a much smaller, more provincial city like SF to play to Chicago's league, easily.
So I still contend that the only notable differences are sheer size - # of skyscrapers and # of people within city limits. Everything else is pretty much on par and so it becomes subjective what you prefer.
SF can offer what Chicago can in a much smaller package. For this reason I don't get Unobtainium's quote above that SF just doesn't have that "fun big city vibe that cities back east do" because it's definitely a more vibrant city than anywhere back east save for NYC. It's a similar reason I think Boston feels more vibrant than Philly - it serves a larger region without getting overshadowed by a nearby larger city and has more stuff and higher density packed into its central core (and superior transit). But I'm alone there since most people feel like Philly is certainly more vibrant than Boston.
And there's also another major difference between SF and Chicago or other cities. SF's "suburbs" that people don't like to count are interesting, major cities themselves with interesting suburbs in between. There is reason to occasionally leave SF, hop on a train, and go visit Oakland, Berkeley, SJ, or Palo Alto. Take a ferry up to Marin to visit Sausalito or Tiburon. BART out to Walnut Creek and hike Mount Diablo finishing up with some shopping and dining in the downtown. These options are not readily available in most metros, and for that reason, the overall Bay Area is a super cohesive, very large, and interesting place that is merely anchored by SF. You can stay in one neighborhood of SF and never need to leave, but there's a lot to do and explore within a 1 hour train or car ride (and that includes flippin Sonoma/Napa, the jaw dropping PCH and its coastal towns, and Santa Cruz).
San Francisco is one of the worlds best cities. Chicago is half ghetto. Is that the diversity? I prefer being able to walk from a white affluent area to Chinatown to little Italy. Or on the west side how different Asian cultures seamlessly transition to a little Russia.
But having an entire half of the city being a horrible ghetto. Playing "guess my exit" freeway roulette on the Eisenhower or Dan Ryan. I guess for some that's hard to beat. Can't you just walk from union square through the tenderloin to the civic center?
San Francisco is one of the worlds best cities. Chicago is half ghetto. Is that the diversity? I prefer being able to walk from a white affluent area to Chinatown to little Italy. Or on the west side how different Asian cultures seamlessly transition to a little Russia.
But having an entire half of the city being a horrible ghetto. Playing "guess my exit" freeway roulette on the Eisenhower or Dan Ryan. I guess for some that's hard to beat. Can't you just walk from union square through the tenderloin to the civic center?
SF proper is just over a fifth the land area of Chicago though with much of the ghetto areas of SF pushed out to other parts of the metro, especially into the East Bay. I mean, if you're really into being able to walk white affluent areas to Chinatowns to Little Italy, then you can easily draw an area roughly the shape, size, density as that of the total of SF for Chicago. You'd have to ride out of your way on purpose to get to the ghetto parts you're talking about, but then that's functionally equivalent to riding out to the worst parts of Oakland for a joy ride. I mean, I guess you can do it?
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 09-28-2014 at 06:00 PM..
I like Chicago so I'm not trying to be too hard on it. Even if you took the ghettos in the east bay they aren't near in size as Chicago.
Chicago's also aren't separated by anything so it just blends into the loop. You can feel the pressure from the west and south pushing in.
San Francisco is much safer. At least I feel it feels far safer. So Oakland may suck. Oakland isn't San Francisco. Where the south side is Chicago.
Actually....it's the opposite...the Loop has been rather forcefully pushing into the South and West Sides. it's only a matter of years before the south lakefront is more or less totally gentrified to Hyde Park...which will create a vibrant urban swath extending nearly twenty miles to Evanston. Chinatown is already in the orbit of the mega Loop and southwest side neighborhoods like Pilsen and even Brighton Park are rising. You seem to have an outdated impression of what's happening in Chicago.
SF proper is just over a fifth the land area of Chicago though with much of the ghetto areas of SF pushed out to other parts of the metro, especially into the East Bay. I mean, if you're really into being able to walk white affluent areas to Chinatowns to Little Italy, then you can easily draw an area roughly the shape, size, density as that of the total of SF for Chicago. You'd have to ride out of your way on purpose to get to the ghetto parts you're talking about, but then that's functionally equivalent to riding out to the worst parts of Oakland for a joy ride. I mean, I guess you can do it?
I think a couple of SF's worst parts are near its southern periphery. And of course, there's the Tenderloin and parts of The Mission...
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