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Frankly as a fellow Angeleno\ Pasadena resident most wouldn't consider Torrance\ El Segundo\ Westminster [which isn't even in LA county] as favorite suburbs of Los Angeles. Definitely Pasadena, Santa Monica & Malibu are much more favored than the suburbs you suggest.
I think I count metro areas and suburbs differently than some people...I lump the Bay Area into one big metro where SF is city center and all other Bay Area cities (SJ, Oak, Richmond, etc.) are it's suburbs. Same thing with Seattle and Bellevue, Everett, Tacoma, etc.
Well, Krudmonk is correct. Santa Clara County is its own metropolitan area according to the 2000 US Census and has its own MSA. However, if you are using CSA definitions, then Santa Clara County is part of the rest of the Bay Area. However, San Jose would be the biggest city, not San Francisco. That technically means that all these places, including San Francisco, can be considered suburbs/exurbs of San Jose.
The Bay Area is a real tough cookie to crack and can't simply be pigeonholed. Out of the large metropolitan areas, its unique in that there are 3 major anchors to the Bay Area (SF, SJ, Oakland) with a combined population of 2.2 million. You really can't look at it in the same way you would other metropolitan areas. That's why you never hear on the news the words 'Suburban San Francisco' 'Suburban San Jose' or 'Suburban Oakland', but rather 'Bay Area'.
If people stopped referring to the Bay Area as 'San Francisco', then much of this problem would be alleviated. However, it would be hard to do that due to the great historical significance of SF and the relatively new status of San Jose or the geographic proximity of Oakland to SF.
Pittsburgh: Dormont, Mt. Lebanon ( northern part), and Millvale; Cincinnati : Norwood, Cheviot and Newport-Covington,Ky.; Cleveland : Lakewood, Parma, and Brooklyn; Columbus: Grandview Heights, Grove City and Westerville; Chicago: Oak Park, Evergreen Park and River Forest ; Philadelphia: Narberth, Ardmore and Glenolden; and finally New York : Hoboken NJ , gentrifrying parts of Jersey City and Weehawken NJ. All relatively safe areas with the urban feel.
^These two stand out above the rest... they really have their own identities separate from Houston, and have a large corporate presence and great economies.
They all feel pretty suburban to me; we have these arguments on the Atlanta forum about what constitutes a 'suburb' all the time.
As someone who has a lot of friends who live in Queen Anne, I can tell you no one in Seattle or the surrounding area would ever confuse that neighborhood for being a suburb--it's within walking distance of the urban downtown core of Seattle and has a fair amount of density with a lot of apartment buildings in parts of the neighborhood.
By your rationale, I could say my favorites suburbs of Atlanta are Little Five Points and the Grant Park neighborhoods...
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