Sac residents move here from Phoenix? (Fresno, Sacramento: cost of, moving, things to do)

[shelato]

Originally Posted by Chimérique

Compared to the Sacramento Valley, and the hills surrounding it, there is very little natural grasses that grow in the Sonoran desert as there is so little natural fertile soil. The lack of natural large and abundant deciduous trees is also why there is so little natural fertile soil in the Sonoran desert coupled with the lack of numerous year long running streams, rivers and creeks.

But if these severe droughts in NorCal continue who knows we could get up looking like Arizona...although that would take 50 years of continuous severe drought.

Have you seen the Cal Adopt model for Sacramento? It predicts that we will go from having an average of 4 days a year above 103.4 to averaging 24 days above that temp by 2070.

Additionally by 2070 the number of extreme heat events is going to go from .2 a year to 2.6. Here they are defining an extreme heat event as temperatures consecutively above 103.9 for 4 days.

https://cal-adapt.org/tools/extreme-heat/

I don't know that we will be Phx, but maybe something closer to Bakersfield.

[Valley Boy]

Originally Posted by shelato

Sacramento is at a weird juncture. It is desirable enough to be able to attract rather high skilled employees from the Bay Area to relocate here, but not really yet the employers. Oracle and HP Enterprise left the Bay Area for Texas, not Sacramento and I really don't know why they bypassed us.

One thought was airline connections. Houston probably does offer more direct flights for HP Enterprise to worksites in Asia and Europe and I suspect that is also true for Austin and Oracle. But I don't really know how airlines decide to offer direct flights. Is that purely an economic decision for the airlines involved or does lobbying by airports matter?

How much does thickness of the labor market matter in specific industries? Dell was already in Austin. How much of an impact was that getting Oracle confident to move to Austin.?

They didn't move to Austin for cheap real estate. If they wanted cheap real estate they would have opted for Sacto obviously. They moved to Austin, because Texas has lower tax rates. Additionally, the "human capital" or labor force is right there, with UT and a few other colleges in town. Additionally, there is tons of talent to poach from major companies, as Austin has had a strong tech industry for 30 years. All with in reasonable distance lobbying at the capitol.

As for flights, it's pragmatic, given the resources available. A certain number of passengers must start their journey from Sac and end it at a specific airport. Enough to justify a seasonal flight, or a shuttle or two to haul people back and forth daily.

[Valley Boy]

Originally Posted by PhoenixSomeday

It's funny to see the comments about Phoenix being a big city that's made it like the other big cities, and all that. When, in the Phoenix forum when the subject comes up, they say stuff like Phoenix is a second rate city and it's not world class and blah blah blah because it doesn't have X number of Ferrari dealers, or the museums don't have such-and-such a work from random-renaissance-artist, or that it doesn't have XYZ amenity, or this-and-that recreational facility, or that some particular imagined-tier-of-importantness of companies doesn't want to build a non-blue-collar facility there, or because some super-de-duper important event has never been held in Phoenix, or the downtown skyline doesn't have some building that someone perceives as drop dead gorgeous, etc. Perspective and grass-is-greener, I guess.

Phoenix might not be the most urban or cosmopolitan legacy city out there. But it's pretty clear with boots on the ground that you are in a 4-million person metro. Enough to cross the threshold of what I personally .consider to be large. Will it have the amenities of NYC? No. But it will be enough for Phoenix.

Second tier metros are mid sized metros typically not much larger than Sacramento. Maybe 1 million or so more at most. But typically bigger GDP and appear more vibrant. Imagine Sacramento, but with Sac State downtown along with a couple fortune 500 companies. And Broadway, Stockton Blvd and Del Paso Blvd with a gentrified vibrancy of J Street in midtown, with like 60,000 people living in the grid neighborhoods. With a light rail that ran to the Airport. And an MLS Stadium in the Railyards, a new expanded zoo, and a real aquarium.

If Sac had like 6 of the 8 things I just listed, I would give the nod to call it Second rate.

But it doesn't so I would say Sac is more third rate like Salt Lake or San Antonio or Indianapolis. Not a bad place, just not really the big times in any form.

[wburg]

ValleyBoy, thanks for providing some metrics. Is there something about an aquarium that is more urbane or cosmopolitan than, say, one of the largest, best known, and most visited railroad museums on the continent? Does our about-to-open Powerhouse Science Center help things at all? And we're currently a 2.5 million person metro.


What does "vibrant" mean to you? It's kind of a nebulous word but what does something that is "vibrant" look like? Is it simply a matter of property values? Just a matter of GDP? What GDP threshold in dollars would you consider the minimum for "second tier"? Just saying "more than it is now" isn't much of a metric, because it's a moving goalpost.



I'm all for getting the population of the central city to close to 60,000 and have been calling for that for around a decade, along with expanding the idea of what we think of as the central city; the problem is, it's tricky, and past efforts to "remake" downtown resulted in dramatic population drops rather than gains, while efforts that were more focused on adding housing instead of replacing residents with new residents resulted in gains but weren't well supported by the city or developers.



And why don't we expand our central city geographically? People already think of Oak Park as an urban/central city neighborhood, and Richards Boulevard/River District as a future expansion of downtown, but not so much East Sacramento or Land & Curtis Park, despite the fact that they're basically the same distance from downtown. Why shouldn't Sacramento City College/William Land Park, UCDMC and CSUS be considered the edges of downtown? In a city of half a million covering 100 square miles, why should we squeeze "downtown" into the same 4 square mile box? And if you do consider them part of the central city, then our "greater downtown" population was already more like 75,000 people, with close to 175,000 jobs, as of 2010! Of course, the main issue there is that multifamily housing is already allowed in the central city, and in significant portions of Oak Park, while the other neighborhoods mentioned are almost exclusively SFH only--you can't even build duplexes except on corners, while fourplexes or small apartment buildings are forbidden, even though they already existed in those neighborhoods prior to their current zoning.

[Chimérique]

The Sacramento Powerhouse Science Center took 25 years to get to where it is now, still not open. Alas, I can't wait til it opens and I hope it is impressive. By the way, where are people supposed to park for Powerhouse Science Center, as there appears to be no easy public transportation access?

What should be an impressive walkway along the bike trail/walkway from the Crocker Art Museum to Old Sac to the Powerhouse Science Center to Discovery Park is an eyesore, an embarssbement, trash, dirty, broken fixtures, defamation, graffiti(the kind that is not interesting art). Compare that to Portland's Riverfront or Austins Riverfront, or Dallas's Katy Trail (very impressive old rail line turned into an urban green space of walking/biking in the heart of the City).

The park that sits next to the Powerhouse Science Center, Matsui Park, had a good run for 2 years, until the fountain-water feature broke, never fixed and permenatly inoperable, many of us never even knew it was even a fountain. The "pier" (Sacramento Water intake) for which one used to be able to walk out on above the Sacramento River has been gated for the last 5-10 years due to vandals, defamation, and potential destruction by its own citizens. That used to be a nice walk. The park is also full of graffiti and homeless; many folks do not feel safe using it.

Again, it takes years, decades for any thing to get done in this town, public projects that get done, may have a "good" run for a year or two, and then it looks like crap because its own citizens destroy it. For, example, the 1/4 mile riverfront portion on the Sacramento side of the Sacramento River(Crocker Art Museum to Old Sac) looked nice, but just for 2 years before it is now a flilthy eye sore. Benches are trashed, craped on, burned, defamed. The light features and informational displays about Sacramento River wildlife were destroyed years ago and never replaced. Also, the light features were made to house additional historic information about the city never appeared, probably because they know they will just be destroyed.

Public recreation places, parks, benches, etc. in Orlando, Kansas City, and Dallas are spotless, clean, impressive, well taken care.

[wburg]

The big flat black thing with white lines on it that's right next to the Powerhouse Science Center is called a "parking lot." Obviously you might not recognize them because we've been getting rid of a lot of them downtown and replacing them with housing, and I'm not a big fan of them myself, but it most certainly exists and will be right next to the science center. Obviously toxic remediation to make it safe for children to visit the site wasn't something that could be hurried. My knowledge of the timetable involved may be a bit different, I seem to remember it being more like 15 years, but I wasn't really paying attention to this sort of thing 25 years ago, so maybe it was under discussion back in her day?


Portland's riverfront seems nice, but the last time I was there (2018) there were definitely unhoused folks present--although since then they have opened a navigation center & safe-ground campgrounds along their riverwalk, so hopefully that will help! Maybe we should follow that sort of example and open a few such sites on our waterfront too?

[Chimérique]

Originally Posted by shelato

Have you seen the Cal Adopt model for Sacramento? It predicts that we will go from having an average of 4 days a year above 103.4 to averaging 24 days above that temp by 2070.

Additionally by 2070 the number of extreme heat events is going to go from .2 a year to 2.6. Here they are defining an extreme heat event as temperatures consecutively above 103.9 for 4 days.

https://cal-adapt.org/tools/extreme-heat/

I don't know that we will be Phx, but maybe something closer to Bakersfield.

Thanks for the post, I'll check it out. Well, if Sacramenno looks like Phx, what will Phx look like by 2070? It is already rock stone, and lifeless....I guess their Saguaros will die off too.

[shelato]

Originally Posted by wburg

The big flat black thing with white lines on it that's right next to the Powerhouse Science Center is called a "parking lot." Obviously you might not recognize them because we've been getting rid of a lot of them downtown and replacing them with housing, and I'm not a big fan of them myself, but it most certainly exists and will be right next to the science center.

Could you be anymore condescending and patronizing?

Why are so incredibly rude?

You do this all of the time.

Really what is your problem?

[NickB1967]

Originally Posted by shelato

Could you be anymore condescending and patronizing?

Why are so incredibly rude?

You do this all of the time.

Really what is your problem?

He is also deliberately obtuse to the point of absurdity. It's SOP for him.

[Chimérique]

March 2021 comparisons for Phoenix and Sacramento temperature-wise.

Sacramento
How many high temps days of:
80's - 2 days
70's - 6 days
60's - 15 days
50's - 8 days

Phoenix
How many high temps days of:
80's - 12 days
70's - 11 days
60's - 7 days
59F - 1 day