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So far...it seems like there IS a downtown/midtown, etc. Some people seem to like it, and many others don't. It seems they don't like it because it has panhandlers, expensive to park, and not much to do there? Is that about right? Do the same kind of people NOT like cities like San Francisco, etc., as well?
People that DO like places like San Francisco...is Sacramento acceptable for strolling around downtown? Is the downtown just dead? Not much retail? Too many malls outside of downtown to bother with paid parking?
I'm also a bit confused on the demographics. They look GREAT..nice mix...still looks predominately white, but a healthy representative of everyone else as well. But reading on here, it seems as if there are racial tensions of some kind....it appears to be more of 'fear of illegal immigrants' or something...as I've observed threads that quickly go into that realm. I'm a bit confused though, as San Francisco statically has much stronger diversity across the board, and no one seems to complain about it there. Sacramento seems to have LESS, yet MORE complaints. So, kind of mixed message there.
When I look at 'google maps' or 'skyscapercity' or 'skyscraperforum' or 'realtor.com' and view the city and the housing and everything else in Sacramento...it looks great...clean and new housing everywhere...the city looks new and clean...
Generally speaking, people in every city complain immensily about wherever they are at....so wondering if Sacramento just suffers from the same fate as well?
So far...it seems like there IS a downtown/midtown, etc. Some people seem to like it, and many others don't. It seems they don't like it because it has panhandlers, expensive to park, and not much to do there? Is that about right? Do the same kind of people NOT like cities like San Francisco, etc., as well?
People who love suburbs will hate The Grid (downtown/midtown) and the rest of the inner city. People who like an urban environment will love THe Grid. San Francisco has nothing to do with this.
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Originally Posted by Tiger Beer
is Sacramento acceptable for strolling around downtown?
Yes.
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Originally Posted by Tiger Beer
Is the downtown just dead?
No.
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Originally Posted by Tiger Beer
Not much retail? Too many malls outside of downtown to bother with paid parking?
Plenty of non-big box unique retail in midtown. The downtown mall is a sore topic, we won't discuss that. There are better malls in suburban Sacramento such as Arden.
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Originally Posted by Tiger Beer
I'm also a bit confused on the demographics. They look GREAT..nice mix...
Most diverse city in the world.
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Originally Posted by Tiger Beer
still looks predominately white
No.
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Originally Posted by Tiger Beer
but a healthy representative of everyone else as well.
Yes. Again, most diverse city in the world.
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Originally Posted by Tiger Beer
ut reading on here, it seems as if there are racial tensions of some kind....it appears to be more of 'fear of illegal immigrants' or something...as I've observed threads that quickly go into that realm.
Uh, no.
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Originally Posted by Tiger Beer
I'm a bit confused though, as San Francisco statically has much stronger diversity across the board, and no one seems to complain about it there. Sacramento seems to have LESS, yet MORE complaints. So, kind of mixed message there.
No. In fact I don't know what you are even talking about or where you get your facts from (made up?). San Francisco is probably one of the least diverse cities in California.
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Originally Posted by Tiger Beer
When I look at 'google maps' or 'skyscapercity' or 'skyscraperforum' or 'realtor.com' and view the city and the housing and everything else in Sacramento...it looks great...clean and new housing everywhere...the city looks new and clean...
Generally speaking, people in every city complain immensily about wherever they are at....so wondering if Sacramento just suffers from the same fate as well?
Most of the people who complain about Sacramento have never stepped foot in the place and are just echoing what others have told them.
In SF you get something and there are bums. In Sacramento you just get bums.
And please what is the fetish or compulsion for minority counting? I get the feeling that scolding is the point. Like loudly complaining the price of fruit at the local market. It will change nothing but everyone will note your high minded protest. If your minority diet is specific, good grief, why itchb about the neighborhood blend when with the click of the mouse you can find a more suitable demographic.
Someplace where racial anemia won't give you cramps or that unsightly swelling about the ankles. Image is everything.
We live in the Sierra foothills. It is a real treat to drive to Sacramento to visit art museums, theatres, Old Town, and Imax. Walking around downtown is fun.
So far...it seems like there IS a downtown/midtown, etc. Some people seem to like it, and many others don't. It seems they don't like it because it has panhandlers, expensive to park, and not much to do there? Is that about right? Do the same kind of people NOT like cities like San Francisco, etc., as well?
The problem is that, to people used to suburbs, Sacramento is too urban--they are utterly unused to dealing with people not of their socioeconomic class. Things like being spare-changed or paying for parking are utterly alien experiences, and thus uncomfortable. At best, many people consider cities to be places solely dedicated for the entertainment of visitors. Because only small portions of downtown Sacramento are set up for this (in addition to the places where people work and live) we fail to sufficiently entertain visitors to the central city and thus get a reputation for being boring. Basically, we're not enough like Disneyland for them.
As far as being spare-changed goes, in San Francisco if you go to Union Square and walk to Van Ness you'll get spare changed once or twice per block, but in between you have lots of neat stuff going on to look at and a lot of activity. In Sacramento, you might get spare changed a couple times in the course of a stroll from Downtown Plaza to Midtown, but the streets are more quiet and calm, the skyline is far more modest, and there are some vacant buildings. On the weekends, the office buildings are just as bleak as boarded-up buildings due to lack of activity. So maybe the spare-changings stand out more.
For people who really, really like skyscrapers, Sacramento is disappointing because we don't have a super awesome skyline. For people used to eastern and midwestern cities that were big and bustling before the era of the automobile, Sacramento is disappointing because we don't have large multi-story brick factory buildings (they were built that way to be easier to heat, our industrial buildings were usually big and flat to be easier to cool) and we don't have rows of attached brick townhomes and row houses (we do have rows of detached wood townhomes and row houses, we knocked down the more urban-looking ones to built Capitol Mall.)
For people who like historic reisidential architecture, and trees, and streets that aren't crowded, Sacramento can be pretty nice. But it isn't for everyone.
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People that DO like places like San Francisco...is Sacramento acceptable for strolling around downtown? Is the downtown just dead? Not much retail? Too many malls outside of downtown to bother with paid parking?
For people used to busy, bustling cities, Sacramento can seem dead. During the weekday, downtown is pretty busy because of all the commuters (around 100,000) who fill downtown offices and bustle to and fro, plus the 30,000 or so people who actually live in the central city. But at night, the population of downtown drops dramatically, and only about 3000 live in downtown proper (the rest live in the residential neighborhoods around the central city.) Visiting downtown on the weekends can be kind of "Omega Man." Midtown is a bit more lively, especially in the evenings, because more people actually live there and people come to Midtown's clubs and bars and restaurants from the suburbs.
Unless there is a big street fair or festival going on, in which case it is a mob scene. Sacramento doesn't do middle ground when it comes to street life--either it's totally empty or it's a huge crowd. There used to be a big to-do called "Thursday Night Market" that would draw crowds of 10,000 or more to K Street Mall, and we got at least that many out for New Year's Eve. Tonight is a new event called "Design Downtown" on K Street; I'll let you know in a day or two how that went.
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I'm also a bit confused on the demographics. They look GREAT..nice mix...still looks predominately white, but a healthy representative of everyone else as well. But reading on here, it seems as if there are racial tensions of some kind....it appears to be more of 'fear of illegal immigrants' or something...as I've observed threads that quickly go into that realm. I'm a bit confused though, as San Francisco statically has much stronger diversity across the board, and no one seems to complain about it there. Sacramento seems to have LESS, yet MORE complaints. So, kind of mixed message there.
Not sure how much you listen to Parliament, but listen to their song "Chocolate Cities and Vanilla Suburbs." It's an early seventies tune, when racial divisions were still a lot more pronounced. De facto racial segregation, known as "racial exclusion covenants," were legal in California until 1967, and inner cities tended to be populated with nonwhites and poor whites, while middle-class and wealthy whites fled to the outer suburbs, producing a marked difference in racial makeup within a region. Because Sacramento is a combination of an old city (the "grid" area and the early 20th century suburbs) and absorbed suburban neighborhoods (the postwar car-centric suburbs) we have neighborhoods with very different ethnic makeup, even 42 years after those legal restrictions were removed.
Sacramento's central city, and some of its nearby suburbs, are various varieties of color, while its outer suburbs and neighboring cities are very, very, very vanilla. Sacramento as a whole is 38% non-Hispanic white, about half the national average, while Roseville is about 78% non-Hispanic white, Citrus Heights is 74%, Folsom 70%. Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova are around 50-55%, but they're rapidly gaining a reputation for being "ghetto." Granite Bay is 85%. So your experience regarding racial diversity depends very much on what part of the region you are visiting--or the neighborhood within Sacramento. (For comparison, San Francisco is 45% non-Hispanic white, Oakland is 23%.)
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When I look at 'google maps' or 'skyscapercity' or 'skyscraperforum' or 'realtor.com' and view the city and the housing and everything else in Sacramento...it looks great...clean and new housing everywhere...the city looks new and clean...
Generally speaking, people in every city complain immensily about wherever they are at....so wondering if Sacramento just suffers from the same fate as well?
Pretty much, if not more so. Skyscraperpage is really more talk about upcoming development, and it varies from cheery optimism to utter despair. The swanky 3-D renderings people post there, with pasted-in images of busy people going to and fro on the street, don't always match up with the reality that gets built.
It's really something you're going to have to come see for yourself.
Without meaning any offense, that's a fool's errand if ever there was one!
Sacramento actually has a lot to offer, just not so much on weekends and "furlough Fridays."
Some areas running from downtown to mid-town are filled with eclectic shops, restaurants, etc.
In terms of diversity, if you're caucasian, you'll be in the overall minority.
Sacramento is going through severe and painful growing pains but now that I think about it. it's been doing that for all of the almost 20 years I've lived here.
Nothing will replace coming here and spending a fair amount of time before you jump into the frying pan (94 right noiw!).
To me Downtown and Midtown are seperate - with seperate reasons to go there.
Downtown, in comparison to Los ANgeles or San Fran is dead, and it has a lot of bums but only because that's where they go. No biggie.
Now Midtown is a place to stroll and shop and eat and coffee and go out and dance and go to a pub or go to art walk or go to local music etc. It's not big by any means, but to me it's just right
First as city girl pointed out downtown and midtown are seperate.
Have you been to Oakland, did you like it? Sacramento reminds me a lot of Oakland.
Downtown Sacramento is a lot like downtown Oakland. There are a lot of office buildings between 6 and 25 stories tall and in both areas people pretty much clear out after work especially when it gets dark. Their is an older retail district that used to be locally prominent but despite repeated efforts to to turn it around has been mostly dead for probably 40 or 50 years. I don't feel comfortable around K Street Mall after dark and I wouldn't feel safe walking around downtown Oakland after dark either.
Midtown is like a much smaller version of the Grand Lake district in Oakland. Both of these regions are fairly close to their respective cities downtowns. In both of those places you can find some restaurants and a lot more people walking around after dark.
But both regions also suffer from a lot of the same problems. In the bay area, you have a lot of the poor people concentrated in the east bay especially in Oakland and this region a lot of the poor people are concentrated in the city of Sacramento. You don't have to walk to far from a lot of seemingly nice neighborhoods to transition into something much more rough. International Blvd isn't too far from Lake Merrit and Oak Park isn't that far from Elmhurst.
If you had the money there are some really nice places in both communities. I really thought Peidmont was beautiful and the fabulous forties in Sacramento also has a lot of charm.
If you have been to Oakland and you liked it, you will probably like Sacramento as well. If you didn't like Oakland, you might not care for Sacramento for a lot of the same reasons you didn't like Oakland.
Wburg wants to characterize the segregation here merely as a geographic issue, but I think that approach obfuscates as much as it enlightens. If you assume that the segregation is just a geographic issue, then the inference is that solution is to get the suburban white people living in Roseville, Fair Oaks and Folsom to become more accepting of living in close proximity to minority folks like the people in the city of Sacramento and that will somehow solve the problem. But the evidence doesn't seem to support that inference.
The data suggests that what is driving the geographic segregation is the racial segregation by social class. The poor people in this region are ethnically diverse. The wealthier people in this region are mostly white. The median price of homes in midtown and east Sac are fairly close to the median prices in Roseville and Folsom, and the census reports that 78% in midtown and 88% in East Sac of the population are non hispanic whites which is about the same or greater than number of white people as Roseville and Folsom.
In short the reason for ethnic disparity in the between the city and the suburbs is the comparative quality of the housing stock in the two communities. Because Placer and El Dorado Counties have a lot more housing selling for over 300k, the end up with a lot more white people who can afford to buy that housing.
The other reason I don't think the suburban racist thesis is applicable here is that Elk Grove isn't the only suburb/nearby city that is diverse. Both Galt and Woodland are about 40% Hispanic. We don't have good data yet, but given the prices points the homes were selling I suspect that N. Natomas and Southport areas of West Sac are probably going to end up looking a lot like Elk Grove in terms of diversity. Housing that is selling at the same price point tends to get a lot of the same types of buyers.
I think a big part of the reason the wealthy population in this region isn't more diverse is structural.
There are two ways your region gets immigrants there are pull factors and their are push factors. In the bay area you have a bunch of multinationals that operate globally and these act as pull factors for the highly educated immigrants.
If you are Chevron if you need someone at headquarters in San Ramon to help reconcile the tax consequences of repatriating earnings from Korea to the US, your best candidate might be the person handling the operation for Chevron in Korea. You have dealt with this person, you know that they understand US tax law, Korean tax law, and you know that they have a strong command of both spoken English and Korean. So you promote from within and bring this person over. If you are a start up company in the bay area that is using a contract manufacturer in Korea to build your computer, your head hunter might try to lure this person away from Chevron.
In short moving to the bay area is the best way to advance of the highly skilled immigrant. Because the economy in the bay area has a lot more international connections, there are just a lot more opportunties in the bay area for highly skilled foreign nationals.
The primary industry in the Sacramento region is government, this region lacks economic connections with abroad. Compared to the bay area in this region being a non native speaker is less of an advantage and more of liability.
There are also push factors that effect immigration. If the crops fail in Mexico your best bet is probably in the US. If you have an 8th grade education the types of jobs you can do like working in fast food probably pay the same here as in the bay area, but the cheaper housing prices in this area mean that this area offers a better standard of living. So the poor flee the bay area for Sacramento.
That is important. One of the biggest predictors of how well and how much education a kid will get is how much education their parents have. In the bay area you have a lot more educated immigrants and lot fewer poorly educated immigrants. In Sacramento you have a lot fewer educated immigrants and a lot more poorly educated immigrants.
The child of the Korean accountant is much more likely to better in school than the child of the Mexican farmworker.
The reason the minorities are much more likely to be part of an underclass in the Sacramento region than the bay area is that we are attracting a lot less of the well educated minorities and those were the minority members most likely to break out of the underclass.
I have been to Oakland, and I liked it. I don't know it that well to know what it is all like, but having driven around and ate at a few of the restaurants, I was actually quite impressed that it is SO MUCH diverse and alive and interesting than what the national level seems to paint it as. I always assumed it was going to be like Detroit (I'm from MI), but Oakland is actually a pretty cool city, although I never saw the bad sides of it, the good sides seemed pretty good to me.
Also interesting about the socio-economic factors. Personally, I LIKE the big mix of cultures A LOT. I guess it really comes down to 'would they like me?' Having lived in Manhattan, Washington Heights, and Brooklyn, I never had a problem with that at all, and being California has a lot more Mexican (which I like as well) and Asians (no problem there), I'd think it would be good. Unless someone sees some inherent bias or dislike of 'white people' in general for some reason? It does happen. Actually, I have a preference for very mixed groups, but if there are quite a few poor socio-economic groups, than tensions that I don't really care for, could exist I suppose. (I'm white).
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