I hate when people say "SF is a small city" (San Jose: metro, cities)

[Harrier]

Originally Posted by Isebiel

Just looked at some ranks. San Francisco is 8th most populous in the USA, 4th most populous in California (after LA, San Diego, and San Jose.)

Actually, SF is 13th most populous in the United States.

[dalparadise]

Originally Posted by Harrier

Actually, SF is 13th most populous in the United States.

And is the financial and cultural hub of the 6th most populous CSA in the country.

[rah]

Originally Posted by Harrier

//www.city-data.com/forum/san-j...-than-san.html

San Jose is the 10th largest city in the United States.

City limits are arbitrary and mean basically nothing. If SF's city limits were as massive as San Jose's (which is only as big as it is because it was able to annex tons of neighboring towns, not to mention it never would have grown so much if SF, and thus, Stanford, never existed) it would have something like 1.6 million residents, and include all of Oakland, Daly city, Alameda, south San Francisco, Berkeley, Castro Valley, Albany, San Leandro, Brisbane, Colma, etc in addition to San Francisco.

If you look at metro areas and urban areas, which is how you should actually measure a city's size, SF is way bigger than San Jose:

MSA:
SF: 4,391,037
SJ: 1,865,450

Urban Area:
SF: 3,281,212
SJ: 1,664,496

Of course SF and SJ should really be combined into the same MSA/urban area, but that's another topic. And if you need some more reasons why SF is truly the bigger city, here: San Francisco gains 200,000 residents every day due to commuters and other visitors, while San Jose loses 5% of its population to suburban jobs. So during the day San Francisco actually has around 100,000 more people than San Jose does (and in a much smaller area as well). San Francisco is the largest single center of employment in the Bay Area. It eclipses San Jose when it comes to amount of office space and companies that are based there.

Originally Posted by Harrier

Three.

Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose.

San Jose and San Diego are not really bigger, except in their arbitrary city-limit populations. SF has a larger metro and urban area than both of them, a bigger downtown than both, is far denser and more built up in the core, has a larger GDP, etc.

Originally Posted by Harrier

The only thing "big" about SF is the nickname of its baseball team.

If a city of 800,000 with an urban area of 3.3 million (over 5 million when counting the entire Bay Area), an MSA of 4.3 million and a CSA of 7.5 million (so really SF is a city of 3-7 million depending on how you want to measure it) is considered "small" in America, than literally every city in this country that is not NYC and LA is "small".

[loloroj]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

When will people get it through their head that SF is a huge metropolis of 7,000,0000 in the greater area? Our city limits are tiny, yes, 7 x 7 square miles, but other cities have giant boundaries making them appear more populated. SF is like a NY part 2. Kind of annoying, anyone else feel the same way? The Bay Area = SF.

Oh, hell no, NYC is an old, dilapidated place, with new paint once in awhile. The City was destroyed in the earthquake and fire of 06. Much of it is brand new compared to NYC.

And the city isn't small, it's that the people got big....

[Harrier]

Originally Posted by loloroj

And the city isn't small, it's that the people got big....

Naw - just their heads.

[AngusHsu]

Originally Posted by rah

City limits are arbitrary and mean basically nothing. If SF's city limits were as massive as San Jose's (which is only as big as it is because it was able to annex tons of neighboring towns, not to mention it never would have grown so much if SF, and thus, Stanford, never existed) it would have something like 1.6 million residents, and include all of Oakland, Daly city, Alameda, south San Francisco, Berkeley, Castro Valley, Albany, San Leandro, Brisbane, Colma, etc in addition to San Francisco.

If you look at metro areas and urban areas, which is how you should actually measure a city's size, SF is way bigger than San Jose:

MSA:
SF: 4,391,037
SJ: 1,865,450

Urban Area:
SF: 3,281,212
SJ: 1,664,496

If you extend SF's city limits to its immediate and rather densely populated urban and suburban areas, you get over 1.4 million in an area of just 121 square miles or what I consider to be an area typical of medium-sized American city. This area also includes a lot of parks such as Golden Gate and Chabot that contain no residents. Density is still relatively high by American standards at 11,800 people per square mile including parkland.
- Oakland (390,000 over 56 square miles)
- Berkeley (113,000 over 10.5 square miles)
- Daly City (101,000 over 7.7 square miles)

San Jose is larger than all of SF and its immediate dense areas combined at 177 square miles and yet its population is still 984,000 versus the hypothetical 1.4 million of SF and its vicinity.

Lastly, I quote from 18Montclair about comparing sustained densities among cities:
"... the only places that have a larger and more widespread area of high population density than the Bay Area are Chicago, Los Angeles and New York."

SF is a medium-sized city with extremely high density in some areas only rivalled by Manhattan in this country.

[Ruth4Truth]

In area, it is a small city. So what? Who cares?

[BayAreaHillbilly]

The overall Bay Area conurbation easily exceeds megacity criteria.

The political unit known as "The City and County of San Francisco" is a fraction of said megacity.

There is an odd history that explains this. It involves the fact the SF seceded from the former "San Francisco County" (name was then changed to San Mateo County) back in 1856, cutting off all annexation potential. That is almost unheard of with other cities.

Setting aside this political abnormality, functionally speaking, "San Francisco" is a major "city."

[OklaFornia]

The Bay Area MSA has 8.3 million+ people. San Francisco is the main hub of that MSA. Land wise SF is small but it isn't a small city. It's part of the fifth largest MSA in the country. IMO it is like Manhattan and the rest of NYC just spread across more land.

[zombocom]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

When will people get it through their head that SF is a huge metropolis of 7,000,0000 in the greater area? Our city limits are tiny, yes, 7 x 7 square miles, but other cities have giant boundaries making them appear more populated. SF is like a NY part 2. Kind of annoying, anyone else feel the same way? The Bay Area = SF.

San Jose is not San Francisco, neither is Pittsburgh, or Palo Alto, or Morgan Hill, etc, etc...

San Francisco isn't even the biggest in the bay area.