San Francisco Bay Area
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USGS satellite photo of the San Francisco Bay Area.
San Francisco Bay Area highlighted in red on a map of California
The San Francisco Bay Area, colloquially known as the Bay Area or The Bay, is a geographically and ethnically diverse metropolitan region that surrounds the San Francisco Bay in Northern California. It encompasses the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, and their many suburbs. It also includes the smaller urban and rural areas of the North Bay. As of July 2006, the Bay Area is home to 7.2 million people, up half a million people since 2000, with the majority of the growth due to international immigration.[1][2] The Bay Area comprises many cities, towns, military bases, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks sprawled over nine counties (sometimes defined as ten or eleven counties) and connected by a massive network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels and commuter rail.
While San Jose is now the largest city in the Bay Area (having surpassed San Francisco in the 1990 census), for most of its history San Francisco was the most populous city. San Francisco remains the focal point and major cultural center in the region. The Bay Area has the highest median household and per capita income of any metropolitan area in the United States[3] and is also one of the most politically liberal areas in the nation.[4] The cost of living is also one of the highest in the nation (San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, 2007).
Subregions:
San Francisco
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate strait, the opening into the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. It connects San Francisco with Marin County
The City and County of San Francisco is generally placed in a category by itself in terms of geography and culture even within the Bay Area, and is known locally as "The City". It is separated by water from the north, west and east, and by a county line from its neighbor cities to the South. San Francisco has long served as the cultural, financial and urban center of the region. For most of the Bay Area's history, it has also served as the key population center. However, the limitations of the size of the county (47 square miles, making it the second most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City) constrained the growth of the city and, since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, other cities and counties have received the larger share of population growth.
North Bay
Napa Valley is most famous for its wine.
The region north of the Golden Gate Bridge is known locally as the North Bay. This area consists of Marin County and extends northward into Sonoma County and Napa County and eastward into Solano County. The city of Vallejo, being part of Solano County, is often considered the eastern most city of the North Bay, though due to a stronger cultural/socioeconomic similarity to many East Bay cities, it is also often considered the northern most city of the East Bay. With few exceptions, this region is quite affluent: Marin County is ranked as the wealthiest in the nation. The North Bay is generally the least urbanized part of the Bay Area, with many areas of undeveloped open space, farmland and vineyards. Santa Rosa in Sonoma County is the North Bay's largest city, with a population of 156,200 and a Metropolitan Statistical Area population of 466,477, making it the fifth largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area. The North Bay is the only section of the Bay Area that is not served by a commuter rail transit service, and Sonoma-Marin service was recently voted down. The lack of transportation services is mainly because of the lack of population mass in the North Bay, and the fact that it is separated completely from the rest of the Bay Area by water, the only access points being the Golden Gate Bridge leading to San Francisco, the Richmond-San Rafael and Carquinez Bridges leading to Richmond, and the Benicia-Martinez Bridge leading to Martinez.
The Peninsula
View of Colma, California, looking down from San Bruno Mountain
The area between the City and County of San Francisco and the South Bay is the San Francisco Peninsula, known locally as The Peninsula. This area consists of a series of small cities and suburban communities in San Mateo County and the northwestern part of Santa Clara County, as well as various towns along the Pacific coast, such as Pacifica and Half Moon Bay. This area is extremely diverse, although it contains significant populations of affluent family households. Many of the cities and towns had originally been centers of rural life until the post-World War II era when large numbers of middle and upper class Bay area residents moved in and developed the small villages. Since the 1980s the area has seen a large growth rate of middle and upper class families who have settled there as part of the technology boom of Silicon Valley. Many of these families are of foreign background and have significantly contributed to the diversity of the area.
East Bay
Looking west from the Berkeley Hills. Visible clockwise around the bay from the distant Golden Gate (upper center) are Marin County (Upper Right). Albany (Lower Right), Berkeley (Center and foreground), Emeryville (Lower Left), Oakland (Far Lower Left), Burlingame (Far Upper Left) and San Francisco (Upper Left)
The eastern side of the bay, consisting of Alameda and Contra Costa counties, is known locally as the East Bay. The East Bay is split into two regions, the inner East Bay, which sits on the Bay coastline, and the outer East Bay, consisting of inland valleys separated from the inner East Bay by hills and mountains.
The inner East Bay includes the cities of Oakland, Hayward, Fremont, Berkeley, and Richmond, as well as many smaller suburbs such as Alameda, Hayward, Castro Valley, Newark, Union City, Emeryville, Albany, San Leandro, San Pablo, El Sobrante,Pinole, Piedmont, and El Cerrito. The inner East Bay is more urban, more densely populated, has a much older building stock (built before World War II) and a more ethnically diverse population. Oakland hosts the region's largest seaport and professional sports franchises in basketball, football, and baseball. As with many inner urban areas the Inner East Bay also features a high accumulation of crime as well as other socio-economic problems. According to the FBI Uniformed Crime Reports, more than 50% of all homicides in the Bay Area in 2002 occurred within the city limits of Oakland and Richmond. The homicide rates have steadily increased, as 2005 had the highest homicide rates for both Richmond and Oakland.
The outer East Bay consists the eastern portions of Alameda and Contra Costa counties and includes the cities of Orinda, Walnut Creek, Concord, Benicia, Martinez, Pittsburg, Antioch, and Pleasant Hill, and Lafayette to the north (also referred as Central Contra Costa County) and the cities of Dublin, Pleasanton, Livermore, Danville, San Ramon to the south (sometimes referred to as the Livermore-Amador Valley or the Tri-Valley), as well as other smaller towns, such as Alamo and Brentwood. They are connected to the inner East Bay by BART, interstates 80 and 580, and highway 24 via the Caldecott Tunnel. The outer East Bay is part suburban, part rural and its infrastructure was mostly built up after World War II. The upper middle-class white population is still the majority in this area.
South Bay
Looking west over northern San Jose (downtown is at far left) and other parts of Silicon Valley
The communities along the southern edge of the Bay are known as the South Bay, Santa Clara Valley, and Silicon Valley. Some Peninsula and East Bay towns are sometimes included in the latter. It includes the major city of San Jose, and its outlying neighbors, including the cities Morgan Hill, Gilroy, and the high-tech hubs of Santa Clara, Milpitas, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto and Mountain View as well as many other suburbs like Los Altos, Saratoga, Campbell and Los Gatos. Generally, the South Bay is Santa Clara County, but the northwest portion of the county (Palo Alto and Mountain View) is often considered part of the Peninsula instead. Home of Silicon Valley, the South Bay was also an early development of working and middle class families who left the coastal cities of the Eastern Bay south of Oakland and Alameda. Large numbers of families during the post-World War era also moved there for the aerospace industry. This area has long been developed and expanded and is often featured as a stereotype of the typical California suburban city. Today, the growth continues, primarily fueled by technology and cheap immigrant workers. The result has been a huge increase in the value of property forcing many middle class families out of the area or into nascent ghettos in older sections of the region.
Befitting of the title Silicon Valley, this region is home to a vast number of technology sector giants. Some notable tech companies headquartered in the South Bay are Intel, AMD, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Google, eBay,and Yahoo!. As a consequence of the rapid growth of these and other companies, the South Bay has gained increasing political and economic influence both within California and throughout the world.
Santa Cruz and San Benito
The regional governments in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board include only the nine counties above in their boundaries or membership. (The BAAQMD includes all of the nine counties except the northern portions of Sonoma and Solano; the RWQCB includes all of San Francisco and the portions of the other eight counties that drain to San Francisco Bay or to the Pacific Ocean.)[5] However, the United States Census Bureau defines the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Consolidated Statistical Area as an eleven-county region, including the nine counties above plus Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties. Meanwhile, the California State Parks Department defines the Bay Area as including ten counties[6], including Santa Cruz but excluding San Benito. On The Other hand, Santa Cruz and San Benito along with Monterey County are part of a different regional government organization called the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments.
Some residents of the Santa Cruz Mountains (Boulder Creek, Brookdale, Ben Lomond, Felton, Scotts Valley) do not usually consider themselves to be residents of the Bay Area, rather just of the Santa Cruz Mountains themselves. The Santa Cruz Mountains run along the spine of the San Francisco Peninsula, beginning in San Francisco and continuing down to their terminus near the City of Gilroy, effectively creating the Santa Clara Valley.
The city of Santa Cruz is geographically isolated from the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, and is usually considered a part of the Monterey Bay area since the city lies on the north end of the Monterey Bay. The city is also sometimes regarded as the northernmost point of the California Central Coast, which extends along the state's coastline to Santa Barbara.
Weather
Because the hills, mountains, and large bodies of water produce such vast geographic diversity within this region, the Bay Area offers a significant variety of microclimates. The areas near the Pacific Ocean are generally characterized by relatively small temperature variations during the year, with cool foggy summers and mild rainy winters. Inland areas, especially those separated from the ocean by hills or mountains, have hotter summers and colder overnight temperatures during the winter. Few residential areas ever experience snow, but peaks over 2000 feet are often dusted with snow several times each winter (including Mount St. Helena, Mount Hamilton, Mount Diablo, and Mount Tamalpais). The coast north of San Francisco, where year-round cool, moist conditions enable redwoods to grow, has almost nothing in common with Livermore, just 40 miles inland across the bay, which has desert-like precipitation and heat. San José at the south end of the Bay averages fewer than 15 inches of rain annually, while Napa at the north end of the Bay averages over 30 and parts of the Santa Cruz Mountains just a few miles west of San José get over 55. In the summer, inland regions can be over 40 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius) warmer than the coast. This large temperature contrast induces a strong pressure gradient, which results in brisk coastal winds which help keep the coastal climate cool and typically, foggy during the summer. Additionally, strong winds are produced through gaps in the coastal ranges such as the Golden Gate, the Carquinez Strait, and the Altamont Pass.
References
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