[stepper77]

Tour of California
Part One - Los Angeles (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=133321)
Part Two - Glendale, Pasadena, Hollywood, Beverly Hills (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=133496)
Part Three - Riverside, Santa Ana, Long Beach (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=133766)

Since my trip to San Diego this past weekend was postponed since I was sick, I thought I'd go ahead and skip to California's third largest city, San Jose. These were taken between Christmas and New Years 2006, thus the holiday decorations and lack of people (most offices were closed that week).

Even though I have lived in the Bay Area for over six years, I had never before been to San Jose before taking these pictures, at least not to downtown. Now I don't wish to get into any debates over whether San Jose is better than San Francisco, or vice versa. There is a reason why San Francisco is simply called "The City" and no matter how many jobs and no matter how many baseball or football teams head south that will not change. However, San Jose seems to be a very nice, liveable "working" city in it of itself. The downtown actually has quite a lot of amenities, is walkable, has relatively frequent light rail service, and it seems you could live downtown and still not feel like you were living in a city of a million people.

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An bit of an urban retreat
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In every city I visit, I become a little obsessed with one building or another, this is the one I found in San Jose.

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/9261/2006sanjose061ci8.jpg
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The planes approaching the airport make for some cool photos, but, are also reportedly responsible for SJ's lack of tall buildings

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/5703/2006sanjose089po7.jpg
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/6606/2006sanjose098zr3.jpg

The Sobrato Office Tower...bear with me...

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Entrance to San Jose State University

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Views from SJSU parking garage

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/736/2006sanjose198bm8.jpg
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Near downtown residential

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A church by SJSU campus

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/5599/2006sanjose212kx4.jpg
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Back to downtown

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/8117/2006sanjose217rv8.jpg
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Santa Clara County Courthouse

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According to Emporis, this is San Jose's tallest

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A few more before I go...

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/8596/2006sanjose333gk6.jpg
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And lastly...

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Added more photos taken this past Christmas

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[Tanster]

Thats a nice little city very neat like happy town LOL

[ady26]

I think the tallest is the City Hall;nice photos ,how different is SJ of SF!

[Gordo]

The tallest building is the City Hall...it's also worth noting that the Sobrato Tower was completed just after the dotcom bomb went off - and was completely vacant for more than five years because Sobrato wanted to find a single tenant and refused to break it up. It was recently sold to BEA Systems for their new HQ. (Not sure if they've actually moved in yet)

And yes, the airport height limits have severely restricted downtown San Jose's growth and height and will continue to do so.

Thanks for the pics!

[peanut gallery]

A very nice tour of downtown SJ.

I love Teske's and have to get down there for another visit one of these days:
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/3505/2006sanjose260dv7.jpg

[the dude]

great tour. looks like a fantastic city...except for the planes flying over.

[ChrisLA]

Pleasantly surprised, I may have to stop by San Jose for a quick visit. The strange thing is I've passed through this city many times, but never new exactly where the city was. Its always been sort of confusing because I've never seen anything from the highway (101), and I think the other one was 680? or something like that. Well these photos certainly impressed me, and its very clean. Thanks for sharing and opening up a new horizon for me. :tup:

[stepper77]

Pleasantly surprised, I may have to stop by San Jose for a quick visit. The strange thing is I've passed through this city many times, but never new exactly where the city was. Its always been sort of confusing because I've never seen anything from the highway (101), and I think the other one was 680? or something like that. Well these photos certainly impressed me, and its very clean. Thanks for sharing and opening up a new horizon for me. :tup:

That is one of the problems I think with Silicon Valley, in general. It seems pretty faceless. That's why I see it is more of a working city, but, San Jose is definitely worth checking out. Most of downtown is northeast of the intersection of 280 and 87. I'm not sure if you can see much from 101 since the buildings are rather short, but, you just take 280 W from 101 and downtown is a short distance down.

[ChrisLA]

That is one of the problems I think with Silicon Valley, in general. It seems pretty faceless. That's why I see it is more of a working city, but, San Jose is definitely worth checking out. Most of downtown is northeast of the intersection of 280 and 87. I'm not sure if you can see much from 101 since the buildings are rather short, but, you just take 280 W from 101 and downtown is a short distance down.


Thanks for sure I'll check it out the next time I'm heading up to the bay area.

[EastBayHardCore]

Re: The Sobrato Building

BEA won't be moving in until sometime in 2008. I've heard Spring or Summer.

[Rufus]

What a pleasant surprise -- I didn't know San Jose was that urban. Nice. It even has a couple old highrises.

[Jularc]

Pretty nice. I love to see those old buildings in San Jose.

[PHX31]

WOW, I had no idea SJ looked that nice and urban, especially with all of the crap that it gets by the forum. I should have known, though, being a California city, it would look nice. Great pics.

[Red UM Rebel]

Neat pictures. What is the population of the San Jose area?

[dcmcgov]

Neat pictures. What is the population of the San Jose area?

City of SJ is right under 1 million. About 975,000 i think. The Bay Area metro is about 7 or 8 million.

[stepper77]

Added to some extra pictures...

[urbanlife]

Well, I am impressed. In a matter of a week, you guys have managed to change my opinion completely on a city I knew very little on except for a hand full of skyline shots. I always assumed the city was just one of those over built dot com suburb city, but it is starting to look like a nice alternative to SF.

Also with it being such a you city so to speak, albeit still having a great collection of small historic buildings, it has managed to hold a great collection of urban density and I love how walkable it looks to be. Something most young cities are still struggling to get back to.

Anyway, thank you for all the amazing shots. If it wasn't so damn expensive, I probably would migrate to the bay area...but on the other hand, I have grown fond of my northwest, I feel like I belong here, no matter how much I bitch and complain.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Now I know the way to San Jose.

[whatsthepoint13]

downtown looks nice...

[dktshb]

Nice showing for CA's third largest city.

[SLO]

San Jose really has come a long way in the last 15-20 years. If downtown continues to grow the way it has, SJ has the potiential to be very cool. With so much mid rise construction, it will be totally different than SF, but could get quite dense.

[boden]

Do you know the way?:tup:

[Evo5Boise]

I spent some time in San Jose many years ago. Great area. It surprises me how many people don't really know much about San Jose and it is one of the largest cities in the nation. It is a shame that downtown has to be restricted by the airport. As funny as it may sound I often feel the lack of a dominating skyline keeps it out of the nation's eye.

[urbanactivistTX]

San Jose really has come a long way in the last 15-20 years. If downtown continues to grow the way it has, SJ has the potiential to be very cool. With so much mid rise construction, it will be totally different than SF, but could get quite dense.

Yeah, I really enjoyed the thread too. It killed some of my misconceptions about San Jose.

It still looks very quiet, but that's not necessarily a bad thing!! I agree with SLO... SJ is growing up, and will make for a very interesting part of the "Bay Area Triumverate" in a few decades. It probably won't achieve the density levels of Oakland or SF, but there's lots of potential for the city from a "smart planning" perspective to go the way of Portland.

[TXLove]

great pics of San Jose