Great photos of an unfortunate city. It is interesting that an hour away from some of the most expensive housing in the United States there is a city where nearly every building (and some of them are beautiful buildings) downtown is vacant. I agree with the other comments on this thread about the potential of high-speed rail to make these Central Valley cities like Fresno and Stockton more vibrant. If it was a short 30 min train ride to San Jose, it could revitalize downtown Stockton.
I went to grad school in Sacramento about a decade ago and, although I never stopped in Stockton, Stockton always looked a bit forlorn driving through it. I also recall even before the housing bust of the Central Valley and Delta-area towns, Stockton had many issues to deal with, including high crime rates and drug abuse. Although I only lived in Sacramento for about a year and a half, just as a previous commenter mentioned the appeal of the Bay Area and Southern California for young people in the Valley, Sacramento seemed like a whole different universe from Stockton.
More broadly for the Central Valley, I recall reading a column a while back that argued it was a huge mistake to put the newest UC campus in Merced and create more sprawl, rather than locating it in Fresno and reinvigorating a deteriorating urban core.
Finally, Stockton's 2012 municipal bankruptcy certainly didn't help this city:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/stockton...day-1424815104 .