San Jose: Soon to be an alpha world city

[tdawg]

???

[tdawg]

that place looks completely unremarkable. Is this high sarcasm?

[HomeInMyShoes]

I've read this thread at least a hundred times and it gets funnier EVERY TIME I READ IT.

[rriojas71]

After I first read this thread I thought Yakumoto was being serious and trying to promote his city as most of us do on this forum, but after reading through all the posts and the narratives I'd have to say that this post was made with a sarcastic tone. (At least, I'm hoping that's what his/her intentions were).

I mean the pictures are such an oxymoron to the narrative that there is no way this person can be taken seriously.

[Complex01]

Here, here, i agree. If anything made me smile and on a bad day...

[Chelsea Spy]

Irony darlings, irony!

I love it!

Great thread

[Western Spaghetti]

HeHe! very funny.

Obviously this is a joke.

[the Misanthropist]

If I didn’t know better, I would have a hard time believing this was even an American city

OK, let's not get carried away.

[rajaxsonbayboi]

okay i just have to say wow. i live pretty close to san jose and i dont believe its all that interesting. but its not as bad as people say it is. the pictures really doesnt do it justice. san jose though has a long way to go to be as interesting as say sf, oakland, berkley, and other cities in the bay area. and its downtown is pretty much a joke. one person mentioned that he couldnt find room on the light rail. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA i rode the light rail for over a month every week day during high traffic and i ALWAYS found room to sit. its nothing more than a more populous fremont with more freeways and businesses.

[mthq]

Alpha World City eh? Forget my planned trip to San Francisco, I think I'm gonna book a 1 week vacation at that Marriot pictured and enjoy the sights and sounds of San Jose.

[BigKidD]

Originally Posted by mthq

Alpha World City eh? Forget my planned trip to San Francisco, I think I'm gonna book a 1 week vacation at that Marriot pictured and enjoy the sights and sounds of San Jose.

You could stay in San Jose and take Caltrain up to the City. Anyway, San Jose's downtown is not too bad, but people should not expect it be like Union Square or Powell & Market with lots of people and activities.

[Raraavis]

I flew in and out of San Jose a few weeks ago on a business trip (the airport is currently a sh*thole due to major construction). The city and surrounding area up to and including Silicon Valley is an ugly sprawling mess. If there is attractive pedestrian friendly urban areas of the city please post pics because I missed them on my trip

[stepper77]

If you wanna see more pics of San Jose, you can see my thread here.

And no, San Jose is not the worst city in the US. Not even the worst in California. Downtown actually has some nice places and, even if the ridershipship isn't huge now, I credit San Jose for having the forsight of putting a light rail at all. The city just needs more time to get there. Having said this though, San Jose sometimes holds itself in more prominence then it should. The city alone is not Silicon Valley. Even a lot of the bigger tech firms, save Adobe, are located in Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Mountain View, up the peninsula, and even Fremont. So, San Jose maybe at the "heart" of Silicon Valley, but, it is merely a part of it. And perhaps I'm mistaken, but, didn't a lot of the money used to start a lot of these tech firms in the Silicon Valley come from VC firms in San Francisco?

[dimondpark]

Very Low Crime.
Very Wealthy Residents.
Very Highly Educated Residents.
Racially and Ethnically Diverse.
Excellent Outdoor Amenities.
Excellent Job Opportunities.
Lots of Culture and A wide variety of things to do.
Not far from San Francisco and The Ocean.
Near Perfect Weather.

San Jose...you SUCK!

[krudmonk]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

Very Low Crime.
Very Wealthy Residents.
Very Highly Educated Residents.
Racially and Ethnically Diverse.
Excellent Outdoor Amenities.
Excellent Job Opportunities.
Lots of Culture and A wide variety of things to do.
Not far from San Francisco and The Ocean.
Near Perfect Weather.

San Jose...you SUCK!

As long as we rank behind San Francisco in anything, we always will suck!

Proximity is a bitch sometimes...

[boden]

This is the biggest alpha thread that never was............................................................................................................
I like it.

[richardofmystery]

Originally Posted by krudmonk

Most suburbs have more people and jobs than their core cities. You're so right.

I assume you don't mean that San Jose has more jobs than San Francisco, do you? Because that isn't accurate. As of the last census San Francisco had a little over 200,000 more jobs than San Jose. San Jose has more actual residents, yes, but it also covers four times the land area. If Oakland were to expand its boundaries to match San Jose's, it would also have more people than San Francisco. But that wouldn't change the fact that San Francisco is the central city in the region. Any more than Queens having a million more people than Manhattan changes the fact that Manhattan is the center of New York.

And before you say that the jobs in SF are all in tourism:

VISA
Barclays Global Investors
Wells Fargo
CNET
Ubisoft America
Dolby
Technorati
Yelp
Six Apart / Typepad
Gymboree
Mac / PC World
Salon
Mother Jones
Wired
Del Monte
California Supreme Court
9th Circuit Court of Appeals

are just some of the companies and organizations based in SF. I could go on, of course.

Aside from San Francisco having more jobs, there are also more people in the city at any given time due to tourists and commuters (while San Jose is the only US city of more than 500,000 people to lose population during the day when people go to work). Plus the budget for the city of San Francisco is roughly double the budget for San Jose.

Now that doesn't make San Jose a suburb of San Francisco (it is, as you said, a suburb of Silicon Valley if it's a suburb of anything). It just means that San Francisco is the primary and central city in the region, and that shows no signs of changing anytime soon.

[mhays]

Well said.

[krudmonk]

If I'm wrong about the "more jobs" thing, it's certainly not by 200,000. According to 2006 data (which lists SJ at 929K and not the new 973K) San Jose loses 5.6%* of it's population due to daily commute while San Francisco gains 21.7%**. Doing that math, that's nowhere near 200,000. I was initially led to believe that number of jobs dictated listing order in CSA naming. For example, it is now the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland combined statistical area. It hasn't been such since 1990, though, when SJ passed SF in population.

And where did the rest of these words come from? Certainly not my mouth. Disproving suburb status does not equate to proving supremacy in the region. Who cares if SF is the focal point of the region? That was never my point. You swooped in to defend the city against phantom attacks. Good job.

And just so you know, companies like Mac World and CNET have name recognition but they don't employ that many people.

*http://www.city-data.com/city/San-Jose-California.html
**http://www.city-data.com/city/San-Fr...alifornia.html

[nickcarey]

Northern Californian cities with population densities higher than San Jose:

Modesto
Santa Clara
Davis
Mountain View
Citrus Heights
Sunnyvale
San Leandro
Alameda
South San Francisco
Oakland
San Mateo
Berkeley
Daly City
San Francisco