I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. There are many other places in the Bay area that offer dense urban areas. Palo Alto, San Mateo, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz come to mind. I know someone who lives in the south bay and does not have a car. There are places which are very hard to live in without a car (Sunnyvale comes to mind), but different places in the south and east bay are... different.

And frankly, there are parts of SF that I personally would find difficult to live in without a car (or at least bicycle), because they're far from effective public transit or commercial areas. BART and CalTrain don't serve the western part of SF at all, and muni is often slower than walking.

The south and east bay may not have the same density as San Francisco, but then again, it's far from clear that super-high density is a good idea in a seismically active zone. A lot of people seem to treat the choice as being between super-low density and super-high density. The alternative, medium density, never seems to get much P.R., but it seems like by far the best choice.

Are you seriously suggesting that San Mateo and Palo Alto are "urban", in the sense 'potatolicious means, of "offering a lifestyle comparable to that of Seattle, Boston, or Milwaukee"? San Mateo and Palo Alto are suburbs, each with essentially a single suburban main drag†, neither with any significant transit to get from point A to point A' (neither being large enough, as large as, say, Ann Arbor, to host a legitimate point B).

I think a reasonable case could be made that Champaign Illinois (which hosts UIUC) is more of an urban area than those two cities. At the very least, I think it's better than San Mateo.

I agree that San Francisco sucks (and I lived in SOMA and in Noe Valley, both of which have relatively good [for the area] transit), but it is at least an actual city.

The obvious elephant in the room here is San Jose, and it's telling that you didn't mention it, opting instead to pretend that San Mateo was a "dense urban area". San Jose is an urban center. But it's miserable; nobody talks about moving there. The fact is that San Mateo sounds plausible because of its proximity to San Francisco.

† For Palo Alto, I mean University; you don't need to point out that El Camino runs through it, I know where to go to find the strip malls. :)

> The obvious elephant in the room here is San Jose, and it's telling that you didn't mention it, opting instead to pretend that San Mateo was a "dense urban area". San Jose is an urban center.

San Mateo, at around 8K/sq.mi., is far more of a "dense urban area" than San Jose, at around 5K/sq.mi.

So who is pretending?

Easy: you are. Lots of people live in San Mateo. It's still a suburb. Evanston and Oak Park are suburbs of Chicago that are denser than San Mateo. So is, for god's sake, Berwyn.

To see how silly population density is as a metric for what 'potatolicious is talking about, consider that your metric says that Berwyn and San Mateo are more like cities than Bellevue Washington, which is so independently urbanized that it stretches the definition of "suburb" but has a density of only 3k/sqm. Look at downtown Bellevue in street view on Google Maps. Now go look at Delaware and 3rd in San Mateo.

The idea that you might think San Mateo is more of an urban area than San Jose --- I mean this without annoying snippiness in my heart though I know it is, characteristically, going to sound that way --- suggests to me that you haven't been to one of those two cities before. San Jose is self-evidently a real city. (I look forward to you embarrassing me by informing me that you've lived in both).

> Easy: you are. Lots of people live in San Mateo. It's still a suburb.

The issue was what is a "dense urban area". A city that is a suburb because of its relation to a another city can still be a dense urban area, and a sparsely populated municipality that is not a suburb can fail to be a dense urban area. San Jose is not a dense urban area, by any remotely reasonable standard.

> consider that your metric says that Berwyn and San Mateo are more like cities than Bellevue Washington,

All of those are cities, none of them are "more like cities". The issue was "dense urban areas", and certainly some of them are more "dense urban areas" than others, and that is easily and objectively verifiable.

> The idea that you might think San Mateo is more of an urban area than San Jose

You keep leaving out the key word "dense".

San Mateo is, objectively, more of a "dense urban area" than San Jose. Whether its more of an "urban area", density aside, isn't a entirely a well-defined question, but given that San Jose is basically a giant mass of the type of development referred to as "suburban sprawl" that just happens to be within a single legal jurisdiction that isn't a satellite of a larger municipality, I'd say by most reasonable standards its probably not more an urban area than most Peninsula cities, even if the latter happen to suburbs of San Francisco.)

Though, of colin_mccabe's examples, I'll agree that San Mateo isn't the best (Berkeley probably is).

I think the reason you & I are talking past each other is that I wrote my comment because I found Colin's "dense urban area" appellation misleading. Your comment forced me to do the research to check whether population density meant anything like what 'potatolicious was talking about; had I done that before writing my original comment, I think my response would have been more convincing.

Oak Park is a village, not a city, and is denser than San Mateo. The city/town designation is arbitrary.

San Jose has a very large downtown area, much better transit, and more diverse retail businesses and restaurants than San Mateo does. It also has a gigantic residential sprawl. So does Houston. Nobody would mistake San Mateo for a urban area of the likes of Houston.

I agree with you about Berkeley, but that's telling too, isn't it? Berkeley is, like San Francisco, a hotbed of anti-Google protests.

The subtext of this thread is 'potatolicious' claim that no place other than San Francisco (and, admittedly, Berkeley and Oakland) offer a "dense urban core" with a "transit-centric" lifestyle that is "commutable" to jobs on the Peninsula. He is right. San Mateo does not in fact offer that. To argue the contrary, you'd need to find a way in which San Mateo offers that lifestyle that, say, Mountain View or Santa Clara or Pleasonton don't; otherwise, you're arguing that the whole Peninsula is urban, and the term doesn't mean anything. Obviously, if you find a job in downtown Pleasanton and are happy to eat out only at the Cheesecake Factory, Pleasanton is livable too.

Berkeley has been a hotbed of political protest for a long, long time. While I lived there, the Oak Grove protests, (protesting the cutting down of some trees to build a stadium) were going on. Most of the fellow Berkeley residents I talked to were not in favor of the tree protesters, simply because the university was planting more trees in other places, so that there would actually be a net gain of trees due to the construction. Prior to Oak Grove, there were the protests surrounding the army recruitment offices. And prior to that, I'm sure there was another cause, all the way back to Vietnam, where Berkeley was also a famous center of protest.

The protests in San Francisco are very different from the ones in Berkeley. The San Francisco ones are basically concerned about the effect the Google buses are having on the composition of the neighborhood. The idea is that SF is perfect as-is and must not change. There were similar worries when gays started moving into SF in the 70s and 80s.

I think the reason why you're "talking past" me and the other people here is that you haven't really visited most of the neighborhoods outside SF, and you think they're all the same. Hence the apparent non-sequiturs like bringing up Oak Brook, Illinois, or trying to decide whether something is a "city" or a "town." The reality is that different places are different. Berkeley is not SF. San Mateo is not downtown San Jose. And downtown San Jose is not east San Jose.

An "us versus them" mentality, coupled with lack of knowledge of "them," lies behind a lot of ugly things in human nature. Do we really need to have more of it here? Maybe there are places outside of SF that are (gasp) as good as parts of SF. Maybe there are places in SF that kind of suck. Is it possible?

I don't think average density is a very good metric for San Jose. Downtown San Jose is quite dense, with a lot of skyscrapers. On the other hand, there are some parts of it that are definitely very low density. I definitely agree that downtown San Jose is more dense than any of the places I mentioned.

With regard to San Mateo being "a suburb" without "any significant transit," I can't agree. I see people taking the bus all the time. There are a lot of people who work in downtown San Mateo and live nearby.

Oak Brook Illinois is an archetypical midwestern suburb --- strip malls, chain restaurants, vast residential areas, centered (like San Mateo) on a big shopping mall --- that happens to host a bunch of high rise office buildings. No doubt there are lots of people who work in those buildings and choose to live in Oak Brook so they can walk or take the Pace bus to work. But that doesn't make the living experience of Oak Brook comparable to that of Chicago, or even Milwaukee.

I'm not trying to say that San Mateo is irredeemable. If I had to move back to the Bay Area (crosses self), I'd probably look at San Mateo before San Francisco, because I have kids, and San Francisco seems like an awful place to raise kids. I'm just saying that it is not a realistic substitute for San Francisco for city dwellers.

San Mateo is not "an archetypical midwestern suburb" with "strip malls, chain restaurants, vast residential areas... centered on a big shopping mall." Most of the restaurants are not chains, or if they are, they're local chains like Curry Up Now or Pacific Catch. It's not "centered on a big shopping mall." There is a smallish strip mall called the Shoreview shopping center which I don't think many people visit any more, on the east side of the tracks (the bad side of town, according to some.) There is also the Hillsdale mall which is more out towards Belmont. I think it's technically in the city of San Mateo, but very far from the center. The center of the town is the downtown area where the Caltrain station, central park, farmers market, most of the office buildings, and so forth are.

Speaking as someone whose high school was located in "downtown" Santa Cruz and who went to college at UCSC, I'm very curious how you think Santa Cruz qualifies as a "dense urban area". I'd hesitate to call it "urban".

> Palo Alto, San Mateo, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz come to mind.

Palo Alto is a horrible example IMHO. All of the good stuff is on University Ave and maybe California, the rest of it is just residential and not within walking distance. If you don't live close to University, you definitely need a car.

Just curious, but is there some sort of anti-car sentiment in the tech world in the Bay Area? Being from SoCal, I can't imagine living without my car and motorcycle.

SF is just absolutely terrible for parking. But I wonder, do tech people dislike cars because they live in SF, or do they live in SF because they dislike cars? Or is it neither?

Wow, awesome culture clash that you'd even ask this!

Yes, the bay area, but particularly SF is extremely anti-car. This is probably rooted in environmentalism, but in the city it also resonates with many people for health, social, and economic reasons.

The sentiment is so strong among younger people that if people own a car they will often almost apologize for it in friendly conversation. Like "yeah, I still have my odd beater from when I lived in LA... But I have free parking at the office and it's nice for carpooling to burning man".

From a personal perspective, I grew up in orange county, but moved to NYC in early adulthood and SF later. I own a car and a motorcycle. I love riding the motorcycle, but bicycling or walking is frequently more efficient in the city, not to mention pleasurable.

If you have only ever lived in car-centric places like so cal, I rely strongly recommend taking a long vacation in a walkable place like NYC or a European city where you know people who can show you the ropes. You might be surprised how much you enjoy Not driving.

There has been a movement called the "new urbanism," starting in the 1980s, that emphasized walkable neighborhoods rather than car-focused areas. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism

Of course, cars also have an impact on the environment which many northern Californians dislike. Oddly enough, the same people don't seem to mind flying, even though one or two transatlantic flights can emit as much carbon dioxide per person as an entire year of driving.

Personally, I like walkable neighborhoods. I would not want to live in a place where I couldn't walk or bike to a downtown area. However, I think the focus on "urbaner than thou" is misguided. I've always liked medium density areas the best.

> even though one or two transatlantic flights can emit as much carbon dioxide per person as an entire year of driving

Are you sure about that?

http://www.businessinsider.com/driving-is-actually-less-ener...

For the purpose of argument, let's say that a plane emits 3/4 as much carbon dioxide per mile as a car. This seems to be roughly what the graph is showing in your linked post.

A single plane trip from California to Europe is 5,500 miles. Double that for the round trip, and you've got 11,000 miles. Multiply by 3/4 and you've got 8250 miles, which is easily what an average person might drive in a year. If you add another trip (notice I said "one or two" in my post), then you're definitely emitting more CO2 than the average American emits by driving for a year.

Of course, if the car person in question drives a Prius or an electric car (very common in the Bay area), the numbers look even worse for the plane person. Not to mention the fact that the plane efficiency improvements are created by packing more and more people on the plane, which makes for a miserable flight. The car efficiency improvements are generated by newer technology.

I'm from Europe, currently living in SoCal. It's just so much nicer to be able to walk/take a bus/subway wherever you need (I went to university in a really dense urban area, never even needed a car). Also, suburbs are too quiet for some people, hectic/agitated city life can be more interesting (during day time as much as at night).

Well put. I too am often shocked by how truly dysfunctional and inconvenient SF is compared other metropolitan areas in the country. Yet I still can't see myself ever living anywhere else in the Bay Area...