Congratulations Bay Area! You’ve now become just like Los Angeles!
(I will scurry away and hide now.)
Clearly, San Jose is a suburb of Milpitas 
Re: Aurora and Joliet as suburbs or separate cities.
I agree that Aurora and Joliet have, and have always had, significant employment bases of their own, independent of being in the Chicago metropolitan area. But the large parking lots, filled to capacity Monday through Friday, at the Aurora and Joliet commuter rail stations strongly suggest a suburban tie to Chicago.
I would argue that the Fox River cities (Elgin, Geneva, and Aurora) and Joliet have always been both cities in their own right and distant suburbs of Chicago. One or more of these cities would have existed as significant communities in the absence of Chicago, due to their locations, but their connections to Chicago made them larger than they would have been otherwise.
From a television market perspective San Jose is part of San Francisco. San Jose just wasn’t far enough away from SF back in the 40’s & 50’s when TV stations got started and sorted out to develop its own set of station. San Jose did have its own PBS station and a few independent stations, Channels 20 & 36 come to mind, but 20 was recently sold and is now operated out of SF and 36 is now tightly under the control of Oakland’s Fox 2.
Channel 11 was originally a station for the Monterey/Salinas/Watsonville market. At some point they “turned around” their transmitter and rebadged themselves as a San Jose station. I think they had to exploit some sort of loophole in order to do this, as I don’t think the FCC generally allows a new station to invade an established station’s market area if they have the same network affliation.
Last year, in something of a bombshell move, SF’s KRON decided not to reup its NBC affliation and Channel 11 stepped up to take its place. So 11 dropped its ABC affliation and is currently a WB affliate. I believe the NBC turnover takes place at midnight 01/01/02.
Because channel 11’s transmitter was never powerful enough to get it much further north than Palo Alto a lot of cable TV holdouts won’t be able to watch Friends next year. If history is any guide Channel 11 will migrate up the Peninsula eventually.
Sorry for reviving a dead thread, but…
Fiddlesticks, Channel 11 has upped its power or wattage or whatever the hell it’s called. I can watch it in Sonoma County now.
San Jose came first so does that preclude it from being a suburb? Both cities started as mission settlements.
Myself