I was reading the paper today and was rather surprised to find that my hometown of San Jose, California is nearly as big as Detroit! We’re the 11th biggest city in the United States and some folks in City Hall are trying their darndest to squeeze into that golden ‘top ten’ group.
I had no idea my city was that big! I’ve been to city hall many times, drive downtown often, but I never think of my city as a sprawling metropolis, rather it seems the ultimate ‘average’ city in my mind, not too big, not too small, someplace Goldilocks might like to live though of course I am biased because I’ve lived here all my life and despite the high cost of living here I am rather fond of it
…And that “almost in the top 10 biggest” thing. If this is true, no offense or anything, but it might be time to get yourselves a decent airport. The only time I’ve ever walked out across the macadam to get to a commercial jet airplane flight was in San Jose! Even the Lehigh Valley International Airport (Motto: “One flight to Canada, we’re International!”) in Allentown, PA, doesn’t make you walk outside between the terminal and the airplane.
Other than that admittedly minor point, I found the San Jose area to be quite nice… And 70 degrees in mid November was just wonderful… Certainly can’t blame you for liking it. Didn’t seem all that big to me. Must’ve been the airport…
I think it’s because of the ridiculous way the freeway onramps are set up. Once you get off the interstate it’s damn near impossible to get back on and leave. People must eventually give up and build a house there.
I was surprised that San Jose was larger than San Francisco. Maybe because San Francisco is more ‘recognizable’ it seemed larger.
SF is okay and I’ll admit there is a better night life there but it is also dirtier than San Jose and also seems to have a major homelessness problem.
Perhaps the size of San Jose can be attributed to the miles and miles of urban sprawl that keep expanding through housing developments. At this point it seems like all the cities in the Bay area border each other- any direction I go, I’ll run into another city, be it Los Gatos, Morgan Hill, Campbell, Santa Clara, etc
San Jose has had a larger population than San Francisco for approximately ten years, I believe it is.
As noted, SJ has lots of physical area to fill. Most of it is filled, but there’s still lots to go. The Mercury just did a series of stories on the Coyote Valley area. I think the prediction was that the area could support something like 50-100k people on its own once completely built up. SF, by comparison is tiny. Even Fremont, #4 in population in the Bay Area, covers over twice the area that SF does.
SF has over 200 years of history as the center of NorCal’s focus behind it. It has always been the business, cultural, and political center for the area, and will probably remain that way. SJ will always remain in its shadow, regardless of how much larger its becomes in comparison. SJ, for all intents and purposes, is basically a large suburb.
I think all the “biggest city” lists are a load of crap. The size of the metro area is what matters most, not the population inside the city limits. So a lot of sunbelt and southwestern (maybe CA?) cities are artificially high up on these lists, since they generally have bigger city limits and fewer competing incorporated municipalities nearby.
A few years ago there was some talk of either moving the baseball Giants to San Jose or getting a new team there. One of my friends, and a native Californian at that, snorted laughingly about San Jose being too small to support major league ball. When I told him that it was quite a bit bigger than San Francisco he didn’t believe me and had to go look it up.
San Jose is the 295th city, and 456th metro area in the world.
San Francisco is the 344th city, and the 37th metro area.
So yes, San Jose is bigger, but only in ways that statisticitans care about
If it makes you feel better, San Francisco is still failing compared to Chongging, Lima, Bogota, Nagoya, Dhaka and Tehran.
He was of course absolutely correct in any way that matters when it comes to supporting a major league baseball team.
San Jose is a bigger city within the city limits. What lies within the city limits is a meaningless measurement of the ability of a city to support a sports team. No sane person actually believes that the population of San Francisco is actually 780,000 people, because nobody considers the municipal boundary to mean anything beyond who gets taxed by whom.
Calgary, Alberta has a larger population than either San Jose or San Francisco, counting city limits. But does anyone really think that in any meaningful way, Calgary is bigger than San Francisco?
Looking at the Census Bureau’s definitions of the local metropolitan areas, which I’m guessing is what the World Gazetteer uses, it seems highly biased towards SF. Their definition includes cities as far away from it as Fremont and Hayward. Both of these cities are much closer to SJ than SF, and are probably more closely linked to it as well. As far as I can tell, it looks like the Census list refuses to divide up counties between different metro areas, even where it would seem to be warranted. SF gets the counties of SF, San Mateo, Alameda, and Contra Costa. SJ gets only Santa Clara county.
Anyways, SF, SJ, Oakland, etc. are all really part of the same metro area for all intents and purposes. It’s all one big metropolis, with no real dividing lines. Comparing metro areas around here is pretty much meaningless. And there’s plenty of population surrounding SJ as well as inside it’s borders. A stadium would have been sustainable, I believe.
I lived in Concord about 22 years ago and even then SF had a nighttime population of 750,000 and a daytime population due to the influx of workers coming in from outlying bedroom communities, of around 1,500,000. Even at 750,000 this is very dense as SF measures only 7 miles wide by 7 miles long.
For those of you in Rio Linda, that’s 49 square miles.
(Ouch, Ow! Stop! Ow, quit it! Okay, okay, I promise I won’t say such a thing again…ever…I promise! Ow, stop!)
I lived in San Jose till I was about 12, then for the next 14 years I’ve been moving steadily North (up to Santa Rosa now!). Most of my family is still down there though, so I visit often.
I’ll never forget when I saw a tourist brochure for San Jose. I immediately thought to myself "San Jose? Huh? Why the hell would anyone want to visit San Jose?
Tell me, does anyone consider San Jose a place where one would visit just to visit? Doesn’t seem as if there’s really anything to see down there. It’s obvious why someone would visit San Francisco. I lived in Napa for awhile too, that one’s a give in. But San Jose?
Is anyone here connected to the tourist industry there in any way? What are it’s selling points?
though of course I am biased because I’ve lived here all my life and despite the high cost of living here I am rather fond of it 
