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?
Comments
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.
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.
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?