Despite its urban character, the San Francisco Bay is one of California's most ecologically sensitive habitats, providing important ecosystem services such as filtering the pollutants and sediments from rivers and supporting a number of endangered species. In addition, the Bay Area is known for its stands of coast redwoods, many of which are protected in state and county parks. The region is additionally known for the complexity of its landforms, the result of millions of years of tectonic plate movements. Because the Bay Area is crossed by 6 major earthquake faults, the region is particularly exposed to hazards presented by large earthquakes. The climate is temperate and conducive to outdoor recreational and athletic activities such as hiking, running, and cycling. The Bay Area is host to 6 professional sports teams and is a cultural center for music, theater, and the arts. It is also host to numerous higher education institutions, including research universities such as Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Home to 101 municipalities and 9 counties, governance in the Bay Area involves numerous local and regional jurisdictions, often with broad and overlapping responsibilities.
The Coyote Hills Shell Mound, the earliest known archaeological evidence of human habitation of the Bay Area estuaries, dates to around 10,000 BCE, with evidence pointing to even earlier settlement in Point Reyes in Marin County.[19] It has been conjectured that the people living in the Bay Area at the time of first European contact were descended from Siberian tribes who arrived at around 1,000 BCE by sailing over the Arctic Ocean and following the salmon migration.[20] However the current academic consensus is compatible with the oral tradition of the Ohlone and Miwok peoples, which suggests they have been living in the Bay Area for several hundreds if not thousands of years.[10][11]
At the time of colonization, the Ohlone peoples in the Bay Area primarily lived on the San Francisco Peninsula, in the South Bay and in the East Bay, and the Miwok primarily lived in the North Bay, northern East Bay, and Central Valley. Ohlone villages were spread across the Peninsula, East Bay, South Bay, as well as further south into the Monterey Bay area.[21] There were eight major divisions of Ohlone people, four of which were based in the Bay Area: the Karkin of the Carquinez Strait, the Chochenyo of the East Bay, the Ramaytush of the San Francisco Peninsula, and the Tamien of the South Bay. The Miwok had two major groups in the Bay Area: the Bay Miwok of Contra Costa and the Coast Miwok of Marin and Sonoma.
In 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo explored the Pacific coast near the Bay Area though the expedition did not see the Golden Gate or the estuaries, likely due to fog. Sir Francis Drake became the first European to land in the area and claim it in June 1579, when he landed at Drakes Bay near Point Reyes. Even though he claimed the region for Queen Elizabeth I as Nova Albion or New Albion, the English made no immediate follow up to the claim.[22][23][24]
In 1595, Philip II of Spain tasked Sebastião Rodrigues Soromenho with mapping the west coast of the Americas. Soromenho set sail on Manila GalleonSan Agustin on July 5, 1595 and in early November they reached land between Point St. George and Trinidad Head, north of the Bay Area, in the Lost Coast. The expedition followed the coast southward and on November 7 the San Agustin anchored in Drakes Bay, and claimed the region as Puerto y Bahía de San Francisco.[25][26][27] In late November, a storm sank the San Agustin and killed between 7 and 12 people. On December 8, 80 remaining crew members set sail on the San Buenaventura, a launch which was partially constructed en route from the Philippines. Seeking the fastest route south, the expedition sailed past the Golden Gate, arriving at Puerto de Chacala, Mexico on January 17, 1596.[28]
The Bay Area estuaries remained unknown to Europeans until members of the Portolá expedition, while trekking along the California coast, encountered it in 1769 when the Golden Gate blocked their continued journey north.[29] Several missions were founded in the Bay Area during this period. In 1806, a Spanish expedition led by Gabriel Moraga began at the Presidio, traveled south of the bay, and then east to explore the San Joaquin Valley.[30]
In 1848, James W. Marshall's discovery of gold in the American River sparked the California Gold Rush, and within half a year 4,000 men were panning for gold along the river and finding $50,000 per day.[33] The promise of fabulous riches quickly led to a stampede of wealth-seekers descending on Sutter's Mill. The Bay Area's population quickly emptied out as laborers, clerks, waiters, and servants joined the rush to find gold, and California's first newspaper, The Californian, was forced to announce a temporary freeze in new issues due to labor shortages.[33] By the end of 1849, news had spread across the world and newcomers flooded into the Bay Area at a rate of one thousand per week on their way to California's interior,[33] including the first large influx of Chinese immigrants to the U.S.[34] The rush was so great that vessels were abandoned by the hundreds in San Francisco's ports as crews rushed to the goldfields.[35] The unprecedented influx of new arrivals spread the nascent government authorities thin, and the military was unable to prevent desertions. As a result, numerous vigilante groups formed to provide order, but many tasked themselves with forcibly moving or killing local Native Americans, and by the end of the Gold Rush, two thirds of the indigenous population had been killed.[36]
During this same time, a constitutional convention was called to determine California's application for statehood into the United States. After statehood was granted, the capital city moved between three cities in the Bay Area: San Jose (1849–1851), Vallejo (1851–1852), and Benicia (1852–1853) before permanently settling in Sacramento in 1854.[37] As the Gold Rush subsided, wealth generated from the endeavor led to the establishment of Wells Fargo Bank and the Bank of California, and immigrant laborers attracted by the promise of wealth transformed the demographic makeup of the region. Construction of the First transcontinental railroad from the Oakland Long Wharf attracted so many laborers from China that by 1870, eight percent of San Francisco's population was of Asian origin.[38] The completion of the railroad connected the Bay Area with the rest of the United States, established a truly national marketplace for the trade of goods, and accelerated the urbanization of the region.[39]
In the early morning of April 18, 1906, a large earthquake with an epicenter near the city of San Francisco hit the region.[40] Immediate casualty estimates by the U.S. Army's relief operations were 498 deaths in San Francisco, 64 deaths in Santa Rosa, and 102 in or near San Jose, for a total of about 700. More recent studies estimate the total death count to be over 3,000, with over 28,000 buildings destroyed.[41] Rebuilding efforts began immediately. Amadeo Peter Giannini, owner of the Bank of Italy (now known as the Bank of America), had managed to retrieve the money from his bank's vaults before fires broke out through the city and was the only bank with liquid funds readily available and was instrumental in loaning out funds for rebuilding efforts.[42] Congress immediately approved plans for a reservoir in Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, a plan they had denied a few years earlier, which now provides drinking water for 2.4 million people in the Bay Area. By 1915, the city had been sufficiently rebuilt and advertised itself to the world during the Panama Pacific Exposition that year, although the effects of the quake hastened the loss of the region's dominant status in California to the Los Angeles metropolitan area.[42]
During the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent economic depression, not a single San Francisco-based bank failed,[43] while the region attempted to spur job growth by simultaneously undertaking two large infrastructure projects: construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, which would connect San Francisco with Marin County,[44] and the Bay Bridge, which would connect San Francisco with Oakland and the East Bay.[45] After the United States joined World War II in 1941, the Bay Area became a major domestic military and naval hub, with large shipyards constructed in Sausalito and across the East Bay to build ships for the war effort.[46] The Army's San Francisco Port of Embarkation was the primary origin for Army forces shipping out to the Pacific Theater of Operations.[47][48] That command consisted of fourteen installations including Fort Mason, the Oakland Army Base, Camp Stoneman and Fort McDowell in San Francisco Bay and the sub port of Los Angeles.[49]
After World War II, the United Nations was chartered in San Francisco, and in September 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco to re-establish peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers was signed in San Francisco, entering into force a year later.[50] In the years immediately following the war, the Bay Area saw a huge wave of immigration as populations increased across the region. Between 1950 and 1960, San Francisco welcomed over 100,000 new residents, inland suburbs in the East Bay saw their populations double, Daly City's population quadrupled, and Santa Clara's population quintupled.[46]
In 1989, in the middle of a World Series game between two Bay Area baseball teams, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck and caused widespread infrastructural damage, including the failure of the Bay Bridge, a major link between San Francisco and Oakland.[55] Even so, the Bay Area's technology industry continued to expand and growth in Silicon Valley accelerated: the United States census confirmed that year that San Jose had overtaken San Francisco in terms of population.[56] The commercialization of the Internet in the middle of the decade rapidly created a speculative bubble in the high-tech economy known as the dot-com bubble. This bubble began collapsing in the early 2000s and the industry continued contracting for the next few years, nearly wiping out the market. Companies like Amazon.com and Google managed to weather the crash however, and following the industry's return to normalcy, their market value increased significantly.[57]
Even as the growth of the technology sector transformed the region's economy, progressive politics continued to guide the region's political environment. By the turn of the millennium, non-Hispanic whites, the largest ethnic group in the United States, were only half of the population in the Bay Area as immigration among minority groups accelerated.[58] During this time, the Bay Area was the center of the LGBT rights movement: in 2004, San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a first in the United States,[59] and four years later a majority of voters in the Bay Area rejected California Proposition 8, which sought to constitutionally restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples but ultimately passed statewide.[60]
The Bay Area was also the center of contentious protests concerning racial and economic inequality. In 2009, an African-American man named Oscar Grant was fatally shot by Bay Area Rapid Transit police officers, precipitating widespread protests across the region and even riots in Oakland.[61] His name was symbolically tied to the Occupy Oakland protests two years later that sought to fight against social and economic inequality.[62] By August 2023, San Francisco was in such severe decline that Mayor Matt Mahan of San Jose joked that one day the region might be renamed the "San Jose Bay Area", after its largest and most prosperous city.[63]
Geography
Boundaries
A map of the Bay Area and its sub-regions, divided by counties:
The borders of the San Francisco Bay Area are not officially delineated, and the unique development patterns influenced by the region's topography, as well as unusual commute patterns caused by the presence of three central cities and employment centers located in various suburban locales, has led to considerable disagreement between local and federal definitions of the area.[64] Because of this, professor of geography at the University of California, Berkeley Richard Walker claimed that "no other U.S. city-region is as definitionally challenged [as the Bay Area]."[64]
The Association of Bay Area Health Officers (ABAHO), an organization that has fought local outbreaks of HIV/AIDS in 1980s and with COVID-19 pandemic and Deltacron hybrid variant (2020–22), consists of the public health officers of 9 Bay Area counties, in addition to the Central Coast counties of Santa Cruz, San Benito, and Monterey and the city of Berkeley.
Counties in the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area[73]
The "East Bay" is the densest region of the Bay Area outside of San Francisco and includes cities and towns in Alameda and Contra Costa counties centered around Oakland. As one of the larger subregions, the East Bay includes a variety of enclaves, including the suburban Tri-Valley area and the highly urban western part of the subregion that runs alongside the bay, including Oakland.[74]
The "North Bay" includes Marin, Sonoma, Napa, and Solano counties, and is the largest and least populated subregion. The western counties of Marin and Sonoma are encased by the Pacific Ocean on the west and the bay on the east and are characterized by their mountainous and woody terrain. Sonoma and Napa counties are known internationally for their grape vineyards and wineries, and Solano County to the east, centered around Vallejo, is the fastest growing region in the Bay Area.[75]
Regions of the Bay Area
East Bay
South Bay
North Bay
San Francisco and the Peninsula
The "Peninsula" subregion includes the cities and towns on the San Francisco Peninsula, excluding the titular city of San Francisco. Its eastern half, which runs alongside the Bay, is highly populated, while its less populated western coast traces the coastline of the Pacific Ocean and is known for its open space and hiking trails. Roughly coinciding with the borders of San Mateo County, it also includes the northwestern Santa Clara County cities of Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Los Altos.[76]
Although geographically located on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, the city of San Francisco is not considered part of the "Peninsula" subregion, but as a separate entity.[77][78]
The term "South Bay" has different meanings to different groups: Writing in 1959 for the Army Corps of Engineers, the United States Department of Commerce defined the South Bay as comprising five counties, corresponding to their two-way division of the bay into north and south regions.[79] In 1989, the federal Environmental Protection Agency defined the South Bay as the northern part of Santa Clara County and the southeastern part of San Mateo County.[80] This latter definition corresponds to common usage.[81]
The Bay Area is located in the warm-summer Mediterranean climate zone (KöppenCsb) that is a characteristic of California's coast, featuring mild to cool winters with occasional rainfall, and warm to hot, dry summers.[82] It is largely influenced by the cold California Current, which penetrates the natural mountainous barrier along the coast by traveling through various gaps.[83] In terms of precipitation, this means that the Bay Area has pronounced seasons. The winter season, which roughly runs between November and March, is the source of about 82% of annual precipitation in the area. In the South Bay and further inland, while the winter season is cool and mild, the summer season is characterized by warm sunny days,[83] while in San Francisco and areas closer to the Golden Gate strait, the summer season is periodically affected by fog.[84]
Due to the Bay Area's diverse topographic relief (itself the result of the clashing tectonic plates), the region is home to numerous microclimates that lead to pronounced differences in climate and temperature over short distances.[82][85] Within the city of San Francisco, natural and artificial topographical features direct the movement of wind and fog, resulting in startlingly varied climates between city blocks. Along the Golden Gate Strait, oceanic wind and fog from the Pacific Ocean are able to penetrate the mountain barriers inland into the Bay Area.[85]
During the summer, rising hot air in California's interior valleys creates a low pressure area that draws winds from the North Pacific High through the Golden Gate, which creates the city's characteristic cool winds and fog.[84] The microclimate phenomenon is most pronounced during this time, when fog penetration is at its maximum in areas near the Golden Gate strait,[85] while the South Bay and areas further inland are sunny and dry.[83]
Along the San Francisco peninsula, gaps in the Santa Cruz Mountains, one south of San Bruno Mountain and another in Crystal Springs, allow oceanic weather into the interior, causing a cooling effect for cities along the Peninsula and even as far south as San Jose. This weather pattern is also the source for delays at San Francisco International Airport. In Marin county north of the Golden Gate strait, two gaps north of Muir Woods bring cold air across the Marin Headlands, with the cooling effect reaching as far north as Santa Rosa.[85] Further inland, the East Bay receives oceanic weather that travels through the Golden Gate strait, and further diffuses that air through the Berkeley Hills, Niles Canyon and the Hayward Pass into the Livermore Valley and Altamont Pass. Here, the resulting breeze is so strong that it is home to one of the world's largest array of wind turbines. Further north, the Carquinez Strait funnels the ocean weather into the San Joaquin River Delta, causing a cooling effect in Stockton and Sacramento, so that these cities are also cooler than their Central Valley counterparts in the south.[85]
Average daily high and low temperatures in °F (°C) for selected locations in the Bay Area, colored and sortable by average monthly temperature
There is also a significant diversity of salmonids present in the bay. Steelhead populations in California have dramatically declined due to human and natural causes; in the Bay Area, all naturally spawned anadromous steelhead populations below natural and manmade impassable barriers in California streams from the Russian River to Aptos Creek, and the drainages of San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bays are listed as threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act.[96] The Central California Coast coho salmon population is the most endangered of the many troubled salmon populations on the west coast of the United States, including populations residing in tributaries to the San Francisco Bay.[97] California Coast Chinook salmon were historically native to the Guadalupe River in San Francisco Bay, and Chinook salmon runs persist today in the Guadalupe River, Coyote Creek, Napa River, and Walnut Creek.[98] Industrial, mining, and other uses of mercury have resulted in a widespread distribution of that poisonous metal in the bay, with uptake in the bay's phytoplankton and contamination of its sportfish.[99]
Aquatic mammals are also present in the bay. Before 1825, Spanish, French, English, Russians and Americans were drawn to the Bay Area to harvest prodigious quantities of beaver, river otter, marten, fisher, mink, fox, weasel, harbor and fur seals and sea otter. This early fur trade, known as the California Fur Rush, was more than any other single factor, responsible for opening up the West and the San Francisco Bay Area, in particular, to world trade.[100] By 1817 sea otter in the area were practically eliminated.[101] Since then, the California golden beaver re-established a presence in Alhambra Creek, followed by the Napa River and Sonoma Creek in the north, and the Guadalupe River and Coyote Creek in the south.[102] The North American river otter which was first reported in Redwood Creek at Muir Beach in 1996,[103] has since been spotted in the North Bay's Corte Madera Creek, the South Bay's Coyote Creek,[104] as well as in 2010 in San Francisco Bay itself at the Richmond Marina. Other mammals include the internationally famous sea lions who began inhabiting San Francisco's Pier 39 after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake[105] and the locally famous Humphrey the Whale, a humpback whale who entered San Francisco Bay twice on errant migrations in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[106]Bottlenose dolphins and harbor porpoises have recently returned to the bay, having been absent for many decades. Historically, this was the northern extent of their warm-water species range.[107]
In addition to the many species of marine birds that can be seen in the Bay Area, many other species of birds make the Bay Area their home, making the region a popular destination for birdwatching.[108] Many birds are listed as endangered species despite once being common in the region.
Bald eagles were once common in the Bay Area, but habitat destruction and thinning of eggs from DDT poisoning reduced the California state population to 35 nesting pairs. Bald eagles disappeared from the Bay Area in 1915, and only began returning in recent years.[111] In the 1980s an effort to re-introduce the species to the area began with the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group and the San Francisco Zoo importing birds and eggs from Vancouver Island and northeastern California,[112] and there are now nineteen nesting couples in eight of the Bay Area's nine counties.[111] Other once absent species that have returned to the Bay Area include Swainson's hawk, white tailed kite, and the osprey.[111]
In 1927, zoologistJoseph Grinnell wrote that osprey were only rare visitors to the San Francisco Bay Area, although he noted records of one or two used nests in the broken tops of redwood trees along the Russian River.[113] In 1989, the southern breeding range of the osprey in the Bay Area was Kent Lake, although osprey were noted to be extending their range further south in the Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada.[114] In 2014, a Bay Area-wide survey found osprey had extended their breeding range southward with nesting sites as far south as Hunters Point in San Francisco on the west side and Hayward on the east side, while further studies have found nesting sites as far south as the Los Gatos Creek watershed, indicating that the nesting range now includes the entire length of San Francisco Bay.[115] Most nests were built on man-made structures close to areas of human disturbance, likely due to lack of mature trees near the Bay.[116] The wild turkey population was introduced in the 1960s by state game officials, and by 2015 have become a common sight in East Bay communities.[117]
Geology and landforms
Satellite photo of the Bay Area taken in March 2019. The gray areas are signs of urbanization and represent the most populated areas.
The Bay Area is well known for the complexity of its landforms that are the result of the forces of plate tectonics acting over of millions of years, since the region is located in the middle of a meeting point between two plates.[118] Nine out of eleven distinct assemblages have been identified in a single county, Alameda.[119] Diverse assemblages adjoin in complex arrangements due to offsets along the many faults (both active and stable) in the area. As a consequence, many types of rock and soil are found in the region. The oldest rocks are metamorphic rocks that are associated with granite in the Salinian Block west of the San Andreas fault. These were formed from sedimentary rocks of sandstone, limestone, and shale in uplifted seabeds.[120] Volcanic deposits also exist in the Bay Area, left behind by the movement of the San Andreas fault, whose movement sliced a subduction plate and allowed magma to briefly flow to the surface.[121]
The region has considerable vertical relief in its landscapes that are not in the alluvial plains leading to the bay or in inland valleys. The topography, and geologic history, of the Bay Area can largely be attributed to the compressive forces between the Pacific Plate and the North American plate.[122]
A map displaying each of the seven major fault lines in the Bay Area and the probability of an M6.7 or higher earthquake occurring between 2003 and 2032
Prior to the introduction of European agricultural methods, the shores of San Francisco Bay consisted mostly of tidal marshes.[130] Today, the bay has been significantly altered heavily re-engineered to accommodate the needs of water delivery, shipping, agriculture, and urban development, with side effects including the loss of wetlands and the introduction of contaminants and invasive species.[131] Approximately 85% of those marshes have been lost or destroyed, but about 50 marshes and marsh fragments remain.[130] Huge tracts of the marshes were originally destroyed by farmers for agricultural purposes, then repurposed to serve as salt evaporation ponds to produce salt for food and other purposes.[132] Today, regulations limit the destruction of tidal marshes, and large portions are currently being rehabilitated to their natural state.[130]
Non-Hispanic whites form majorities of the population in Marin, Napa, and Sonoma counties.[58] Whites also make up the majority in the eastern regions of the East Bay centered around the Lamorinda and Tri-Valley areas.[58] San Francisco's North Beach district is considered the Little Italy of the city, and was once home to a significant Italian-American community. San Francisco, Marin County[139] and the Lamorinda area[140] all have substantial Jewish communities. There is a Little Russia community in northwestern San Francisco, and there are Russian communities throughout the Bay Area, especially in San Mateo County and Santa Clara County; there are also Eastern European American groups such as Ukrainians and Poles in dozens of thousands to hundreds of thousands especially in San Francisco and in the Peninsula, including recent immigrants and American-born citizens of Eastern European descent. Churches in Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish languages are found in dozens in number in San Francisco, the South Bay, the East Bay, and on the Peninsula.
Like much of the U.S., the Bay Area has a large Irish population and this is reflected in the Richmond District area of San Francisco. San Jose has a Little Portugal.
The Latino population is spread throughout the Bay Area, but among the nine counties, the greatest number live in Santa Clara County, while Contra Costa County has seen the highest growth rate.[141] The largest Hispanic or Latino groups were those of Mexican (17.9%), Salvadoran (1.3%), Guatemalan (0.6%), Puerto Rican (0.6%) and Nicaraguan (0.5%) ancestry. Mexican Americans make up the largest share of Hispanic residents in Napa county,[142] while Central Americans make up the largest share in San Francisco, many of whom live in the Mission District which is home to many residents of Salvadoran and Guatemalan descent.[143]
Maps of racial distribution according to 2010 U.S. Census. Each dot is 25 people: White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, or Other (yellow)
Pacific Islanders such as Samoans and Tongans have the largest presence in East Palo Alto, where they constitute over 7% of the population.[152] San Bruno also has a large Tongan population and so does San Mateo and South San Francisco, which also have smaller communities of Samoans. The Visitacion Valley has a designated Pacific Islander district and Samoan and Tongans have a presence in Southeast San Francisco and Daly City's Bayshore neighborhood.
The African-American population of San Francisco was formerly substantial, had a thriving jazz scene and was known as "Harlem of the West." While black residents formed one-seventh of the city's population in 1970, today they have mostly moved to parts of the East Bay and North Bay, including Antioch,[153]Fairfield and out of the Bay Area entirely.[154] The South Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa was once home to a primarily black community until the 1980s, when many Latino immigrants settled in the area.[155] Other cities with large numbers of African Americans include Vallejo (28%),[156]Richmond (26%),[157] East Palo Alto (17%)[152] and the CDP of Marin City (38%).[158] Suisun City and Vacaville both have African American populations that have accelerated in population since the 2000s. There are also Eritrean, Ethiopian and Nigerian communities.
There is also a significant Middle Eastern and Balkan population. There are 4,000 Armenians in San Francisco, and some in the San Jose area. The San Jose area, especially the Campbell area and some areas off of San Jose's Stevens Creek Blvd contain a Bosnian community. There are several thousand Turks in San Francisco, and a Palestinian population is concenrated in Daly City and San Francisco.
Since the economy of the Bay Area heavily relies on innovation and high-tech skills, a relatively educated population exists in the region. Roughly 87.4% of Bay Area residents have attained a high school degree or higher,[159] while 46% of adults in the Bay Area have earned a post-secondary degree or higher.[160]
The Bay Area is the wealthiest region per capita in the United States, due, primarily, to the economic power engines of San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland. The Bay Area city of Pleasanton has the second-highest household income in the country after New Canaan, Connecticut. However, discretionary income is very comparable with the rest of the country, primarily because the higher cost of living offsets the increased income.[161]
There are 285,000 millionaires living in the region, the third-highest amongst the world's metropolitan areas after New York City and Tokyo as of 2022.[162]
The amount of wealth held by Bay Area residents is about $2.6 trillion, the second-highest in the world after New York City, and just ahead of Tokyo as of 2021.[163]
By 2014, the Bay Area's wealth gap was considerable: the top ten percent of income-earners took home over eleven times as much as the bottom ten percent,[164] and a Brookings Institution study found the San Francisco metro area, which excludes four Bay Area counties, to be the third most unequal urban area in the country.[165] Among the wealthy, forty-seven Bay Area residents made Forbes magazine's 400 richest Americans list, published in 2007.
Crime
Statistics regarding crime rates in the Bay Area generally fall into two categories: violent crime and property crime. Historically, violent crime has been concentrated in a few cities in the East Bay, namely Oakland, Richmond, and Antioch, but also East Palo Alto in the Peninsula, Vallejo in the North Bay, and San Francisco.[166] Nationally, Oakland's murder rate ranked 18th among cities with over 100,000 residents, and third for violent crimes per capita.[167] According to a 2015 Federal Bureau of Investigation report, Oakland was also the source of the most violent crime in the Bay Area, with 16.9 reported incidents per thousand people. Vallejo came in second, at 8.7 incidents per thousand people, while San Pablo, Antioch, and San Francisco rounded out the top five. East Palo Alto, which used to have the Bay Area's highest murder rate, saw violent crime incidents drop 65% between 2013 and 2014, while Oakland saw violent crime incidents drop 15%.[166] Meanwhile, San Jose, which was one of the safest large cities in the United States in the early 2000s, has seen its violent crime rates trend upwards.[168] Cities with the lowest rate of violent crime include the Peninsula cities of Los Altos and Foster City, East Bay cities of San Ramon and Danville, and southern foothill cities of Saratoga and Cupertino. In 2015, 45 Bay Area cities counted zero homicides, the largest of which was Daly City.[166]
In 2015, Oakland also saw the highest rates of property crime in the Bay Area, at 59.4 incidents per thousand residents, with San Francisco following close behind at 53 incidents per thousand residents. The East Bay cities Pleasant Hill, Berkeley, and San Leandro rounded out the top five. Saratoga and Windsor saw the least rates of property crime.[166] Additionally, San Francisco saw the most reports of arson.[167]
Several street gangs operate in the Bay Area, including the Sureños and Norteños in San Francisco's Mission District.[169] African-American street gangs familiar in other cities, including the Crips, have struggled to establish footholds in the city,[170] although gangs with shotcallers in China, including Triad groups such as the Wo Hop To, have been reported active.[171] In 1977, an ongoing rivalry between two Chinese gangs led to a shooting attack at the Golden Dragon restaurant in Chinatown, which left five people dead and eleven wounded. Five members of the Joe Boys gang were arrested and convicted of the crime.[172] Oakland, which also sees organized gang violence, implemented Operation Ceasefire in 2012 in an effort to reduce the violence.[173]
The three principal cities of the Bay Area represent separate employment clusters and are dominated by different but commingled industries. San Francisco is home to the region's tourism, financial industry, and is host to numerous conventions. The East Bay, centered around Oakland, is home to heavy industry, metalworking, oil, and shipping, while San Jose is the heart of Silicon Valley where a major pole of economic activity around the technology industry resides. Furthermore, the North Bay is a major player in the country's agriculture and wine industry.[64] In all, the Bay Area is home to the second highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies, second only to the New York metropolitan area, with thirty such companies based throughout the region.[174]
In 2019, the greater fourteen-county statistical area had a GDP of $1.086 trillion, the third-highest among combined statistical areas.[176] The smaller nine-county Bay Area had a GDP of $995 billion in the same year, which nonetheless would rank it fifth among U.S. states and 17th among countries.[176]
The COVID-19 pandemic caused an exodus of businesses from the downtown cores of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, as remote work became more widespread, especially in the tech industry.[177][178] Some observers have warned that this could lead to an economic doom loop for Bay Area cities, particularly San Francisco,[179] while others have argued that these concerns are restricted to the downtown core.[180] Many retailers in Downtown San Francisco and Downtown Oakland have closed since 2020,[181] with some citing challenges with visible homelessness and crime in the area.[182] Additionally noted is the Bay Area's steadily decreasing lead in the geographically dispersing high technology field.[183][184]
In spite of the San Francisco Bay Area's industries contributing to the aforementioned economic growth, there is a significant level of poverty in the region. Rising housing prices and gentrification in the San Francisco Bay Area are often framed as symptomatic of high-income tech workers moving in to previously low-income, underserved neighborhoods.[189] Two notable policy strategies to prevent eviction due to rising rents include rent control and subsidies such as Section 8 and Shelter Plus Care.[190] Moreover, in 2002, then San Francisco Supervisor Gavin Newsom introduced the "Care Not Cash" initiative, diverting funds away from cash handouts (which he argued encouraged drug use) to housing. This proved controversial, with some suggesting his rhetoric criminalized poverty, while others supporting the prioritizing of housing as a solution.[191]
Sausalito, in the North Bay, is a popular tourist destination.
Contrary to historical patterns of low incomes within the inner city, poverty rates in the Bay Area are shifting such that they are increasing more rapidly in suburban areas than in urban areas.[192] It is not yet clear whether the suburbanization of poverty is due to the relocation of poor populations or shifting income levels in the respective regions. However, the mid-2000s housing boom encouraged city dwellers to move into the newly cheap houses in suburbs outside of the city, and these suburban housing developments were then most affected by the 2008 housing bubble burst. As such, people in poverty experience decreased access to transportation due to underdeveloped public transport infrastructure in suburban areas. Suburban poverty is most prevalent among Hispanics and Blacks, and affects native-born people more significantly than foreign-born.[192][193]
As greater proportions of their incomes are spent on rent, many impoverished populations in the San Francisco Bay Area also face food insecurity and health setbacks.[194][195]
Housing
High density urbanism in northeastern San Francisco
The Bay Area is the most expensive location to live in the United States outside of Manhattan.[196] Strong economic growth has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but coupled with severe zoning restrictions on building new housing units,[197] has resulted in an extreme housing shortage. For example, from 2012 to 2017, the San Francisco metropolitan area added 400,000 new jobs, but only 60,000 new housing units.[198] As of 2016, the entire Bay Area had 3.6 M jobs, and 2.6 M housing units, for a ratio of 1.4 jobs per housing unit,[199] significantly above the ratio for the US as a whole, which stands at 1.1 jobs per housing unit. (152M jobs, 136M housing units[200][201])
As of 2017, the average income needed in order to purchase a house in the region was $179,390, while the median price for a house was $895,000 and the average cost of a home in the Bay Area being $440,000 - more than twice the national average, while the average monthly rent is $1,240 - 50 percent more than the national average.[202][203] In 2018, a Bay Area household income of $117,000 was classified as "low income" by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.[204]
With high costs of living, many Bay Area residents allocate large amounts of their income towards housing. 20 percent of Bay Area homeowners spend more than half their income on housing, while roughly 25 percent of renters in the Bay Area spend more than half of their incomes on rent.[205] Expending an average of more than $28,000 per year on housing in addition to roughly $13,400 on transportation, Bay Area residents spend around $41,420 per year to live in the region. This combined total of housing and transportation signifies 59 percent of the Bay Area's median household income, conveying the extreme costs of living.[205]
The high rate of homelessness in the Bay Area can be attributed to the high cost of living.[206] No approximate number of homeless people living in the Bay Area can be determined due to the difficulty of tracking homeless residents.[206] However, according to San Francisco's Department of Public Health, the number of homeless people in San Francisco alone is 9,975.[207] Additionally, San Francisco was revealed to have the most unsheltered homeless people in the country.[207]
Because of the high cost of housing, many workers in the Bay Area live far from their place of employment, contributing to one of the highest percentages of extreme commuters in the United States, or commutes that take over ninety minutes in one direction. For example, about 50,000 people commute from neighboring San Joaquin County into the nine-county Bay Area daily,[208] and more extremely, some workers commute semimonthly by flying.[209]
The Bay Area is home to a large number of colleges and universities. The first institution of higher education in the Bay Area, Santa Clara University, was founded by Jesuits in 1851,[210] who also founded the University of San Francisco in 1855.[211]San Jose State University was founded in 1857 and is the oldest public college on the West Coast of the United States.[212] According to the Brookings Institution, 45% of residents of the two-county San Jose metro area have a college degree and 43% of residents in the five-county San Francisco metro area have a college degree, the second and fourth-highest ranked metro areas in the country for higher educational attainment.[213]
Many scholars have pointed out the overlap of education and the economy within the Bay Area. According to multiple reports, research universities such as Stanford University, University of California - Santa Cruz and University of California - Berkeley, are essential to the culture and economy in the area.[160] These universities also provide public programs for people to learn and enhance skills relevant to the local economies. These opportunities not only provide educational services to the community, but also generate significant amounts of revenue.[160]
Public primary and secondary education in the Bay Area is provided through school districts organized through three structures (elementary school districts, high school districts, or unified school districts) and are governed by an elected board. In addition, many Bay Area counties and the city of San Francisco operate "special service schools" that are geared towards providing education to students with handicaps or special needs.[221]
An alternative public educational setting is offered by charter schools, which may be established with a renewable charter of up to five years by third parties. The mechanism for charter schools in the Bay Area is governed by the California Charter Schools Act of 1992.[222]
The Bay Area hosts an extensive freeway and highway system that is particularly prone to traffic congestion, with one study by Inrix concluding that the Bay Area's traffic was the fourth worst in the world.[228] There are some city streets in San Francisco where gaps occur in the freeway system, partly the result of the Freeway Revolt, which prevented a freeway-only thoroughfare through San Francisco between the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, the western terminus of Interstate 80, and the southern terminus of the Golden Gate Bridge (U.S. Route 101).[229] Additional damage that occurred in the wake of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake resulted in freeway segments being removed instead of being reinforced or rebuilt, leading to the revitalization of neighborhoods such as San Francisco's Embarcadero and Hayes Valley.[230] The greater Bay Area contains the three principal north–south highways in California: Interstate 5, U.S. Route 101, and California State Route 1. U.S. 101 and State Route 1 directly serve the traditional nine-county region, while Interstate 5 bypasses to the east in San Joaquin County to provide a more direct Los Angeles–Sacramento route. Additional local highways connect the various subregions of the Bay Area together.[231]
There are over two dozen public transit agencies in the Bay Area with overlapping service areas that utilize different modes, with designated connection points between the various operators. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a heavy rail/metro system, operates in five counties and connects San Francisco and Oakland via the Transbay Tube. Other commuter rail systems link San Francisco with the Peninsula and San Jose (Caltrain), San Jose with the Tri-Valley Area and San Joaquin County (ACE), and Sonoma with Marin County (SMART).[225]
In addition, Amtrak provides frequent commuter service between San Jose and the East Bay with Sacramento, and long-distance service to other parts of the United States.[232]Muni Metro operates a hybrid streetcar/subway system within the city of San Francisco, and VTA operates a light rail system in Santa Clara County. These rail systems are supplemented by numerous bus agencies and transbay ferries such as Golden Gate Ferry and the San Francisco Bay Ferry. Most of these agencies accept the Clipper Card, a reloadable contactless smart card, as a universal electronic payment system.[225]
Government in the San Francisco Bay Area consists of multiple actors, including 101 city and nine county governments, a dozen regional agencies, and a large number of single-purpose special districts such as municipal utility districts and transit districts.[233] Incorporated cities are responsible for providing police service, zoning, issuing building permits, and maintaining public streets among other duties.[234] County governments are responsible for elections and voter registration, vital records, property assessment and records, tax collection, public health, agricultural regulations, and building inspections, among other duties.[235][236] Public education is provided by independent school districts, which may be organized as elementary districts, high school districts, unified school districts combining elementary and high school grades, or community college districts, and are managed by an elected school board.[221] A variety of special districts also exist and provide a single purpose, such as delivering public transit in the case of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District,[237] or monitoring air quality levels in the case of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.[67]
Politics in the Bay Area is widely regarded as one of the most liberal in California and in the United States.[238][239] Since the late 1960s, the Bay Area has cemented its role as the most liberal region in California politics, giving greater support for the center-leftDemocratic Party's candidates than any other region of the state, even as California trended towards the Democratic Party over time.[240] According to research by the Public Policy Institute of California, the Bay Area and the North Coast counties of Humboldt and Mendocino were the most consistently and strongly liberal areas in California.[240]
The Bay Area's association with progressive politics has led to the term "San Francisco values" being used by conservative commentators in a pejorative sense to describe the secular progressive culture in the area.[246]
The Bay Area was a hub of the Abstract Expressionism movement of painting. It is associated with the works of Clyfford Still, who began teaching at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) in 1946, leaving a lasting influence on the artistic styles of Bay Area painters up to the present day.[247] A few years later, Abstract Expressionist painter David Park painted Kids on Bikes in 1950, which retained many aspects of abstract expressionism but with original distinguishing features that would later lead to the Bay Area Figurative Movement.[248]
While both the Figurative Movement and the Abstract Expressionism movement arose from art schools, Funk art would later rise out of the region's underground and was characterized by informal sharing of technique among groups of friends and art showcases in "cooperative" galleries instead of formal museums. Later, the Bay Area art movement would be heavily influenced by the counterculture movement in the 1960s, and art produced during this time reflected the political environment.[249]
The Bay Area is presently home to a thriving computer animation industry[251] led by Pixar Animation Studios and Industrial Light & Magic. Pixar, based in Emeryville, produced the first fully computer animated feature film, Toy Story, with software it designed in-house and whose computer animation films have since garnered 26 Academy Awards and critical acclaim.[252] Industrial Light & Magic, which is based in the Presidio in San Francisco, was created in 1975 to help create visual effects for the Star Wars series has since been involved with creating visual effects for over three hundred Hollywood films.[253]
Throughout its recent history, the Bay Area has been home to several musical movements that left lasting influences on the genres they affected. San Francisco, in particular, was the center of the counterculture movement in the 1960s, which directly led to the rise of several notable musical acts: The Grateful Dead, which formed in 1965, and Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin; all three would be closely associated with the 1967 Summer of Love.[254]Jimi Hendrix also had strong connections to the movement and the Bay Area, as he lived in Berkeley for a brief time as a child and played in many local venues in that decade.[255][254] By the 1970s, San Francisco had developed a vibrant jazz scene, earning the moniker, "Harlem of the West".[153] The Vietnam War was being fought at the time, and Bay Area bands such as Creedence Clearwater Revival of El Cerrito became known for their political and socially-conscious lyrics against the conflict.[256]Carlos Santana rose to fame in the early 1970s with his Santana band and would later be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[257] Two former members of Santana, Neal Schon and Gregg Rolie would later lead the formation of the band Journey.[258]
During the 1980s and early 1990s, the Bay Area became home to heavy metal and hard rock bands, including Ludicra,[259] and also to one of the largest and most influential thrash metal scenes in the world, with contributions from Exodus, Testament, Death Angel, Forbidden, Vio-lence, Lȧȧz Rockit, Possessed and Blind Illusion, in addition to three of the "Big Four" (Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth); although Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth were all technically from Los Angeles, those bands are often credited for popularizing and contributing to the Bay Area thrash metal scene during the 1980s by frequently playing shows there, especially early in their careers and/or before they were signed to a record label.[260][261]
Several famous actors have arisen from the Bay Area's theatre community, including Daveed Diggs from Hamilton and Darren Criss from Hedwig, A Very Potter Musical, and Glee.[270] Locally, well-regarded actors include James Carpenter, a stage actor who has performed at the ACT, Berkeley Repertory, and San Jose Repertory Theatre among others, Rod Gnapp of the Magic Theatre Company, Sean San Jose, one of the founders of the Campo Santo theater, and Campo Santo member Margo Hall.[271]
The Bay Area also has an active youth theater scene. ACT and the Berkeley Repertory both run classes and camps for young actors, as do the Peninsula Youth Theater and Willow Glen Children's Theatre in the Peninsula and South Bay, Bay Area Children's Theater and Danville Children's Musical Theater in the East Bay, and Marin Shakespeare in the North Bay, among many others.[272][273]
The San Francisco Bay Area is the tenth-largest television market[274] and the fourth-largest radio market[275] in the U.S. The Bay Area's oldest radio station, KCBS (AM), began as an experimental station in San Jose in 1909, before the beginning of commercial broadcasting.[276]KALW was the Bay Area's first FM radio station, and first radio station to begin commercial broadcasting west of the Mississippi River when it signed on the air in 1941.[277]KPIX, which began broadcasting in 1948, was the first television station to air in the Bay Area and Northern California.[278]
All major U.S. television networks have affiliates serving the region, including KTVU 2 (FOX), KRON-TV 4 (The CW/MyNetwork), KPIX 5 (CBS), KGO-TV 7 (ABC), KQED-TV 9 (PBS), KNTV 11 (NBC), KICU-TV 36 (Independent), KPYX 44 (Independent), KQEH 54 (PBS), and KKPX 65 (Ion). Bloomberg West, a show that focuses on topics pertaining to technology and business, was launched in 2011 from a studio in and continues to broadcast from San Francisco.[279]
Public broadcasting outlets include both a television station and a radio station, both broadcasting under the call letters KQED from a facility near the Potrero Hill neighborhood. KQED-FM is the most-listened-to National Public Radio affiliate in the country.[280] Another local broadcaster, KPOO, is an independent, African-American owned and operated noncommercial radio station established in 1971.[281]
The largest newspapers in the Bay Area are the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News, the highest and second-highest most widely circulated newspaper in Northern California.[282]The Chronicle is most famous for a former columnist, the late Herb Caen, whose daily musings attracted critical acclaim and represented the "voice of San Francisco". The San Francisco Examiner, once the cornerstone of William Randolph Hearst's media empire and the home of Ambrose Bierce, declined in circulation over the years and now takes the form of a free daily tabloid, under new ownership.[283][284] Most of the Bay Area's local regions and municipalities also have their own newspapers, such as the East Bay Times and San Mateo Daily Journal. The national newsmagazine Mother Jones is also based in San Francisco.[285] Non-English-language newspapers include several Chinese-language papers such as Sing Tao Daily, the largest in the Bay Area by circulation,[286] and El Mundo, a free Spanish-language weekly distributed by the Mercury News.[287]
The Bay Area has an ideal climate for outdoor recreation, such that activities like hiking, cycling and jogging are popular among locals.[311][312] There are more than 200 mi (320 km) of bicycle paths, lanes and bike routes just within San Francisco,[313] and the Embarcadero and Marina Green are favored sites for skateboarding. Extensive public tennis facilities are available in Golden Gate Park and Dolores Park, as well as at smaller neighborhood courts throughout the city. Boating, sailing, windsurfing and kitesurfing are among the popular activities on San Francisco Bay, and the city maintains a yacht harbor in the Marina District. The St. Francis Yacht Club and Golden Gate Yacht Club are located in the Marina Harbor,[314][315] while the South Beach Yacht Club is located next to Oracle Park.[316] The Bay Area was host to the 2013 America's Cup. Other Bay Area yacht clubs include the Alameda Yacht Club,[317] Berkeley Yacht Club,[318] Corinthian Yacht Club[319] in Tiburon, Oakland Yacht Club,[320] Presidio Yacht Club,[321] Sausalito Yacht Club and Sequoia Yacht Club[322] in Redwood City.
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