More about The City

Chapter 9

What kind of urban city is SF and what makes it urban?

San Francisco is the 14th most populated city in the US, and the 4th in CA. Its situation and site one of the most densely populated in the US, with a little over 750,000 people at the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula (37°46´0´´´N 122°26´0´´W). The City is 54 feet above sea level at the edge of the Pacific Ocean to its west, and the peninsula creating a bay to the east, known as the San Francisco Bay. The San Francisco Bay Area which is made up the cities that surround the San Francisco Bay contain at least 7 million people.

There are several smaller islands that are part of the city and sit in the Bay. Most famous of them all is Alcatraz. There are also a set of islands located 27 miles to the west of the City in the Pacific Ocean called the Farallon Islands, which are uninhabited.

San Francisco is a metropolitan area. According to our text, the definition of metropolitan area is “a large-scale functional entity, perhaps containing several urbanized areas, discontinuously built-up but nonetheless operating as an integrated economic whole.” San Francisco is a part of the conurbation known as the San Francisco Bay Area, which is a part of the Cities of Oakland and San Jose, and including the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. According to the text, San Francisco ranks 5th in the largest Metropolitan area in the U.S.

Although San Francisco was not fully built up before 1850, it followed a city planning structure like that of New York or Boston, a very pre-1850, East Coast city structure; it is very much a walking city. Yerba Buena was the City’s first name. The first homestead was put up in 1835 and it was built up around the Mission Dolores settlement by the Spaniards in the 1770’s. Yerba Buena started to attract Americans. It was claimed for the U.S. during the Mexican-American War in 1846 and renamed San Francisco. By then, the California Gold Rush brought in many settlers. The City grew in one year from 1,000 to 25,000 people. Because of the gold coming in, there arose a need for banks. San Francisco in its early years was a banking city. And where there is money, there is strong politics, and that too is very evident by their stunning City Hall and, even today, thriving Civic Center.

Although this chapter does bring up ethnic and racial distribution, segregation, and gentrification, I believe that these topics can be better explored in chapters 10 & 13 when talking about neighborhoods.