CHAPTER NINE: The Changing South

A brief information about the Reconstruction that lead to a Changing South: "During Reconstruction, industrial and commercial projects began to restore the economy of the South, and new programs were developed such as public school systems. These improvements, however, failed to ensure racial equality, and former slaves remained, in most cases, landless labourers, although emancipated slaves were assisted in finding work, shelter, and lost relatives through federal agencies.

Johnson's failure to work with moderate Republicans in guaranteeing basic rights and protection for the freed slaves caused a Radical triumph in the elections of 1866, ushering in a period of ‘Radical Reconstruction’, and opened the way for military reconstruction. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 began this process, dividing the Southern states (except Tennessee, which had been readmitted to the Union in 1866) into five military districts. Civilian rule and full state rights were to be restored only after the states had adopted constitutions based upon universal male suffrage and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. By 1868 all but three states were readmitted under these conditions, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia finally acquiescing in 1870. The Fifteenth Amendment ratified in March 1870, aimed to guarantee black suffrage in the South.
Despite the legislation, many Southern states still practised discrimination and segregation. Jim Crow Laws disenfranchised blacks in every Southern state, making them powerless to prevent these segregation laws and codes."

(http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Reconstruction+and+The+Changing+South)
The changing south derives from creating a new southern part of United States, with the effort of creating a beginning from the horrible past it adheres. The Changing South has no connection to San Francisco in the West.

CHAPTER EIGHT: Appalachia and The Ozarks

The Appalachian Uplands stretches from New York to Alabama, and the area of the Ozark-Ouachita mountains are separated by approximately 475 kilometers of land. They are actually two parts of a single physiographic province that has topographic similarity along with topography and human settlement issues. Therefore, there is no relation to the West.

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Bypassed East

Sorry to say that according to the textbook the bypassed east only comprised of northern New England and the Adirondacks of New York. The Bypassed East is near, even astride, major routeways, but not on them. Ocean transportation can easily bypass the region, putting it in a transportation shadow that has produced slow regional economic growth and even stagnation.
Southern New England is a part of metropolitan America. Northern New England, for the most part, is not. It is much more like Canada's Atlantic Provinces. There is no relevence to San Francisco.

CHAPTER FIVE: The North American Manufacturing Core.

As Professor Richard Walker of the department of Geography at University of California, Berkeley explains: “The San Francisco Bay Area demonstrates how industrial dispersal had created the sprawling form of the American metropolis. Neither change in transport modes nor residential suburbanization is principally responsible for shaping the outward spiral of urbanization. Manufacturing began its outward march from the outset of the city's industrialization, establishing peripheral nodes of employment and working class residence within San Francisco, then beyond the city limits in South San Francisco and especially the East Bay. The main cause of decentralization has been industrial shifts; the outbreak of new activities in new places, normally in the form of industrial districts at various spatial scales. A second cause has been the orchestration of development by business leaders through property ownership and political maneuvering guided by a general vision of metropolitan expansion, whether in co-operation or competition with one another.” Manufacturing has played a huge role to the development of the city, creating jobs and providing resources.

CHAPTER FOUR: Megalopolis

The term Megalopolis is derived from Greek and means "very large city." Sorry to say, Megalopolis is normally referred over to the East coast of the United States stretching from Boston to Washington D.C.

French Geographer Jean Gottman studied the northeastern United States during the 1950s and published a book that described the region as a vast metropolitan area also known as Megalopolis. Gottmann , along with his findings, he also introduced two developing Megalopoli in the United States - from Chicago and the Great Lakes to Pittsburgh and the Ohio River (ChiPitts) and the California coast from the San Francisco Bay area to San Diego.

The city of San Francisco along with Oakland, San Jose, Napa Valley, Monterrey and other places were commonly referred to as a Megalopolis in its own but not even closely compared to the megalopolis in the Eastern side of United States

CHAPTER THREE: Foundations of Human Activity.

The earliest archaeological evidence of inhabitation of the territory in the city of San Francisco dates back to 3000 BC. Prior to the coming of the Spanish and Portuguese explorers, over 10,000 indigenous people, later to be called the Oholone (a Miwok Indian word meaning "western people"), lived in the coastal area between Point Sur and the San Francisco Bay. People of the Ohlone language group occupied Northern California from at least back in the 6th century. Since the early 16th century, although their territory had been claimed by Spain, they had relatively little contact with Europeans until 1769. 1769 was when, as part of an effort to colonize Alta California, an exploration party led by Don Gaspar de Portola learned the existence of San Francisco Bay. Seven years later, in 1776, an expedition led by Juan Bautista de Anza selected the site for the Presidio of San Francisco. Later the same year, the Franciscan missionary founded the Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores). The Yelamu tribal group of the Ohlone, who had several villages in the area, was brought to live and work at the mission and be converted into the Catholic faith.

Upon independence from Spain, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system gradually ended. In 1835, an Englishman erected the first independent homestead. The Englishman together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro named the state Yerba Buena. Yerba Buena was later renamed San Francisco during the Mexican-American War.

San Francisco’s population increased dramatically when the Gold Rush era came about between 1848 and1855. People all over the world came to California to seek for gold. Today, population is still soaring high with constant in and out immigrants. Tourist attractions helped increased the reputation of the city. San Francisco’s culture could be described as hippy and urban.

CHAPTER TWO: The Physical Enviornment.

San Francisco's climate is characteristic of California’s Mediterranean climate with mild, wet winters and dry summers. Since it is surrounded on three sides by water, San Francisco's climate is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean which tends to moderate temperature swings and produce a remarkably mild climate with little seasonal temperature variation. The combination of cold ocean water and the high heat of the California mainland create the city's characteristic fog that can cover the western half of the city all day during the spring and early summer. Due to its sharp topography and maritime influences, San Francisco exhibits a multitude of distinct microclimates. The high hills in the geographic center of the city are responsible for a 20 percent variance in annual rainfall between different parts of the city.

San Francisco is famous for its hills. There are more than 50 hills within the city limits. Some neighborhoods are even named after the hill in which they reside on. Near the geographic center of the city, southwest of the downtown area, are a series of less densely populated hills. Twin Peaks is a pair of hills resting on one of the city's highest points which forms a popular overlook spot. San Francisco's tallest hill is Mount Davidson standing at about 925 feet high.

Minor earthquakes occur on a regular basis in San Francisco. The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. The city has repeatedly upgraded its building codes, requiring retrofits for older buildings and higher engineering standards for new construction. However, there are still thousands of smaller buildings that remain vulnerable to quake damage. Seismologists have observed that some districts tend to repeatedly experience stronger seismic shaking than others. This is because the ground under these districts is relatively soft. Soft soils amplify ground shaking. An example of this effect was observed in San Francisco, where many of the same neighborhoods were heavily damaged in both the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes.

CHAPTER ONE: Regions and Themes.

Geographers use regions as a neat system of categorization, a way of organizing a complex set of facts about places into a more compact, meaningful set of information. As with any categorization, the regions are satisfactory if they identify understandable patterns in the facts and if they help clarify the complex patterns.

The City and County of San Francisco is known locally as "The City" because of its culture and geography. San Francisco is surrounded by water on the north, the east, and the west sides, it is the cultural and urban center of the region. San Francisco is the key population center of the California region it squeezes approximately 800,000 people in only 47 square miles, which makes it the second most densely populated city in the United States after New York City. The area of land is limited which makes continued population growth more challenging for the city. Due to the limited availability of land it consequently increased real estate prices.
The Bay Area has many different public transportation systems such as: airports bus transits, rapid transit, regional rail systems, public and private ferry services. There are three international airports in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. BART, CalTrain and Amtrak all provide additional transportation in and out of the Bay Area.

NORTH BAY

The region north of the Golden Gate Bridge is known as the North Bay. North Bay consists of a couple of county’s such as Marin County, Sonoma County, Napa County and Solano County. Marin County is ranked as the wealthiest in the nation. The North Bay is comparatively rural; many areas are undeveloped with open space, farmland and vineyards. The North Bay is the only section of the Bay Area that is not currently served by a commuter rail service. However, increased urbanization has lead both Sonoma and Marin counties to begin construction on a commuter rail transit system.

PENINSULA

The area between the San Francisco and the South Bay is known as the Peninsula. Peninsula consists of a series of small cities and suburban communities such as San Mateo County and Santa Clara County. This area is extremely divers, many of the cities towns had originally been centers of rural life until the post-World War II era when large numbers of middle to upper class residents moved away to small villages.

EAST BAY

The eastern side of the bay area is known as the East Bay which splits into two regions, the inner East Bay and the outer East Bay. The inner East Bay includes cities such as Oakland, Fremont, Berkeley, and Richmond. The inner East Bay is more urban and more densely populated with a more ethnically diverse population. The outer East Bay consists of the eastern portions of Alameda and Contra Costa counties. The outer East Bay is particularly urban in Livermore city as well as being part suburban in Pleasanton-Dublin. This area remains largely white demographically.

SOUTH BAY

The South Bay consists of Santa Clara Valley and Silicon Valley including a major city of San Jose. The South Bay was an early development of working and middle class families who left the coastal cities of the Eastern Bay which is south of Oakland. This area has long been developed and expanded and is often featured as a stereotype of the typical California suburban city. Today, the growth continues, primarily fueled by technology and cheap immigrant workers. The result has been a huge increase in the value of property forcing many middle class families out of the area or into nascent ghettos in older sections of the region.

The regional government in the San Francisco Bay Area defines the Bay Area as ten counties, including Santa Cruz but excluding San Benito. On the other hand, Santa Cruz and San Benito along with Monterey County are part of a different regional government organization called the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments. The city of Santa Cruz is geographically isolated from the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, and is usually considered a part of the Monterey Bay area since the city lies on the north end of the Monterey Bay. The city is also sometimes regarded as the northernmost point of the California Central Coast which extends along the state's coastline to Santa Barbara.