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.