There's a lot to like about many areas of California. Which ones may depend on your weather, cultural, etc. preferences. But Silicon Valley proper I find not particularly appealing; housing costs are only part of the reason. (SF itself has well-documented pluses and minuses.) I don't live or work in CA/SV. But if I were in SV but no longer needed to commute, I might well stay in CA but I'd probably move somewhere outside of SV commuting distance.
I did this and completely agree. I lived in the bay area since high school, more than two decades ago. Last year I finally moved away from it for good. Not far, just to the Greater Sacramento area. (I've been working remotely for a couple years, well before COVID) Qualify of life improvement is huge. Weather and cultural are important reasons for me to stay in California (plus family and friends), and I still get that here. (in fact, I prefer weather in Sac -- real summers/not chilly, and winters are similar to the bay area). My house now is easily 1/3 the cost of a similar one in the peninsula or 1/2 the cost of a similar one in east bay.
I moved to Sacramento for all the same reasons, and I also love it here. I remember a lot of people talked down on Sac when I lived in the Bay. It feels like I’ve discovered a secret by moving here.
EDIT: Here are a few more things to like about Sacramento.
There seems to be a large population of highly educated ex-military types concentrated here. It’s been an unexpected source of high quality hires. I never saw these people in the Bay.
I’m in an international marriage. We were worried we wouldn’t be able to find our people upon moving here. That hasn’t been a problem at all. Fellow expats are everywhere. It’s a fairly diverse area.
My problem with Sacramento is 1) crime in Sacramento proper (I have friends in the Sac DA's office, so maybe I am biased by hearing the worst of the worst), and 2) the summer weather. The suburbs of Sacramento, especially to the north, are very attractive to my wife and I and I think that if we do stay in California long-term we will be heading to Sacramento to make it happen.
I mean, it's not cold once you get outside of SF/San Bruno. If you're in the peninsula or south bay, it's really fucking hot during the summer. Uncomfortably hot because no one has AC and many of the homes don't have insulation still.
I think you built my case for me. Sac is consistently hot (90s every day for at least 4 months in the summer) and so, basically every house has AC. Many have solar panels (mine does) because of the available sunny days, for sustainability. It makes for a way easier summer than in bay where you get 2 weeks of dreadful summer (because no AC) and then the week after that is in the 60s-70s and you bring out the jackets again.
If this year's summer becomes the norm I think it may be a bit too hot for places like Sacramento. And all the places I lived in SV so far have had A/C so that hasn't been an issue. But what's great about being near the bay is that at night, most summer nights, it still cools down way below 20C so it's easy to simply keep doors/windows open after sunset and close them in the morning to have cool air inside the house, without an A/C, almost every day. There are exceptions of course like we had this summer where there were 2-3 days long heatwaves with no drop below 25C at night, A/C helped with that.
I wouldn't say the inconsistency in weather is the issue... It's that the homes are ancient and landlords don't want to update them. Why update when you'll not get significantly more money for it (and then have to pay lots of property taxes)? It's why many of the homes that are bought in my neighborhood are completely torn down by new owners and rebuilt. Every single street in my neighborhood with a recent sale has a tear down + rebuild happening.
I'm sure the renter to owner market in Sacramento is different than the bay area...
It can hit 100 these days in San Francisco itself in summer, but there is still this weird sanctimonious attitude about air conditioning. We asked some landscape designers about leaving room for a unit in the yard and more than once got a huffy "People don't use A/C in San Francisco" sort of answer. It's extra miserable if the windows have to stay shut due to wildfire smoke.
I ended up leaving SF and moving to Austin, but Sacramento was really high on my list as well. It's a very nice town, and being half-way between SF and Lake Tahoe is pretty hard to beat :)
I think SVs appeal is that you can leave in a quiet suburb close to a lot of easily accessible nature, while still having Amazon 2-day shipping, ridesharing, Uber Eats, and luxury retail. There's not many places in the US like this. Europe has a lot but there's not much tech jobs in them.
You are also close to SF if you like the madness of the city every once in a while.
Other suburby places with nature easily accessible usually have a more spartan retail experience and sometimes the mail/Amazon doesn't work so well.
> a quiet suburb close to a lot of easily accessible nature, while still having Amazon 2-day shipping, ridesharing, Uber Eats, and luxury retail.
Maybe I'm missing, but I don't see anything in that list that isn't true of almost every metro area in the US. I think people living in SF notice when new services come out that are only available there, like Uber was at first. But they don't notice when those services later spread to the rest of the country. You can get Amazon Prime shipping and rideshares everywhere now. Other cities may have somewhat less luxury retail, but likely have shorter drives with less traffic to get to nature.
The primary point is easy access to nature from a metro area.
Other than easy access to nature, all of those points are true for major metro areas. But other than say, Salt Lake City, does any other metro area offer such close access to nature? Boston and Seattle are even much farther away...
Having lived in both for many years, I'm not sure how anyone could come to the conclusion that nature is more difficult to access in Seattle than the Bay Area. It is a 45 minute drive from the skyscrapers to the Cascade mountains proper; in the Bay Area, it is a 3-hour drive to reach anything comparable. Seattle is bounded on three sides by fresh and salt water in equal measure, similar to San Francisco, with a large boating culture. The city is even nicknamed ("The Emerald City") by virtue of its many expansive and semi-wild parks in the city, plus the general greenery of the surrounding region.
I am a pretty avid nature enthusiast that spends a lot of time in the outdoors. It isn't even close, whether you are looking for mountains, water, or parks. Seattle's reputation in this regard is well-deserved; I'm not sure if there is another metro of its size that is so embedded in and connected to nature. And if you look at map, it is easy to see why -- the city is essentially surrounded by water that is surrounded by very rugged mountains (which has provided challenges for growth).
FWIW, the other large metros in the Pacific Northwest (definitely Vancouver and to a lesser extent Portland) have similarly exceptional access to nature. Some of the Mountain West cities also have great access to nature, though not as diverse as Seattle.
I live in Seattle (south end of Ballard). I can jog to Discovery Park and be in forest surrounded by beach, or up to Carkeek and see tide pools and wetlands. I can be on a real hiking trailhead in less than an hour.
Camelback Mountain is half an hour from the center of Phoenix. Virginia Key Beach Park's walking trails are 20 minutes from downtown Miami. Lionel Hampton-Beecher Hills Park is about the same distance from Atlanta. You get the idea.
SF certainly has really nice nature close by, but it's not like other US cities are industrial wastelands.
I'll grant you the Santa Cruz Mountains if you're on the southern end of the Bay. You've also got the hills in the East Bay and various options in Marin and points north if you're in Marin.
But Boston, in addition to various coastal walks has a bunch of nearby parks and small mountains/hills to the west and in southern NH. Also tons of sea kayaking/canoeing. Depending upon where you live, bigger peaks in NH are maybe 2-3 hours.The Sierras are further than that from the SFBA.
Don't get me wrong. The Bay Area has great recreational options but so do a lot of other cities depending upon what you're looking for.
The variety of landscapes within a 30 minute drive is unparalleled in the Bay Area, though.
I grew up in suburban Boston. It was a very nice town - we lived on an acre of land, with woods behind the house. Drive 30 minutes in any direction, and you got basically - woods. Maybe some ponds and fields, with scattered houses and suburban town centers between. The city (a pretty nice one) was 30 minutes away. You could get to waterfront, in Boston or Salem or Nahant, but there aren't really beaches in most of Massachusetts (outside of Cape Cod). It did have a massive amount of history, though - in that 30 minute drive was basically everywhere significant to the birth of the USA.
I'm on the peninsula now, in the hills. 10 minute walk to a suburban downtown. 3 minute drive (or ~20 minute walk) and we're on some Bay trails. 5 minute drive and we're in the mountains. 5 minute drive to a massive lake over the San Andreas. 20 minute drive and we're on the beach at the Pacific Ocean. 30 minute drive (or 40 minute Caltrain) and we're up in SF. 30 minute drive and we're in downtown San Jose.
"nature": beaches, mountains, ski resorts, redwood forests... Seattle is like that or even better but 9 months out of a year the weather is just a big no no.
> The primary point is easy access to nature from a metro area.
Define "easy access to nature." Where I live, there's a major state park within the city limits and a very large lake within ~20 minutes drive. In ~2 hours I can be at the beach. In ~3-4 hours I can be in the mountains. And untold amounts of basically empty land just outside the city. If you're going to arbitrarily define "easy access to nature" as "mountains next to ocean right next to me", well OK, not a lot of places fit that bill. But that's a very narrow definition designed to fit basically SV.
Easy access to nature means I can go on a scenic five-mile hike between lunch and dinner. It means I can see a beautiful view without planning a day trip. I can meet with groups of friends of all fitness levels and enjoy a pleasant afternoon outdoors where we all have fun.
I can go see thousands of migratory birds a few miles from my apartment. Half Moon Bay is 30-45 minutes away, depending on road conditions. Fairly strenuous hiking and rock-climbing in the Santa Cruz Mountains is also 30-60 minutes away. Santa Cruz itself is not much farther.
I have lived all over the east coast for most of my life, and this degree of access has made an outdoors person of my notoriously sedentary self.
> Easy access to nature means I can go on a scenic five-mile hike between lunch and dinner.
So can I, as I mentioned there's a major state park within the city limits where I live...
> It means I can see a beautiful view without planning a day trip.
Incredibly vague and subjective. What constitutes a "beautiful view"?
> I can meet with groups of friends of all fitness levels and enjoy a pleasant afternoon outdoors where we all have fun.
Not unique to the SF Bay Area at all.
Again I think this is very much a cherry-picked definition of "easy access to nature" that is designed to preclude any place not named "SF Bay Area." Still, the kinds of things you were describing can be found in metro areas all over the country.
I'm not sure why you feel this need to argue that other regions are just as good as the Bay Area. Are you a tourism promoter? Whether you're right in absolute terms is insubstantial. What matters is that hundreds of thousands of people feel the way I do, and that's why we moved here or stayed here.
I have family in Wisconsin, and I enjoy visiting. I like parts of Milwaukee, and I've gotten out into the countryside. It's really nice.
This is all subjective, of course, but what can I say? I've been in restaurant and bars at the top of tall hotels in Milwaukee, I enjoyed it and the view of the lake and city... and no, I don't think it even remotely measures up to views of the bay from Pacific Heights or another dozen views in San Francisco. Nor does the surrounding countryside in Milwaukee - which I sincerely do like quite a bit - measure up to redwood forests, Pt. Reyes, the headlands, the coastline from SF to Santa Cruz. A little farther afield, Big Sur and the high Sierras, Sonoma and Napa valleys. I'm not really even sure how to debate it with people, it seems so self-evident to me. California and SF have some really bad qualities, but no, it's not all six of one and a half dozen of the other around any randomly selected US city of 100K in the US. The nature around San Francisco is a differentiator and a selling point (though I would tend to agree that it is now officially overpriced).
Puget Sound is remarkable, though, and the forest around Portland is beautiful. As I've mentioned in another thread, though, the coast is far more accessible in San Francisco.
Except the access to nature aspect. I mean, that is a broad and ambiguous statement, but not too many places are as beautiful as California.
If you were to take access to nature to mean, being within driving distance of nature sites that people travel across the country to experience, then the number of metro areas drops significantly.
Look at a map of national parks. Most of the population of the US is within driving distance of a national park.
The Appalachian mountain range stretches from GA to Maine, and contains dozens of state and national parks that people travel across the country to see. Nearly the entire eastern seaboard is within range of one of them.
The only part that isn’t is Florida, and they have better beaches than California, swamps, lakes, and massive crystal clear springs.
Lots of replies are saying this exists in "every major metro" in the US.
But if you start narrowing it to places with pleasant weather, suddenly it starts looking like a smaller picture. The west coast, west of the cascades or central valley in CA. Probably places like the Carolinas, Tennessee. And maybe we'll be nice to Colorado and give them a trophy for at least having sunshine in the winter :)
You don't have to pay SF rents, of course, but you're not buying a $100k mansion and getting all of these things either.
> I think SVs appeal is that you can leave in a quiet suburb close to a lot of easily accessible nature, while still having Amazon 2-day shipping, ridesharing, Uber Eats, and luxury retail.
Maybe there’s something you’re not explaining here but there’s plenty of places all over the country that fit this bill. Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Denver, etc.
And Amazon 2 day delivery is available all over the place...
In some places “easily accessible nature” means you can drive just a few hours. But pull up a map of Cupertino or Mountain View and zoom out just a little. There are dozens and dozens of parks in biking distance. Austin and Atlanta are not like this. Haven’t been to Charlotte or Raleigh in ages but, maybe. It’s a nice climate for sure. Denver is really pretty but it depends how you feel about real winter.
Have you been to Atlanta? It doesn't seem like you're familiar.
The Beltline [0,1], a paved multi-use trail converted from old railway, encircles the city's major neighborhoods and connects everything. It's one of the city's major features. Dozens of parks, including some of the largest -- Piedmont [2], Old Forth Ward, Grant Park, and the old Bellwood Quarry [3] where they filmed Walking Dead, It, etc. -- are all immediately accessible.
The Beltine is being connected to the Silver Comet Trail [4,5], which is a paved bike trail stretching all the way to Alabama (the nation's second longest). Light rail is also being added to the Beltline.
Outside the city you've got access to the Chattahoochee River for rafting. The Palisades [6] provide excellent river-adjacent hiking.
Stone Mountain [7], a giant granite mountain, is 30 minutes east of the city and provides excellent hiking and running.
Kennesaw Mountain [8] is 30 minutes northwest of the city and is great for hiking and dog walking.
Red Top Mountain is 40 minutes northwest, and you have a host of lower Appalachian mountains to the north.
Allatoona Lake [9] is 40 minutes northwest, where they filmed Ozark, and provides excellent boating. Lake Lanier is an hour away and is even bigger.
Atlanta isn't called "city in the forest" for nothing. We have so many trees, parks, and outdoor activities.
I lived in Atlanta (starting from my GA Tech days) for over a decade and I've been in the South Bay for a few years. As much as I love Atlanta and the gigantic house I was able to afford, landscape-wise it doesn't even come close to what the bay area has to offer. Beltline is pretty neat but you will find it rather disappointing if you have ever been to one of the coastal trails in the bay. Not to mention the lack of skiing options (sorry but Gatlinburg ain't Lake Tahoe).
From my office in Palo Alto, I can ride my bicycle up Sand Hill Road, past horse farms, and then up a secluded 2000 ft (~600 meters) mountain with virtually no traffic and return during my lunch break. Or I can take a long lunch and ride out to the coast, through rolling farmlands. And I can do that virtually any day of the year, thanks to the local climate.
Most of the peninsula (which is, arguably, not SV proper) is like this, with tons of hiking within walking distance of where you live or work. The reason is that almost everything west of I-280 is undeveloped. As you ride or drive around that area, it's very easy to find a view where the only sign of humans is the road you're traveling on.
If I want to go skiing, I can leave work an hour early and drive up to Tahoe for the weekend. Or I could drive down to Santa Cruz for the day and go surfing.
Not quite "nature", but many people like to drive up to Napa for a day-trip to visit world-class wineries.
> luxury retail
Then, after work, I can walk over to my choice of Michelin starred restaurants (and I will pass multiple art galleries and branches of private banks). Granted, none of the restaurants in Palo Alto have more than one Michelin star (how gauche!).
If conspicuous consumption is your thing, San Mateo, Palo Alto, and Santa Clara each have high-end malls with practically every luxury brand you can imagine. Want to buy Ferrari or a McLaren? There's a dealer for each one within 10 miles of Mountain View.
> plenty of places all over the country that fit this bill
Many places have some of what SV offers. Very very few have everything, and I would argue that none of the cities you listed fit the bill.
I think the point here is that there's things that justify that price and the other downcomings of living in the area.
I'm the one that started this discussion and it proved controversial. I tried to just talk about like, the amenities of living in the area and tech jobs, but most people replied saying "wait there's two or three of your list of five or six in...".
I may be biased because I'm not a "generalist web developer", I work in either crazy startups or kinda niche embedded/low level roles. I still get two or three really good job offers from big companies per month even when I'm not looking and they are in SV. I was getting one or more per week pre-COVID. Even when actively looking for that type jobs in Colorado and Austin I can't find them.
Colorado would be more interesting for me if I was a citizen and could work the government aerospace and defense jobs but unfortunately I can't.
The premise was that there are lots of other places that have what SV has. And, by implication, that SV's high prices are unjustified.
I was merely pointing out that SV has an array of amenities that are found together in very few other places. And if you want what SV has, there are very few other places you can get it. Supply and demand. It's that simple.
Maybe you don't care about fancy restaurants or art galleries or spending time outdoors. That's totally cool. Maybe all you care about is finding the absolute cheapest apartment on planet earth. Again, knock your socks off.
SV doesn't have cheap housing. If that's all you care about, look someplace else.
As an SV local, I am overly jaded about the place. South Bay is wonderfully boring suburbia to grow up to- and would be to raise a family, if not for the housing prices- and S.F. seems pitifully small, and everything closes so early for a supposed world-class city. Not to mention, BART ends before last call, which is just crazy. The outdoors here are great, but how many times can one climb Castle Rock, Mission Peak, or visit Angel Island, Rancho San Antonio, or Point Reyes? And Muir Woods is always full of tourists, it's like Disneyland in a forest.
Of course, the grass is always greener. But I think natives are entitled to grouse a little bit, given the circumstances. It's just a little scary if this is the best the U.S. has to offer.
"Despising, For you, the city, thus I turn my back: There is a world elsewhere."
>Other suburby places with nature easily accessible usually have a more spartan retail experience and sometimes the mail/Amazon doesn't work so well.
Most suburbs of decent sized cities on the east coast have 2 day Amazon shipping, even the ones close to national parks. And the mail works fine in basically any suburban area.
A lot depends on what the nature you're looking to be accessible to looks like of course. (And I'll be the first to agree that the Bay Area is probably especially nice in this regard.) But I'd say you were describing any significant coastal city, areas of Colorado (can't speak to other mountain states although places like Boise I would think...), etc. If you're looking for a reasonably affluent suburb there really isn't a particular shortage of them around the country--and many have good outdoor recreation options.
The Bay Area isn't especially nice in this regard, for one reason:it is crowded. you won't ever get a moment of peace in all of that nature unless you get lucky.
For variety, I actually think the LA area as a whole is better. But it has the same problem.
There’s plenty of quiet, uncrowded nature in the Bay Area if you spend some time exploring off the beaten path. I live in SF and don’t have a car and have still spent hours at a stretch in parks totally alone, not to mention when I do get out of the city.
I think the last unspoken one and perhaps most important one in this list is access to family in the APAC region. The other proposals (i.e. Colorado, Arizona, etc.) have all the other stuff but not the access to Asia.
Looking at air travel - Denver to India or Austin to China - everything is a 1 day+ and over $2000+. SF/LA to these places is about 15 hours and about $1500.
If the business (i.e. Apple/Google making phones) needs to fly execs, production folks as well as if the tech engineers need in person meetings or have family, that's going to be a made much more challenging.
The most important thing is not the airports. All metros have them. The differentiator is the vast number of asian grocery stores, restaurants and other stores/businesses. In America the Bay Area is only behind Los Angeles in that regard.
I'm seeing economy flights round trip from Colorado to Delhi at 1300, rounding up, for Christmas week. Don't really know how much this is due to Covid-related drop in demand, but it seems like a useful data point to put out there, since I've definitely seen similarly priced flights during non-pandemic years.
I fly to China quite often from Austin, it's not that bad, you do AUS-DFW-PVR,PEK... you only lose an hour or so for the short hop, the DFW-China leg is basically the same from SFO
Also from AUS, you have Houston and Dallas as two big airport options to get to China.
People I know dislike the fact that most of SV is a typical suburb indistinguishable from what you see in any random Florida city. And consider how many busses bring workers from their apartments in SF down to the office in the burbs.
