Talk:San Francisco Bay Area

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Source reliability

NOTE: This discussion began on the Teahouse page. It seemed that this discussion should be on the talk page for the San Francisco Bay Area article, so I have copied it here for the record.

I am attending to the history section of the San Francisco Bay Area article and wonder if this [1] HERE is a reliable source. I've read through wp:reliable and lack confidence that this source should be considered reliable. I look forward to hearing from you.Hu Nhu (talk) 16:24, 12 November 2020 (UTC) Hu Nhu (talk) 16:24, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

@Hu Nhu: I agree with you. The "Moraga Explores the Valley", although likely an accurate precise of the Gabriel Moraga Expedition of 1806, is not Wikipedia reliable.

The book "The Gabriel Moraga Expedition Of 1806: The Diary Of Fray Pedro Munoz" would be more appropriate for a reference.

There is a journal article that might be more accessible: "The Gabriel Moraga Expedition of 1806: The Diary of Fray Pedro Muñoz". It is a journal article in the Hunting Library Quarterly. It uses as its primary source, Fray Pedro Munoz's actual written account. It can found at"

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3816007?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents.

Here is the cite for the journal article:

Muñoz, Fray Pedro, et al. “The Gabriel Moraga Expedition of 1806: The Diary of Fray Pedro Muñoz.” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 3, 1946, pp. 223–248. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3816007. Accessed 12 Nov. 2020.

You can read it free by creating an account with Jstor (it doesn't cost anything to create the Jstor account).

Osomite ^hablemos 22:26, 12 November 2020 (UTC).

@Osomite:Many thanks for the assistance. Improving the article was an easy manner using the kind assistance you provided.Hu Nhu (talk) 03:21, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

SF vs SJ as first listed core city

Aside from the ordering of names in the CSA, it does not reflect lived reality to list San Jose as the first "core" city of the Bay Area. The San Francisco Metro contains most of the Bay Area's population and counties. If SJ was the first core city of the Bay Area then the size of its metro would reflect that. 

It's a little bizarre to have a city with a negative commuter population listed first as the core city in an area. When we're not in the middle of a pandemic, San Francisco's population increases by 21% when people are at work and San Jose's decreases by 5%. SF is in line with most big cities, while SJ functions (in this one way) more like a busy exurb of greater Silicon Valley. Its percentage decrease is even slightly larger than Oakland's and it is the only major city in the US that has a negative daytime population.

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/quadrennial/downloads/pdf/tables/Twenty-Five-Largest-US-Cities-by-Population.pdf

SF's airport carries four times as many passengers, its main transit system carries over five times as many people (without even counting BART, which gets the majority of its ridership from people traveling in SF and would boost this to more like seven times), it has 200,000 more jobs, significantly more visitors, and four times the population density. Most of the local TV stations (ABC, CBS, CW, PBS, Univision) are based in SF and the city's budget is nearly three times higher. I could go on.

My goal here is not to slam San Jose, which is obviously a core city of the area (and a place I very much like), but the closer you get to SF and Oakland, the denser and more crowded (and more populated) the area becomes with very little exception. It makes the article inaccurate to imply that the opposite is in any way true.

Using the simple ordering within the CSA label to determine the "core" city order here makes no sense in an article about a region that doesn't even include all the counties in the CSA. SF should be listed first both in the sidebar and in the Bay Area footer that is attached to most Bay Area articles.

Additionally, it's very odd to treat CSAs and MSAs as the same thing, when they are very much not. They don't need separate articles again, but ideally the MSAs for the area would be listed in the sidebar for this article.

--Cowboywizard (talk) 02:10, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Alright, it's been a week and there's been no comment on this. I'm going to give it three more days and make this change. This is primarily based on these factors (among others):

San Francisco has 300,000 more jobs than San Jose:

https://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/jobs

San Francisco has a normal, and even notably high, core city daytime population increase of 21% from commuters. San Jose sees a -5.5% drop, making it the only major city in the US with a negative daytime population (the word city, in fact, is generally not the word we use when labeling places that have negative daytime populations). San Francisco's job growth this decade has also been over four times higher than San Jose's, which means there is likely even more of a disparity now compared to this data from the 2010 census:

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/quadrennial/downloads/pdf/tables/Twenty-Five-Largest-US-Cities-by-Population.pdf

The Bay Area becomes more populated and dense the closer you get to SF. I can lay all this out if needed, but I'm pretty confident everyone here knows that Oakland and Daly City are denser than Sunnyvale and Santa Clara (and both Sunnyvale and Santa Clara are denser than San Jose).

San Francisco has the region's primary and by far busiest airport, its primary and by far busiest transit agencies, numerous embassies and consulates, the Supreme Court of California and many of the HQs for federal agencies within CA, is one of the most visited cities in the US, and is the primary city of the region's primary MSA.

This all doesn't mean San Jose is not A core city, but San Francisco is THE first core city for all the reasons listed above, just as Manhattan has fewer people than Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx but is still clearly the core borough of New York.

--Cowboywizard (talk) 05:14, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Gray Brechin would probably agree with your points He wrote in Imperial San Francisco that the main city of the area has always been SF. I think SF is the leader in progressive ideas, for instance in 1964 the first movement for legalization of marijuana started in SF, and in 1989 it was the first place in the world to declare itself a sanctuary city for refugees. San Jose generally serves as a feeder city, though it is now larger in population. Binksternet (talk) 05:52, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the Census Bureau's purely data-driven method of listing largest residential population as first in rankings is not something that always reflects the on-the-ground reality, as is the case here, and we shouldn't necessarily just follow along. --haha169 (talk) 03:45, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

I disagree with this change and am reverting the page back to its original until there is further consensus on this matter. The Bay Area has no true "core" city. San Francisco and San Jose are completely different areas, as is Oakland, and they have their own cultural caches separate from each other. I recommend scrapping the entire "core city" section and just having a list of major cities instead. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 05:30, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Also, there is no consensus on this issue. User:Cristiano Tomás attempted to explain this when the edits were made, but was overridden unilaterally without any formal vote on the talk page. Per Wikipedia policy, the old revision stands until a new consensus is reached. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 05:40, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with this change. I have lived in the Bay Area for 49 years and love Oakland and also San Jose, which wins the population prize and has its own rich history. I work all over Northern California. But San Francisco remains dominant in Northern California history, image, cultural significance, tourism, iconic status and worldwide reputation. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:42, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

While I agree with San Francisco's historical cache, I think that is too subjective of a metric. We can have endless debates, as people on all these Bay Area pages have had, over which city reigns supreme. In my opinion, that debate is pointless given the scattered and uncentered nature of the Bay Area. If you look at job centers and commute patterns, they're all over the place. San Francisco is great but it's not what New York or Chicago are to their respective metros (the end all, be all city). We had an entire discussion on this on the SF page itself when we chose to call it a cultural center instead of the cultural center of NorCal. I recommend we scrap the whole section and just list major cities in alphabetical order. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 05:46, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

All serious students of the Bay Area know that it has many important cities and no city totally dominates the region like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver and Atlanta do in their regions. But that does not mean that the region lacks its most important city and I contend that it is San Francisco. Take a look at a variety of generalst books about the history and culture of California, and you will consistently find much more attention paid to San Francisco than to San Jose or Oakland. That is not subjective. It is fact. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:09, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

There is a considerable inertia built up by the previous 150 years of power in SF in terms of cultural influence, and SJ may never catch up. It's not just about who has the most people. (Fun fact: SJ in the 1970s welcomed so many new people that the school district went broke in 1983.) Counting people isn't the last word on who is the "core" city. Author Daniel A. Cornford, writing in Working People of California, addresses a subset of this issue when he talks about the various Chinatowns across the USA. He says, "Although the importance of San Francisco as the cultural, social, political and economic center of 'Chinese America' is beyond dispute, the city and county of San Francisco never contained the majority of the Chinese-ancestry population in California, much less in the United States." So here is SF exerting its cultural power despite having fewer people. Binksternet (talk) 07:35, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Academic articles and book reviews on cultural influence do not reflect lived reality, nor are they the sole arbiter of reality. And population is not the only metric I've cited. The truth is that no Bay Area city-- not SF, not SJ-- has a cultural, financial, or political monopoly on the region. Oakland is the center of Black culture, San Jose is arguably the center of the Vietnamese and Hispanic populations, while San Francisco's minority communities have largely fled the city for others in the last 20 years. The center of the Filipino community is in Daly City, the center of the Afghan population is in Fremont. Oakland's cultural scene is just as world-class as San Francisco's. Silicon Valley's tech giants dwarf the startups in SF, SF's financial behemoths dwarf those of other regions. Most auto manufacturing is done not in SF, but in Sacramento or Fremont. BART headquarters is in Oakland, as is the headquarters of the entire UC system. Caltrain's headquarters is in San Carlos. Regional governance is also nowhere near centralized enough to call SF the Bay Area's "first" city.

My point being that no city has a "capital" cache on this diverse region. There is no parallel anywhere in the United States or Canada. And this is why you can't list SF, San Jose, or any other city "first". And it's why I'm arguing for the removal of the entire core cities list in favor of a simplified list of 5-6 major cities. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 14:53, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I disagree with the change and agree with EndlessCoffee54. I am a native of the Bay Area (though not of either SF or SJ), and have lived in both cities and elsewhere in the Bay. To discredit the significance of population in assessing San Jose's status is to discredit the fact that SJ is the core city for the South Bay (which has a larger population than SF and the Peninsula combined) and parts of lower Alameda and San Mateo counties, similarly as Oakland is for the East Bay, many of whose more than 2.4 million residents, spread out in the valleys and over the Diablo range have no regular, real connection to SF, while Oakland remains their closest major hub for government, life, etc. And by regions, SF and the Peninsula is the second smallest in population, after the North Bay. SF has its reputation, no doubt, but the reality of the Bay Area is that not only is SF not a solid core city like NYC, but its not even the hub of either of the two largest regions of the Bay Area (size + population), which are the South Bay and East Bay. The reality is that the task of assessing one city over the other as the "true core city" of the Bay Area is moot. While SF has its historical pedestal, SJ certainly has its own pedestal as well. The point Binksternet made on the significance of SF Chinatown is irrelevant and says absolutely nothing to SF's influence as a city, just like how San Jose having the largest Little Saigon in the country and largest Viet population in the world outside of Vietnam doesn't mean anything about San Jose as a city, but says more to the Viet-American community as an entity or Chinese-American community as an entity. SF gets more tourists, SJ has more people. SJ has more land, SF more density. SF has more historic landmarks, SJ has more natural sites and open space. It goes on and on. I would recommend listing the cities as "Largest cities", as its clear and purely factual and does not invite confusion on status, reputation, and so on that is associated with the term "core city", but its disingenuous to claim SF as the undivided core of the Bay when it is far from that. Cristiano Tomás (talk) 21:14, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

No one in this conversation has at any point disputed anything in my initial thread. San Francisco is the only one of the major cities in the Bay Area with a positive commuter population and this daytime population surge is in line with other major cities around the United States. San Francisco is not just the core city of the "peninsula" as Cristiano ridiculously asserted. Most of its commuters come from the East Bay, which is why the East Bay is part of its metro. There is a reason that the Bay Bridge carries 250,000 cars a day and that BART carries 450,000 people (outside of the pandemic) and it's nearly all related to people traveling into SF. A lot of this conversation seems to deeply misunderstand how other metros work. There are people in the New York area who have no real, regular connection to New York. Many, many, people in the Boston area who never go to Boston. That does not change anything. San Francisco functions like most of other core cities in terms of commuter population, in terms of transit ridership, in terms of density within the city and near it. It's telling that there has been no attempt whatsoever to directly respond to data, but instead to respond with fuzzy notions about how people in Castro Valley might feel about SF (not entirely sure how Oakland could be more their core city either since downtown Oak and SF are literally right next to each other and connected by a bridge). San Francisco should be listed first and to do otherwise is to literally misrepresent how the Bay Area functions. Cowboywizard (talk) 19:21, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

This completely ignores San Jose's contribution to the Metro. Let's delve into the commuter argument you make (which should never be the only metric used to list cities in an infobox). Multiple studies continually show that Silicon Valley's population is largely insular and commutes within the Valley. In fact, more people commute *to* Silicon Valley than live within it: https://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/place/transportation/commuting/commute-flows-tables/.

Most people from SJ, a city with a pop of 1 million+, never go to SF for work as you suggest the vast majority of Bay Areans do. They stay within the Valley and go to Palo Alto, or South SJ, or Mountain View, or North SJ, or Santa Clara, or Fremont. Santa Clara County alone is 2 million some people-- 1/4 of the entire region's population. That by itself disproves your argument that commutes in the Bay Area are somehow centered around a single city for workday commutes. There is no other metro area in the entire continent that has that kind of commuter disconnect between two cities that share a region. Those of us who've lived in this region know that, so please don't call our assertions about our home "ridiculous". Having disproven your "commuter" point, we turn to the other metrics above. Culture: Not centered around SF. Business centers: Not centered around SF. News channels: 2 in SF (ABC/CBS), 1 in SJ (NBC), 1 in Oakland (Fox). I could go on, but I think this makes the point. The Bay Area may have been centered around SF at one point in history. That point no longer exists. Bay Area is not SF. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 20:54, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

This does not ignore San Jose's contribution to the metro and my point about commuters was not disproven. I never said that everyone in the Bay Area commutes to San Francisco (which is not true, it's also not true of Atlanta or Chicago or any other core city), just that San Francisco is the only major Bay Area city that doesn't have a negative commuter population. It also has as many jobs as Oakland and San Jose combined. It's true that most people in Silicon Valley remain in SV to work, but San Jose and Silicon Valley are not synonymous with each other, and if you were to claim they were to someone in Palo Alto or Mountain View they would probably laugh at you.

https://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/jobs

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/quadrennial/downloads/pdf/tables/Twenty-Five-Largest-US-Cities-by-Population.pdf

I've never set out to list San Francisco as the only core city, just as the first one in a list of three. Culture is not completely centered around SF, but it's still the first cultural point ahead of Oak and SJ. Which we can certainly dive into. Just as it has more TV stations and tourists and transit riders and police officers and fire fighters and airplane flights. It is not the only core city, but it is the first among equals and I know of very few people in the Bay Area who aren't SJ wikipedia article editors who would dispute that. I say that as someone who has lived here for decades.

There are a lot of arbitrary political boundaries in the Bay Area, much more so than in other places. SJ's population is entirely an artifact of this. If Oakland were to gobble up 170 urban and suburban square miles directly around it then it'd have in the range of 2,000,000 people. Meanwhile, if SJ dropped down to its 50 square mile core it'd be a bit bigger than Fremont.

Listing SJ first in the core city list misrepresents the Bay Area just as much as listing ONLY SF would. It is reasonable, normal, and fitting with how the area functions, how it is perceived by the world, and how it's seen by residents of the area to list San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland in that order. Cowboywizard (talk) 22:13, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Your point is relevant, that San Jose and Silicon Valley are not the same thing. A lot of sources discuss how Silicon Valley has become the economic center as measured in this way or that way, but far fewer make the case about San Jose by itself. Binksternet (talk) 23:16, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

And even as much as Silicon Valley and tech have taken center economic stage in the region, the center of gravity has been moving towards San Francisco over the past twelve years or so. See this up-to-date and comprehensive list of privately held companies worth more than a billion dollars. These are mostly tech companies and a great many of them will go on to be publicly traded:

https://www.cbinsights.com/research-unicorn-companies

There are 762 such companies in the world as of July 2021. 385 of them are in the United States. 111 of them are in San Francisco (by far the most of any city in the world and certainly more than the rest of the cities in the Bay Area combined). Only 8 of them are in San Jose. We should also probably update the Economy section of this article to reflect SF's growing position in tech relative to and in tandem with Silicon Valley. Cowboywizard (talk) 00:14, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

You are still comparing San Jose by itself to San Francisco. When taken together with Silicon Valley, the South Bay represents a commuter region with a chunk of the commuter population comparable to San Francisco in that it has a positive commuter population. The Valley's daytime population swells just like SF does, indicating a positive commuter area. That list you cited? It's heavily misleading. It's only startup companies. The vast majority of established (not startup) tech companies are still in San Jose and Silicon Valley. Facebook is in Menlo Park, Oracle in Redwood Shores, Apple in Cupertino, EBay in San Jose. In fact, if we're going to go with your well-known argument (which IMO is incredibly subjective), one can argue that most well-known tech companies are headquartered in the Valley. It is entirely subjective to say that "momentum" is headed to San Francisco when more people and companies left SF during 2020 than any other major city in California. If we're going to go with the momentum argument (which is again completely subjective), SF was the only city in the Bay Area to see its average rents fall in price due to the lack of demand over the last year. Oakland and San Jose saw rents rise and population continued to increase.

Your point also still ignores the arguments about culture, geography, land mass, total population, etc.-- all of which are equally important as commuter patterns and economy in determining what is a "center" of the Bay Area. And none of those swing in SF's favor, while the economic and commuter arguments are murky at best. Also, saying that "most" residents think of SF as a center (followed by SJ and Oakland) is to be completely frank, disingenuous. It assumes your opinion of the area is everyone else's. Residents of Oakland and San Jose would disagree entirely that SF is anything but a center for their region and their lives, and do not list the cities in that order as you do. That argument you make about San Jose being large only because it annexed area? San Francisco and Oakland have annexed numerous areas, too. Every city has. Brooklyn wasn't formally part of NYC until hundreds of years after its initial founding. That doesn't make it any less of a city, and doesn't mean the cities haven't coalesced culturally and economically within the last 60 years. Your comment somewhat offensively suggests that annexed communities like Alum Rock and Willow Glen aren't really connected to the core of San Jose. To the contrary, as someone who grew up here, Alum Rock and Willow Glen are focal points for this city (just as every other community in San Jose is), and they define this city's culture. San Franciscans have this idea of San Jose as being "LA North" and just a jumbled patchwork of bland suburban communities. Come down here and see these richly diverse communities for yourself before you make blanket unsupported statements.

These purely subjective tests are precisely why I propose we scrap the whole "core cities" listing, and just give either an alphabetical list of 5-6 major cities or list the top 5-6 by population. These are objective measures, not subjective ones. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 12:48, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I continue to talk about SF and San Jose because that's what this discussion is about. Again, SJ and Silicon Valley are not synonymous. Saying that San Francisco by itself has has many jobs as well over a dozen cities covering hundreds of square miles all combined together is a point in San Francisco's favor, not in San Jose's. Oakland, SF, and the inner East Bay are at least as tied together as Silicon Valley. I mean, downtown Oak and downtown SF are connected by a ten minute subway ride. Should I start lumping them all together here?

I mentioned the unicorn startup list just to illustrate how much tech has spread to San Francisco, to the point where the majority of new tech companies have been founded there over the last decade, not to suggest it had overtaken Silicon Valley. But I could also list lots of popular companies in SF that have recently gone public that were recently on this list: Uber, Lyft, Pinterest, Square, Slack, Cloudflare, etc.

Your statement that SF shrank and SJ grew over the past year is in no way true. San Francisco and San Jose were in second and third place for population loss in 2020. At -1.42% and -1.3% respectively, neither of them lost all that many people:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/Only-one-U-S-city-saw-a-bigger-pandemic-exodus-16258720.php

I never suggested annexation makes SJ less of a city, just that it was unique in the Bay Area for covering so much land area. It is the least dense part of the urban ring that goes around the bay. Also, San Francisco has not annexed anything since the 1800s (not for lack of occasionally trying) and both SF and Oakland are, in fact, the only cities in the US to have gained population since the end of WWII that also did not annex any land in the process.

I go to San Jose all the time and never called it "LA North" or a bland, suburban community. I love LA, too, and take slight offense at the notion that being LA North is a bad thing, lol. That is not what we're discussing here. But if you're trying to say that Willow Glen is as culturally relevant as the Mission, you're losing that argument. You continue dismissing SF as a cultural center when it is, in fact, a cultural center for the US in ways that SJ simply is not (at least not at this time). This is not subjective. It is reality.

Simple population is not the only objective number to look at for cities. Putting San Francisco first in a list of the three largest Bay Area cities reflects objective reality based on commute patterns (when directly comparing cities), population density both in the city and around it, tourism, transit usage, cultural relevance (SF is the third most popular US setting for movies after NY and LA, followed by Chicago in 4th), and simple history. San Francisco's metro includes the majority of the Bay Area's population for a reason. The FTC lists this as the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose media market for a reason.

Lastly, you previously suggested that a change you made to the SF wikipedia article came about by consensus. I looked at that. There were only four people in that conversation and one of them disagreed with you. How is that consensus, while 4 vs 2 editors in favor of listing SF first in this article is not? Cowboywizard (talk) 18:22, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

If you look more closely, I was not the one who made that change. It was another editor who did so, and there happened to be a lone dissenter in that process. Here, you have two dissenting. That's far more significant that I'm joined by someone else who opposes this change AND has explained thoughtfully and eloquently WHY he opposes that change, as I have. San Jose and Silicon Valley are largely synonymous because they have shared culture, jobs, and history. That is in no way the case for Oakland and SF (as an alum of an East Bay school for undergrad and grad school, I can tell you without a shadow of the doubt that Oakland and SF are different as day and night.) I'm from the Valley, so I think it's fair to say that I know about my region's culture far better than you do. Just because annexation occurred in the 1800s does not make it any different than annexation that occurred postwar. It's still annexation, and baffling to suggest that because it occurred more recently it makes a city less of "a city". And oh yes, I could go on forever about how neighborhoods like Alum Rock, College Park, and Little Portugal have more cultural cache than the Mission. But that's for another day, and is also intensely subjective. I'm not losing the argument by saying that. Your definition of "cultural cache" may be history and books. Mine are the people who actually live in these areas. And if you have beef with that, check out San Jose's Flea Market on a weekend and you'll get what I'm saying. And no one is saying SF doesn't have cultural cache. All we're saying is that SJ and so many areas of the Bay have just as much cultural cache as SF does. SF does not rule the roost in that area, and that's why it can't be the cultural center, it's a cultural center.

And you're making my point by saying certain newer companies are in SF. That's true! Doesn't mean there aren't a ton of existing companies in SV as well. Newer does not make a place a "center". I could argue the exact opposite, that older companies are far more stable and therefore last longer than ephemeral startups, thus making the Valley and SJ the economic center. But I don't say that. I say that they are a economic center, just like SF is.

And "least dense" urban ring of the Bay? Fremont is less dense than the Valley. Vast portions of the Peninsula are less dense than the Valley. Most cities in Texas are less dense than the Valley. San Jose actually has a fairly respectable density level for a North American city, at some 7k-8k people per square mile. And lower density does not mean any place is less of a city.

Again, my point stands. Metrics pointing to SF being the undisputed center of anything in the Bay Area beyond finance are murky, subjective, and up to individual POV. Facts on the ground and statistics show a dispersed region with multiple centers. Therefore, we don't list any city on top by matter of subjectivity. We use an agreed-upon objective metric, such as population or alphabetical order. Any other points made in this endless debate about SF vs SJ/SV (a point we have beaten to death over the last few days) don't further any arguments and are mostly subjective. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 20:40, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

You do not get to unilaterally decide this. And it will need to be arbitrated if this continues. In the interim, we should absolutely make the list alphabetical. Cowboywizard (talk) 21:26, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with you on arbitration, nor was there any point where I suggested I was making a unilateral decision, as you did when you first made these changes. Making the list alphabetical means scrapping the entire core cities and the list of cities underneath, and creating a list of 5-6 major cities. This would look like this:

• Fremont
• Oakland
• San Francisco
• San Jose
• Santa Rosa EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 22:02, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

A list of like this seems perfectly reasonable to me and I appreciate your efforts towards it here. To be blunt: I did not make this change unilaterally. I left it up on the Talk page for discussion for two weeks before changing it and there was no attempt at dissenting discussion on the Talk page either before or after I made the change until now. The change was then reverted despite the fact that the discussion has and continues to remain in favor of it. Changing it despite being outvoted because you and one other editor personally consider your points superior is a decision I would see as unilateral. But I could be wrong (I certainly have been before in life) and that's why arbitration exists. Again, I truly appreciate you presenting a reasonable alternative, whether it ends up as temporary or permanent. Cowboywizard (talk) 22:26, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Excellent. I'll leave it up here for others to comment on before we make a change to the page. And I understand where you're coming from. I reverted to the original because the edit was relatively recent and you did get opposition from one user (Cristiano) which you should have noted instead of re-reverting the page to your preferred edit. A good move would have been to keep Cristiano's revert, contact him on his talk page so he could join the conversation on this talk page. But what is done is done. I appreciate your passion for this topic and for our respectful and spirited debate on this issue. I can clearly tell you care about articles regarding this region, and you will always have my respect for that. Thanks for the teamwork, and hopefully we'll get a resolution to this soon that we can all agree on. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 14:18, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Wanted to give this plenty of time for comment and it looks like there is no comment (at least so far). Shall we move forward with the alphabetical list on Monday? We can then all take our time considering whether or not that's the right permanent fix. Cowboywizard (talk) 15:32, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

I was never in favor of alphabetical order. Alpha order is always the last resort. An encyclopedia should provide more information than that, when possible, for instance listing things in chronological order, or order of importance, etc. Binksternet (talk) 16:12, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Totally reasonable. Alphabetical order is also not what I wanted. So where that leaves us is the majority of this conversation supports listing San Francisco first with two people arguing that consensus on that point only exists if they agree. I stepped away from this to allow plenty of time for feedback and that appears to be where the feedback stands. Previous conversations about this topic that are sometimes cited generally involved even fewer people than the six in this one. It is not acceptable for San Jose to remain listed first in the core cities list. It is counter to this conversation and misrepresents how the three major cities in the area function relative to the entire region. As has now been argued ad nauseam, none of the cities can be listed alone as they are all core cities in their own way, but San Francisco is the one that most traditionally acts as a core from metro size to population density to transit usage to number of jobs. Not just within the city proper but within its metro. If alphabetical isn't workable then SF should be listed first in the list or there simply should not be a list. Cowboywizard (talk) 18:21, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Alphabetical isn't what I wanted (I would prefer a list of largest to smallest cities), but like Cowboywizard said, "A list of like this seems perfectly reasonable to me", it also seems reasonable to me, even if it's not my most preferable option. In Wikipedia's spirit of compromise and cooperation, I would ask all to consider the alphabetical choice as a meeting in the middle of all sides. Alphabetical is, even if not desirable, undoubtedly the most neutral way to list the cities. I appreciate the passion of all those who participated in this conversation and their thoughtful consideration and hope we can move forward with this edit without a reprisal of previous arguments. Best, Cristiano Tomás (talk) 19:01, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

There's also some solid precedent for it. NYC's boroughs are listed in alphabetical order. You could even argue that the alphabetical list best represents what our passionate discussion really gets at: the Bay Area is a unique place in which you could argue a number of different cities are "core" depending on which particular set of topics you're discussing. Cowboywizard (talk) 20:53, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Since no one is disputing the "Core Cities" and "Other Municipalities" categories, why not keep those categories and then alphabetize within them? That way we can avoid having a long list that hides the three core cities, while also going by a neutral alphabet system. So within Core Cities, it would go, in order: Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose; and then the Other Municipalities section would have their own list. --haha169 (talk) 01:50, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

This seems perfectly reasonable to me. I say we do it. Sorry for my slow replies this month, work got crazy busy and I figured it couldn't hurt to give people plenty of time to write feedback. Now, unless there are any further thoughts on this I'm gonna put the Core Cities in alphabetical order at the end of this week. Cowboywizard (talk) 22:40, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

It's been six days; no one has commented against merging. --haha169 (talk) 04:02, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

---

I wanted to bring up a proposal to merge the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area into this article. The infobox and definitions section of this article already reference the CSA, and frankly, the CSA article substantively does not have anything else that is not covered in this article. Even the CSA article's "see also" links link back to the Bay Area. Additionally, looking through Combined_statistical_area#List_of_combined_statistical_areas, I noticed that none of the top 10 (at least) CSAs have their own articles, but link to a "metro area" article for that region.

@Zzyzx11: and @Ladygaga328: discussed this issue in a talk page for the MSA article years ago, so pinging them here. I couldn't find anyone other discussion relevant to this issue. --haha169 (talk) 10:10, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Merge as the CSA article contains mostly redundant material, aside from stats. The CSA content can easily be hosted at the SFBA article. Binksternet (talk) 04:29, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

FYI, I am the creator of the CSA article, for reasons that seemed appropriate at the time. Some folks were trying to change the SFBA article into the CSA article, confusing the local nine-county definition with the larger federal definition. Binksternet (talk) 04:31, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Also, we should not lose track of the fact that the CSA was 12 counties at first, then 14 counties. We should not misrepresent the CSA as always having been 14 counties. Binksternet (talk) 05:04, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Glad to see the creator of the CSA article supporting the merge. You said something about stats being hosted in the SFBA article -- the stats are pop., density, land area, and GDP, all of which I think is already hosted in the SFBA area either in the infobox or in the text of the "Economy" section. Was there anything else that needs to be merged? --haha169 (talk) 05:31, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

I would like to see something new: the evolution of the CSA described in steps, starting with 11 counties, going to 12, then 14. So that's not really a merge, is it? The fact of the 12-county CSA was erased when editors updated to 14 counties. I understand it was 11 counties in 2002.[2][3] Binksternet (talk) 15:15, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

That's easy enough to do. Just change the last sentence of the third paragraph in "Boundaries" to: "...and one CSA which includes all nine counties plus neighboring San Benito, Santa Cruz, San Joaquin, Merced, and Stanislaus counties. Merced and Stanislaus Counties were added to the CSA in September 2018." --haha169 (talk) 04:01, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

@Binksternet: Do you have any thoughts on merging San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA MSA into this article as well. I noticed that the MSA article suffers many of the same problems as the CSA, and none of the other MSAs at List of metropolitan statistical areas seem to have their own articles. --haha169 (talk) 08:06, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

I think that article has a non-notable topic, and should be redirected. Binksternet (talk) 15:27, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Metropolitan statistical areas should be defined

A reader should be able to use this article to determine, say, which metropolitan statistical area San Mateo County belongs to. This article defined the CSA and mentioned the five MSAs but didn't define the MSAs. After separate articles about the combined statistical areas and metropolitan statistical areas were merged into this article, details about the MSAs were apparently removed from this article. That left no article on Wikipedia to explain which Bay Area counties are in which MSAs and no articles about the MSAs themselves – an anomaly among metropolitan areas.

In Special:Diff/1044054951, I attempted to solve this problem by outlining the CSA and its constituent statistical areas (MSAs and metropolitan divisions). If these statistical areas aren't notable enough for their own articles, they're at least notable enough to explain in this article without making readers piece together the details from individual county articles. In Special:Diff/1044427203, Haha169 removed the information, along with a historical detail that had previously been present in this article, in favor of a sentence that is hardly equivalent. Even if the MSA section gave too much prominence to this locally unaccepted scheme, I believe this was an overreaction.

Special:Diff/1047905185 restores the section but moves it to the bottom of the article. I don't know if this fully addresses Haha169's concerns, but I'd welcome a discussion about how else to ensure that this information is reasonably accessible on Wikipedia without putting too much emphasis on it.

– Minh Nguyễn ^💬 05:51, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

I feel like the list gives undue weight to the delineations of the MSAs and CSAs, which while relevant is already explained in the article. My reasoning is that the scope of the article is already large; the goal is to cover many topics succinctly, and the long, bulleted list serves to single out the OMB delineations for importance and give them such prominence over the other definitions or even other Bay Area topics in this article.

I recognize that other "metropolitan area" articles generally do have some kind listing of counties in their respective MSAs or CSAs; but the thing is that this article does too. There is both a map in the infobox and a paragraph that lists the counties. I'm not necessarily against having some kind of list similar to what Porland has, for example, but the current list you created is as long as the entire "Government and Politics" section. And quite frankly, is it necessary to have one bullet say "Merced metropolitan statistical area", and underneath it say "Merced County"? It takes up two lines and looks redundant.

Personally, I think a good compromise would be to have something like the Portland table, with perhaps a new column that shows which constituent MSA the county is in. A table like this both conveys more information than the bulleted list and takes up less space: (data fields are incorrect, will need to be fixed)

Extended content

Counties in the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area County 2020 Population 2010 Population Change Area Density MSA Alameda 1,494,876 54.6% 56.4% 14.1% +42.3% San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley Contra Costa 1,037,817 58.5% 50.4% 21.8% +24.8% Marin 250,666 61.5% 54.4% 18.2% +36.2% San Francisco 870,887 62.4% 55.6% 8.6% +47.0% San Mateo 711,622 50.7% 51.3% 19.4% +31.9% San Benito 478,551 54.7% 51.5% 21.6% +29.9% San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara Santa Clara 1,762,754 46.5% 45.6% 21.7% +23.9% Napa 135,377 56.2% 46.9% 24.2% +22.7% Napa Solano 411,620 51.1% 48.6% 25.0% +23.6% Vallejo–Fairfield Sonoma 478,551 54.7% 51.5% 21.6% +29.9% Santa Rosa–Petaluma Merced 478,551 54.7% 51.5% 21.6% +29.9% Merced Santa Cruz 478,551 54.7% 51.5% 21.6% +29.9% Santa Cruz–Watsonville San Joaquin 478,551 54.7% 51.5% 21.6% +29.9% Stockton–Lodi Stanislaus 478,551 54.7% 51.5% 21.6% +29.9% Modesto   Bay Area counties colored red

I removed the MSA codes and the MSA division-level delineations, I don't think that level of detail is in-scope for a general encyclopedic article on the Bay Area writ large. This table serves as a good quick visual and summary table for those looking to identify the names of the counties quickly, while at the same time, I hope, serves to include the MSA definitions that you want. I feel that this dual-use is much better than one simply listing out the MSA delineations. --haha169 (talk) 21:15, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Haha169, you removed the chronology, and now the reader might conclude (incorrectly) that the CSA has always included these listed entries. Binksternet (talk) 23:20, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Haha169: A tabular representation is reasonable; I would've gone for the same approach but didn't have time to put together the population columns, so thanks for putting that together. The codes probably are a bit much, but the metropolitan divisions are worth keeping, perhaps as another column. We could add another column for the date on which each county was added to the CSA, or perhaps a footnote explaining that bit. I understand the desire to keep this article high-level, but that's an argument for bringing back the MSA articles, not for barring this information from non-list articles altogether. For perspective, New York metropolitan area#Statistical area is an example of an MSA/CSA outline that lists metropolitan divisions in the very first section of the article. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 06:54, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@User:Mxn, those things you asked for, including MSA date added, metropolitan divisions, and such are far too trivial. Per WP:HTRIVIA, this is information "broadly defined as not important." Metropolitan divisions and their codes is not something a general resource encyclopedia would contain, that information is better left in Census Bureau guidebooks. We wouldn't include the birth years of the 49ers players in this article, and quite frankly, I feel that 49ers players' birth dates are as relevant as the date each metropolitan region was added to the CSA. Your argument that the NY metro area lists the metropolitan division fails WP:OTHERCONTENT; just because another article does something is not an argument for doing so here. (And even the NY metro article doesn't even go into the detail of listing the dates when counties were added to the CSA).

I am just pushing back on adding trivia to this article. In the second paragraph of WP:HTRIVIA, the guidelines reference an example involving a South Park episode, a real space ship, and the death of a fictional character in the episode. It says, "The overall importance of the piece of information depends on the situation." The death of the fictional character may be mentioned in the article on the South Park episode and the fictional character's article, but not in the article for the real space ship. It's the same situation here; the MSA and CSA articles are here to explain the details of MSA and CSA delineations and their various elements. That level of detail is not relevant here in the Bay Area article. And there is no need to create a "new" MSA or CSA article to showcase this. --haha169 (talk) 08:20, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I concur with User:Minh Nguyễn on this. The CSA and MSA information should be briefly mentioned somewhere in this article. In the alternative, the separate articles on the MSAs and CSA should be restored. Describing MSAs and CSAs as mere trivia reflects a fundamental lack of understanding of the importance of CSA and MSA-based data in the social sciences (especially human geography) and business. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:02, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Coolcaesar: You're misunderstanding my point. The table that I made clearly shows which counties are in the CSA as well as the various MSAs that make up the CSA, which I believe addresses your concern. What I am objecting to is by taking it a step further and including columns regarding the metropolitan divisions, the MSA codes, and the date when each county was added to the CSA. I would argue that none of this information is relevant for an article related to the Bay Area. I also object to creating a new CSA or MSA article just to show those extra three points as they are not notable enough to warrant a separate article.

Including the metropolitan divisions (which for the most part already aligns with the MSAs) would just serve to clutter the chart, while the date added isn't actually relevant in any way and would require hunting down the sourcing in the federal register. The MSA codes don't add anything substantive. haha169 (talk) 21:32, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Again, I'm not insisting that the MSA codes be retained. They're easily confused with other codes like ZIP codes and don't serve much purpose beyond technical procedures. I just happened to copy-paste lines that included them from the source and didn't bother to remove them, but I've gone ahead and removed them from the article to avoid further confusion.

I am well aware of WP:OTHERCONTENT, but I mentioned New York metropolitan area for perspective, because the back matter I'm arguing for is much less prominent than the first section that's typical of metropolitan area articles. Nevertheless, I think this information is important for avoiding confusion about these statistical areas. For better or worse, this article is the only one that attempts to explain the chaotic attempts to define and subdivide the Bay Area. In the absence of adequate detail about how the CSA is broken down, assumptions can take hold. For example, in this discussion, it was proposed that San Jose MSA information be moved into the Santa Clara County article, even though the MSA consists of two counties.

The dates of inclusion don't have to be part of the chart; they could just as well be part of the section that contains the chart, if that would be clearer. Here are the dates each MSA or county was added to the CSA or its predecessors, the San Francisco–Oakland–San Jose consolidated metropolitan statistical area (CMSA) and standard consolidated statistical area (SCSA) and the San Francisco–Oakland standard metropolitan area (SMA):

• Alameda County: 1950– [4]
• Contra Costa County: 1950– [5]
• Marin County: 1950– [6]
• Merced County: 2018– [7]
• Napa County: 1983– [8]
• San Benito County: 2013– [9]
• San Francisco: 1950 [10]
• San Joaquin County: 2009– [11]
• San Mateo County: 1950– [12]
• Santa Clara County: 1983– [13]
• Santa Cruz County: 1983– [14]
• Solano County: 1950–1963 [15][16], 1983– [17]
• Sonoma County: 1983– [18]
• Stanislaus County: 2018– [19]

Sources: [20][21][22]

  Minh Nguyễn ^💬 00:53, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

I suppose I still don't understand the argument for why simply listing out the MSAs (as my table does) isn't sufficient. Why the need for metro divisions (which essentially mirrors the MSAs in almost every instance)? Why the need for the CSA entry date? What purpose do these facts bring to the article? Because from my perspective they would add visual clutter while not actually conveying anything of import. In fact, the current Bay Area article is the only one I've seen that even attempts to explain the chaotic mess of definitions, and so I don't see the benefit of adding to the chaos by introducing clutter. The "definitions" section of the article already serves its purpose by explaining why the Bay Area's boundary lines are messy and controversial, highlighting the most commonly accepted local 9-county definition, and introducing a few other important definitions including MSAs and CSAs. I feel like this is enough. This is an article about the Bay Area writ large, not about how the OMB divvies up the Bay Area and surrounding counties and when they did so.

Perhaps you could change my mind if you have a non-intrusive proposal on how to present the dates. But I still don't see why it is necessary.--haha169 (talk) 06:18, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Haha169 here. I think the table makes much more sense, is significantly easier to read, and conveys more useful information than the bulleted list. The counties and their populations provide more valuable info than simply listing out the metropolitan divisions within each of the MSAs. But if we are going to list out the divisions (again, unclear why we would since that information is not generally used anywhere but at the OMB) then I think it should also be done in Table Format and not as a long bulleted list. Cowboywizard (talk) 22:44, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Cowboywizard: There's no disagreement about using a table. I just included a bulleted list above for convenience, not because I want to see that exact presentation in the article. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 05:43, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

To me, the most important thing is to ensure that the breakdown of counties by MSA is explicitly included somewhere in the article, such as in this table, not just implied as it was. I'm willing to concede the omission of metropolitan divisions if it makes the table easier to lay out.

The dates of inclusion are relevant because the table, once corrected, will display the 2010 populations of each county, potentially misleading a reader to determine the overall CSA's 2010 population by summing that column. (I understand the difficulty of presenting this information accurately in tabular form, having just mucked up Cincinnati metropolitan area for the 2020 census that includes some counties for the first time.) I think we could indicate the dynamic nature of this CSA in an unintrusive way, by adding an asterisk to Merced, San Benito, and Stanislas counties under the "2010 Census" column, and perhaps by citing each of the rows with the source I provided above.

 – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 05:59, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

That's an interesting point I I hadn't thought of. In that case, we could just use an asterisk for those three counties to state that they were not in the CSA yet in 2010. Would that be sufficient? --haha169 (talk) 06:21, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Haha169: Yes, I think so. I'd probably cite that footnote with [23][24]. Some other asterisks/sources would only be necessary if we were to extend the table to previous censuses for some reason. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 18:06, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Updating the table, collapsed the earlier version above:

Counties in the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area

  Bay Area counties colored red
† Merced and Stanislaus counties were not part the CSA until 2018.

County	2020 Population	2010 Population	Change	2020 Density (per sq mi)	MSA
Alameda	1,682,353	1,510,271	+11.4%	2,281.3	San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley
Contra Costa	1,165,927	1,049,025	+11.1%	1,626.3
Marin	250,666	252,409	+3.9%	504.1
San Francisco	873,965	805,235	+8.5%	18,629.1
San Mateo	764,442	718,451	+6.4%	1,704.0
San Benito	64,209	55,269	+16.2%	46.2	San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara
Santa Clara	1,936,259	1,781,642	+8.7%	1,499.7
Napa	138,019	136,484	+1.1%	184.4	Napa
Solano	453,491	413,344	+9.7%	551.8	Vallejo–Fairfield
Sonoma	488,863	483,878	+1.0%	310.3	Santa Rosa–Petaluma
Merced	281,202	255,793 †	+9.9%	145.1	Merced
Santa Cruz	270,861	262,382	+3.2%	608.5	Santa Cruz–Watsonville
San Joaquin	779,233	685,306	+13.7%	559.6	Stockton–Lodi
Stanislaus	552,878	514,453 †	+7.5%	369.6	Modesto

I looked at the two OMB documents you sent over, and I didn't see anywhere where they listed additions to the CSA or anything like that. Did I miss it or could you point it out to me? --haha169 (talk) 03:07, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Looks like the table still has some errors towards the bottom. Only Merced and Stanislaus counties should have a †. The OMB bulletins don't explicitly state the changes; instead, you need to compare the document with the previous document:

• Stanislaus County (aka Modesto MSA) and Merced County (Merced MSA) have been part of the CSA since September 2018, when they were detached from the Modesto–Merced CSA seen in the April 2018 bulletin.
• I got the reference for San Benito County wrong because the 2009 bulletin made "San Benito" unsearchable somehow. (Lesson: always consult the plain-text files first.) The 1999 bulletin[25] was the last to list Santa Clara County as the sole county in the San Jose PMSA, and the 2003 bulletin[26] was the first to list San Benito as part of the San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara MSA. Since this table doesn't go back as far as the 2000 census, there's no need for a † on San Benito County. Sorry for the confusion.
• For San Joaquin County (aka Stockton–Lodi MSA), compare 2009 to 2013. The 2009 definitions were still in effect by the 2010 census, so it doesn't need a †.
• Santa Cruz County has been part of the CSA since 1983, so it doesn't need a †.

 – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 05:12, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I made the updates. If it all looks good now, then the only thing left is to fill in the data and format the citations. I could look into doing that later when I have more time. --haha169 (talk) 02:42, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

References

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