Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
It looks like Orange County, CA. Much of Santa Clara County is protected land.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by homebucket
This is actually intentional. In the 50s-60s, there was a city manager by the name of A.P. “Dutch” Hamann who grew up in Orange County and wanted a more suburban feel for SJ. He is on the record as being inspired by LA, and rather than concentrating economic development in downtown SJ, he annexed unincorporated areas of Santa Clara County on the outskirts of the city, and heavily developed those farmland areas. He also rejected BART in favor of a series of freeways and expressways. Suburban sprawl became the preferred method of development. And now we are left with the chaotic sprawly mess that we see today.
|
I'm comforted by not being the only person who felt this way.
I went up to San Jose for a job offer in 2013. Ten minutes of driving on the 880 (yes, I lived in SoCal...) and the cost to rent a bedroom in a suburban SJ house (between $900 and $1100 at the time) were enough to dissuade me from relocating, but the entire time I was there I couldn't shake the feeling that San Jose (which I thought had a very nice downtown, fwiw) and Silicon Valley in general felt and looked like an upscale Orange County, as absurd as that may sound. There's so much money, power and influence flowing through that valley that for someone like me who wasn't looking to relocate for a tech job (the job offer was for a probation officer position at Santa Clara County), it was hard not to feel out of place.