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I think the takeaway is STL in its present state holds its own with Alameda county decently. St Louis is a somewhat better city, but Alameda has more to do in the metro nature-wise and has weather many people might prefer.
Adding in the Bay Area and the quick connect to SF definitely puts it in a different league from STL metro, but when you factor in cost of living, STL has an edge for many people over Oakland.
I'd also add that I feel property crime effects the affluent/to upper middle class areas of Oakland more than St Louis and much more of St Louis is well kept than Oakland. That said the worst parts of STL are MUCH worse than the worst parts of Oakland.
How does the city of St Louis hold it's own vs Alameda County, which has 1.6 million people over 700 sq miles?
If youre talking about the St Louis Metro Area then the commensurate Oakland Metro Division is Alameda and Contra Costa.
Thanks for educating me on Fresno. To be fair, your downtown has pretty good bones.
Thanks for the kind words.
I normally dont fuss over being cohorted with bakersfield, but the whole Mccarthy mess from last month brought a lot of undeserved fresno hate on the internet. i couldnt help myself
A little more about fresno
The fresno airport is closer to the Sacramento airport in passenger volume than to the bakersfield airport, with just 1 terminal. Put in two terminals and the fresno airport moves light years past the bakersfield airport (city wants to add a second terminal asap)
2 million passengers in fresno
200k in bakersfield
10 million in Sacramento right now
Fresno has potential to get down to 5 homicides per 100k. Itll be very hard to do, but its doable. Normal is 7-9 per 100k(only 1 homicide this month in fresoo, but the county is a little ahead of average). 5 homicides per 100k is basically unheard of east of the Mississippi.
Fresno has a small, but very good foodie/fine dining scene. Hip restaurants get added every year. In fact, Fresnos first michelin worthy restaurant was added this year. Great odds it gets the distinction. Sacramento only has 2 michilin restaurants.
Fresno doesnt have the valley fever issues like bakersfield has. Fresno gets enough rain to keep nasty dust clouds away
. (9.20 inches fresno, 4 inches bakersfield rain season so far). Valley fever is more of a rural fresno county issue than a city issue.
Its not all good, of course.
Fresno has a decent art seen, but most people dont care(sports rule fresno)
You can go to bodegas from most homes, but good luck walking or cycling to a job site(city is working on changing that)
Schools are mediocre for much of fresno(typical in California)
Smog isnt as bad as made out to be, however. Using weather apps makes it easy to avoid putrid air. I honestly rather deal with fresno pollution than with texas allergies (google that mess). And texas air quality is only getting worse because of all the sprawl/construction!!!
Bakersfield isnt all bad either. It has its pros as well, its just a step below fresno if people are honest.
Alright looking from that perspective then Oakland does seem pretty over rated and over priced when discussing strictly city limits. That it relies more heavily on it's surrounding areas, which isn't in this comparison.
But it's fair to say that St Louis is a little bit more country (by culture), that's not a bad thing.
Man, now that I'm looking at it from that perspective, Oakland is just a bigger Stockton or San Bernardino with a port. Oakland just has a few more upper class (overpriced) neighborhoods and a port but overall is really a rundown city with a dangerous downtown (all three Oak, SB, Stockton).
Oakland lost almost all of their professional sports teams and maybe soon to be all. Once everything leaves it really is just a bombed out city next to the ocean.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dontbelievehim
Thanks for the kind words.
I normally dont fuss over being cohorted with bakersfield, but the whole Mccarthy mess from last month brought a lot of undeserved fresno hate on the internet. i couldnt help myself
A little more about fresno
The fresno airport is closer to the Sacramento airport in passenger volume than to the bakersfield airport, with just 1 terminal. Put in two terminals and the fresno airport moves light years past the bakersfield airport (city wants to add a second terminal asap)
2 million passengers in fresno
200k in bakersfield
10 million in Sacramento right now
Fresno has potential to get down to 5 homicides per 100k. Itll be very hard to do, but its doable. Normal is 7-9 per 100k(only 1 homicide this month in fresoo, but the county is a little ahead of average). 5 homicides per 100k is basically unheard of east of the Mississippi.
Fresno has a small, but very good foodie/fine dining scene. Hip restaurants get added every year. In fact, Fresnos first michelin worthy restaurant was added this year. Great odds it gets the distinction. Sacramento only has 2 michilin restaurants.
Fresno doesnt have the valley fever issues like bakersfield has. Fresno gets enough rain to keep nasty dust clouds away
. (9.20 inches fresno, 4 inches bakersfield rain season so far). Valley fever is more of a rural fresno county issue than a city issue.
Its not all good, of course.
Fresno has a decent art seen, but most people dont care(sports rule fresno)
You can go to bodegas from most homes, but good luck walking or cycling to a job site(city is working on changing that)
Schools are mediocre for much of fresno(typical in California)
Smog isnt as bad as made out to be, however. Using weather apps makes it easy to avoid putrid air. I honestly rather deal with fresno pollution than with texas allergies (google that mess). And texas air quality is only getting worse because of all the sprawl/construction!!!
Bakersfield isnt all bad either. It has its pros as well, its just a step below fresno if people are honest.
Thanks for more facts. Yeah Bakersfield is also OK. I'd say Stockton is the one with the least going for it, other than being closer to the Bay Area.
Actually, were I to pick a city whose place in the metropolitan firmanent most closely resembles Oakland's, it would be Newark, N.J. Just as Oakland would be a metropolitan center in its own right (as opposed to a secondary center) were it not located just five miles or so from San Francisco, so Newark would were it not a 15-minute train ride from Manhattan. Both have similar civic infrastructure (including most of the active cargo port facilities for their respective regions), and both live in the shadow of the bigger neighbor next door. (Oakland is also close to Newark in population, albeit larger. I had thought it was about Kansas City, Mo.'s size population-wise, but I see that it's actually a little smaller and has been for most of its history.)
Both have airports, and both of their airports are busy but not international gateways — that role falls to an airport in (or connected with) the bigger city.
The biggest difference between the two: Newark has no fabulously affluent people living in it, while Oakland does.
Demographically, Jersey City is pretty comparable to Oakland.
Id say jersey city is smaller. As is Newark and both are MUCH smaller than any NYC borough so it’s a unique situation
There are fewer people living on Staten Island (~475k) than in Kansas City, Mo. Richmond County (the Borough of Staten Island) is also very close in size to Oakland.
The population differential between Newark and the City of New York, or any of the other four boroughs, is indeed an order of magnitude or two bigger than that between Oakland and San Francisco, but I don't think that negates any of the observations I made about New Jersey's largest city, which as of the latest Census estimates has more people living in it than live in Pittsburgh or St. Louis.
And the population differential between Newark and Oakland is only about 125k. I wouldn't consider it all that huge.
My beloved forever hometown of Kansas City is more "country" than St. Louis, and yet I wouldn't call it a "hick" city either; its ritzy residential districts and shopping center (the nation's first) hold their own with counterparts both in St. Louis and elsewhere.
I tend to refer to St. Louis as "the last great city of the East" and KC as "the first great city of the West." And agriculture is far more important to KC's economy than it is to St. Louis', Monsanto notwithstanding. But neither of them I would consider "country" in the way that poster used the term.
On to appropriate cities to compare Oakland to:
Actually, were I to pick a city whose place in the metropolitan firmanent most closely resembles Oakland's, it would be Newark, N.J. Just as Oakland would be a metropolitan center in its own right (as opposed to a secondary center) were it not located just five miles or so from San Francisco, so Newark would were it not a 15-minute train ride from Manhattan. Both have similar civic infrastructure (including most of the active cargo port facilities for their respective regions), and both live in the shadow of the bigger neighbor next door. (Oakland is also close to Newark in population, albeit larger. I had thought it was about Kansas City, Mo.'s size population-wise, but I see that it's actually a little smaller and has been for most of its history.)
Both have airports, and both of their airports are busy but not international gateways — that role falls to an airport in (or connected with) the bigger city.
The biggest difference between the two: Newark has no fabulously affluent people living in it, while Oakland does.
Having lived in St. Louis for 4 years, and having been to Kansas City many times while there and since, I never understood this distinction. The two cities to me are very common. You have the Delmar Divide similar to the Troost Divide, and to me Westport reminds me a lot of the Central West End. To me both cities are more eastern in feel than western. Perhaps I am missing something, but I think of Rapid City, SD as the first western settlement, but it's not on the level of a city.
Newark, which I lived near most of my life, does, believe or not, have a modestly affluent section, it's small. At least when I lived there anyway, which was quite a while ago. It was the Branch Brook Park section. Although, smaller and not as affluent as Piedmont/Montclair in Oakland.
Having lived in St. Louis for 4 years, and having been to Kansas City many times while there and since, I never understood this distinction. The two cities to me are very common. You have the Delmar Divide similar to the Troost Divide, and to me Westport reminds me a lot of the Central West End. To me both cities are more eastern in feel than western. Perhaps I am missing something, but I think of Rapid City, SD as the first western settlement, but it's not on the level of a city.
They had disappeared by the time you got there, I suspect, but: stockyards. Yes, St. Louis had them (across the river in East St. Louis, IIRC) as well, and of course, Chicago's were even bigger than KC's. But it seems to me that Kansas City was more of a cowtown than either — and I believe most locals shared that opinion as well; I would characterize the dominant attitude among the "better" class of Kansas Citians when I was growing up there as one of trying to sweep its cowtown heritage under the rug in order to win the approval of those Eastern snobs. (It also had distanced itself somewhat from its more recent jazz heritage during those years, at least among those "better classes" who rarely ventured East of Troost except to pick up Q at Bryant's or catch ballgames at Municipal Stadium.). I contend that Kansas City didn't start to become cool (again) until it decided to embrace its colorful past, including the cowtown stuff as well as the freewheeling environment that the Pendergast machine permitted — the environment in which jazz could flourish.
IME, St. Louis never has been a cowtown. Nor has Chicago, the "hog butcher to the world" heritage notwithstanding. It's that difference that leads me to class Kansas City (like its similarly sized sibling in Texas, Fort Worth, also a cowtown at heart) as a Western city.
Quote:
Newark, which I lived near most of my life, does, believe or not, have a modestly affluent section, it's small. At least when I lived there anyway, which was quite a while ago. It was the Branch Brook Park section. Although, smaller and not as affluent as Piedmont/Montclair in Oakland.
Actually, I think I know someone who lives in that part of Newark — and he's a native Kansas Citian who attended Rockhurst High School, the Jesuit school that was Pembroke-Country Day's arch-rival in football. So let me modify that sentence to state that "very few fabulously affluent people" live in Newark. And I wouldn't characterize this fellow as "fabulously" affluent, either, though he definitely lives comfortably.
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