Greater Bay Area

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by goonzy

Nah, I dont think a bourough system would work like New York City. While we share many similarities, geographically with New York City, we differ as well in many ways. For example, Oakliand is not like Brookyln, Oakland is the central business district of the East Bay region, Oakland has its own identity, its own sport franchises, its own airports and its own water supply independent of any other sub region of the Bay Area. Brookyln and Manhattan are and have always been heavly tied together and the passage of the bourough sytems of New York City deminstarte this point while Oakland and San Francisco have never been abler(for the most part) to work togther. Faliure of past consolidation efforts between the East bay and San Francisco prove this point.
I think what makes the San Francisco Bay Area and so unique and progressive is our heavley independent balkinized regions are always trying to do their own thing.
Let the East Bay be the East Bay and not part of San Francisco. This also works vice versa.
I do think though that we should have 4 independent regions in the Bay Area each anchored in by their own independent central businnes district as the capitol of the sub regions of the Bay Area. San Francisco gets the West Bay. Oakland gets the East Bay. San Jose gets the South Bay and Santa Rosa gets the North Bay. It is competion why the Bay Area is so impressive, with SF and Oakland and San Jose saying forget this B.S., we are going to build our own dowtown and our own airports and have our own teams and hospitals. Every region is constintly trying to out do each other but while still maintaing a bay area identity. This is what makes the Bay Area so cool. We our the only metroplitan region anchored in by 3 cities. The San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose Bay Area. No other Metro area has three large american cities in its metropolitan region.
So lets roll with this balkinization that our for fathers left for us but lets try to reel it in a tiny bit. So instead of 9 counties in the bay area, now there will only be 4. West Bay county, SOuth Bay County, East Bay County and North Bay County. But no matter what side of the Bay we are from, let us never forget that we are all representin the BAY.

ugh...not this again.

[andyadhi01]

Originally Posted by batransplant

the bay area is spread out and made up of what I consider "little towns w/ few amenities". It takes 45 min to get anywhere beyond a grocery store from no matter where you live unless you live in the exact same "little town" as your job. If you change jobs in the bay area, which is probable, you will end up driving to some other "little town" 30 min to 1 hour away.

Bay area has worst of urban sprawl without a modern highway structure to support the resulting traffic. Neither does it have the widespread rail network like East coast. So everyone is forced to commute by driving long hours.

[andyadhi01]

I think a great number of bay area cities should consolidate to form a few large cities. The current systems of 100s of tiny cities simply increases the size of city government with redundant city departments every 2-5 miles. For example, what is the point of SF, Daly city and SSF being separate entities? If the cities consolidate then the govt agencies like police, fire, public transit etc can be merged, redundant staffs laid off and so on. This will restore solvency in city budgets and get rid overpaid, overbloated, city govt.s that is mooching off tax payers. Corporate style merger and acquisitions should be applied to governance too.

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by 18Montclair

ugh...not this again.

That's what I was thinking

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by andyadhi01

I think a great number of bay area cities should consolidate to form a few large cities. The current systems of 100s of tiny cities simply increases the size of city government with redundant city departments every 2-5 miles. For example, what is the point of SF, Daly city and SSF being separate entities? If the cities consolidate then the govt agencies like police, fire, public transit etc can be merged, redundant staffs laid off and so on. This will restore solvency in city budgets and get rid overpaid, overbloated, city govt.s that is mooching off tax payers. Corporate style merger and acquisitions should be applied to governance too.

Or this again

[mayorhaggar]