Quote:
Originally Posted by Adder
If you were working the in the Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Menlo Park type area, where would you live? Assume that you tend to prefer cities to suburbs, and you don't want a super long commute. Is San Jose a decent place to live?
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San Jose is a decent place to live, but I'm not confident that it is a "city" in the sense you mean. It's larger than San Francisco, but much more sprawling and without distinct urban neighborhoods. The downtown looks like it has been redeveloped all within the last 20 years, because it has. This has left it with a somewhat artificial urban character, and I think the neighborhoods of the Peninsula are more authentic, which is what most people are looking for (rather than the middle-of-the-night amenities of a large metropolis). Also, in downtown San Jose, you cannot drive four blocks without a cop following you for at least two of them. It's the most thoroughly policed city I've ever been to.
Needless to say, don't make any decisions until you've visited with this specific issue in mind. I think some people would say that Palo Alto is the kind of "urban" they're looking for -- by which they mean it's not exactly like the suburb where they grew up, but it's also not a big scary city. It has a central drag with good restaurants and bookshops where you can hang out, and coffee shops galore. I think that's what most yuppies mean when they say "city." YMMV.
