A deep dive into the history of city planning in San José, CA
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
- Did you know San José is the 10th largest city in America? Or that its Light Rail System needs therapy? Watch this video to learn more about the odd history of how San José came to be as the world's largest suburb!
Hey all, really shocked by the success of this video. I honestly had never recorded my voice before, had ever even touched any editing software, or written and read a script.
This obviously lead to some growing pains. I want to briefly put line some fact checking viewers have done and outline next video goals. I really appreciate it and promise future videos will have much less errors, and no jokes about numbers like a 13 year old in 2009. Overall they are pretty minor but I want to be transparent.
The MLS San José Earthquakes also play in San José. I erroneously say the Sharks are the only professional sports team. This is because their park is very close to Santa Clara.
When I show an image and labeled it "New York, New York" that was actually an image of Bostons North end. I had a couple images for the same point and swapped them out, my apologizes to the city of Boston (also sorry Bruins fans).
The Botanical Gardens I mention in the collage are actually in Saratoga, not San José proper. Honestly if anything this proves how little there is in the city.
As some have pointed out, San José based on recent estimates is below 1 million people. I was using the 2020 census. I think with new developments I think it will bounce back over 1 million in the next 10 years.
I mispronounced Diridion, I chalk that up to me never recording my voice before and having to record on my phone in a broom closet 4x I made a few odd word choices lime "The Northern California" who says that?
Lastly, I got some very detailed comments from people noting that VTA is not controlled by the city but is more County level, which partially explains a lot of it's issues. I plan to do a video on how bay area transit agencies are the Holy Roman Empire of transit someday and go into this in further detail.
I also want to say I plan less weak cutaway jokes, and no jokes about "69" until I do a video on I-69. I'd be lying if I don't want to use meme humor in future videos, but I will make it less throwaway and hopefully less obnoxious.
In your future Bay Area transit video, if you ever do it, there’s a great organization called Seamless Bay Area doing a lot of great advocacy to unite the 27(!) different transit agencies. Plus they have great graphics you could borrow
Graphics I can borrow you say...
I'd say keep exploring humor however you want. Humor in this vid was fine and if you are having fun it generally improves the quality of the final product. Never stop playing, etc
p.s. Quite surprised this is your first video! "City Planner Plays City Builders" got me into city planning in a big way, but most of his experience is in other states, and I've always been curious about Bay Area city planning. Keep it up!
Thanks for choosing my little big city for your first video! You got a lot right. I actually think everything you talked about really obfuscates the incredible aspects of the city, so I'm not mad you missed how much is really happening here :)
After growing up in San Jose, I can easily tell how it is just one giant suburb. Pockets of the city are more walkable such as Willow Glen, Midtown, and Downtown but there is still so much more to be desired. I have noticed an increase in bike infrastructure in my neighborhood with a brand new protected bike lane but it still has a long way to go. It is hard to get anywhere without a car. Even when I take the Caltrain, I stop and park at Diordan station. With traffic becoming closer to pre-pandemic levels, it is becoming more and more obvious that transit to and from the work centers of Silicon Valley needs to be utilized.
Appreciate the comment, hope it gets better utilized too!
As a San Josean, I agree with this analysis. I also live in what is considered downtown. There is so much potential; unfortunately many long time residents have gotten used to the car-centric way of life. Still, there advocates like myself who are pushing for more protected bike lanes and mixed-use mid rise buildings. Two things worthy of mentioning. About 4x/year, the city closes a set of streets to cars, and allows bikes, skates, etc to travel for fun with food kiosks and music playing along the routes. The goal is to get people outside and enjoying the downtown from a different pov. What I hope is that it will bend minds to another possible way of life here. Another thing happening is there is at least one street which has permanently closed itself to cars....and subsequently it is one of the most popular destinations in downtown.
Great to hear about your activism! I agree a big part is pov, once you put perspective to it all, it becomes less alien and that helps normalize these changes. I think one area of "urbanist youtube" I want to be a part of is going over a lot of these challenges. Not to use this as a soapbox, but I think the way we describe a lot of elements as inherently foreign ie "Dutch style bike system" is one area that has lead to this friction. Making a lot of sensible housing and biking policy inherently "European" I think makes it harder for people to imagine these things in there city. However as you pointed out, San Jose already has a closed off street, already has sets of streets closed down, and as other commenters pointed out, already has mixed used neighborhoods. It's a campaign for more of what is the best parts of the city and I wish you the best of luck!
Use electric skateboard bro
As a San Jose resident too, I agree with bike lanes and stuff, but I would disagree that San Jose is unworkable as it is right now, I actually like the suburb-feel of San Jose, unlike driving into SF or Oakland, and I don't need to drive into downtown or business areas, yes we can always improve light rail and bus lines, but there should be a good balance, not every city needs to be 100% bike / walkable, San Jose just needs some improvement in the future
I think San Jose is workable! I hope I didn't come across as a doomer, I'm an optimist. I believe as in the video, I don't realistically think San Jose could just poof turn into Barcelona. There's areas of improvement but it's not like the city is doomed. I apologize for not going over more of the positive of San Jose. Some of my best friends went to college there and I have a lot of family who grew up/live there.
I would push a bit about the walkability because a city that isn't walkable is a safety hazard. You can have suburb be walkable, so why shouldn't a city?
Additionally, I get why people like the suburb-feel of San Jose, I'd only note that's kind of how California got into it's affordability crisis. San Francisco being against "Mahattanization" in the 1970s eventually snowballed throughout the bay to create the modern NIMBY movement. That doesn't mean I think San Jose needs an entire rebuild, but just wanted to note that the suburb-feel comes at a very high cost.
as someone who has used the VTA system i can tell you that it is not practical for most people who want to stay employed at their job. The busses run when they want to and will pass you by the other half. If you don't happen to live near a direct route to your destination then you can spend huge amounts of time in transit. Cars are essential if you want to keep your job. Mixed use building that would allow people to live, work, and shop without a car sounds like a good idea.
I'm a San Jose native. I've always thought it was weird I never had any pride in my city, I've always thought it was lame and boring. When I go on vacation to Portland, Seattle, LA, San Diego, or Boston I envied what they had. Nice to know I'm not crazy.
Make the city one you want to have pride in, whatever that means to you!
this is funny because as someone from la, i envy what european cities i've visited have. like it makes our rail look almost useless
@@Matty002 yeah, but at least there's lots of cool shit to do in LA.
We have one art museum downtown and it sucks lol
I like San Jose the way it is rather boring than dangerous, is actually safe to walk around at night in pretty much every neighborhood in the city there are no real ghettos in San Jose like the ones in Oakland or LA or pretty much any other big city in the US.
@@geofherb1there’s hella shit to do in San Jose your trippin.
Growing up in San Jose and taking public transit for my whole life; I thought it was normal in other places to walk a mile to get to the train to then get to a stop then walk another mile to get to the stop. The funny thing is, where I lived and where my school was located was convenient enough for me to take public transit until I graduated. When I moved to a more urban area after college, I realized that I was a crazy person for accepting 20 minute walks to train stations as normal and convenient 😂
Yeah some people get lucky in San Jose and can do that. Ideally it would be a lot easier to take transit!
@Hinnawi the mega drought in the 2010's really saved my commute hah
I am a second generation San Jose native. My dad told me stories of how he used to work at Almaden vineyards and that the city was once a vast agricultural community. He would say the soil buried underneath San Jose cement is some of the most fertile in the world. Which makes sense due to the proximity to bay marshlands in Alviso and beyond that provide rich nutrients to the soil. Due to improper planning of building industry on the fertile ground of the bay area, California grows crops in mostly desert lands in the interior of the state.
San Jose has SO much potential to become a much better urbanist city, particularly in the areas in and adjacent to downtown, and the places along the current and planned rail corridors. I sincerely hope that San Jose follows through on all that potential. I do see glimmers of optimism: a growing network of protected bike lanes and intersections that are part of a bold cycling plan, ending single-family-exclusive zoning, ending parking minimums, a large mixed-use redevelopment plan for the area around San Jose Diridon station, and an increasing number of mixed use developments along existing light rail lines. San Jose has a long way to go to undo the planning mistakes of the post-war period. We have the money to make it happen. I just hope we have the will to do so.
I agree there is potential. This is not a doomer channel! I think the ball is starting to roll, state law changes + the new bike way they just approved gives me hope.
The bike lanes are retarded, horrible use of money, powerful factor in inner city congestion
Last I heard, Google is building a 40,000 person campus anchored in the diridon area. This injection of money and YUP millenial talent should really help get the ball rolling.
@@thefunktopuss930 unfortunately last I've heard is that Google put that project on hold right now :(. I hope they resume soon
Haha, I come from a rural area where everybody drives and thought nothing of San Jose (where my uncle lives) when I used to visit. I ended up leaving and spending 6 years living in walkable areas without a car, and I came to visit recently. I was horrified! It blew my mind that my uncle and his family didn't see a problem with how the city looked. I looked back on my previous visits and realized that I didn't see a problem either until I lived in walkable cities and experienced the quality of life change. It's pretty crazy how blind you can get when you're used to something.
Yeah you nailed it in the head. If you don't have experience with walkable cities, it doesn't seem unusual, but once you peel the layers back to the San José Onion, you realize this is an extremely bad way to plan a city.
it's because you never lived here and don't know how San Jose works, no one drives into downtown or business areas, and each neighborhood has its own stuff, yes there can always be more improvements, but not every city needs to be 100% bike / walkable, I like the suburb feel of San Jose, compared to SF or Oakland
@@danielzhang1916 What about the people that work there? Are you telling me that people all take public transit into downtown, or that nobody drives into downtown (which kinda defeats the whole purpose of a downtown if nobody goes there?)
Even if that's true, if you have a city with millions of people and they can't get to adjacent neighborhoods in reasonable time without a car, then something is lacking. If you're blind or have epilepsy, then what are you gonna do? Uber everywhere?
I felt extremely unsafe as a pedestrian in San Jose. I do not feel unsafe where I currently live.
@@danielzhang1916 I guess you like the smog your car centric living self produces also. You need to see other walkable, rail suburban towns around the country with urban growth centered around rapist transit stations. Cookie cutter sterile car dependent neighborhoods in the burbs are becoming obsolete.
Yeah I grew up in San Jose but eventually lived abroad for a while. I lived in Tokyo (with their amazing public transport system) and traveled to most of Southeast Asia and Oceania. After that I lived in SoCal for a while. When I finally came back I realized how awful SJ was setup. Eventually had to leave SJ again because of how expensive and how run down the city, the crime, the stupid/dangerous drivers on the road. I loved growing up there but I would never think of raising my kids there.
Some of the reasons San Jose's light rail is so poorly used, apart from the land use issues you already identified, is that the routes were made to serve the then new tech sector instead of the people of the city. By that, I mean that the city's heaviest traveled transit corridors (the east/west ones through downtown) were not the ones to be served by light rail. Additionally, San Jose should have learned from other cities that freeway ROW's make for inhospitable stations for people to wait but built an entire line located in the middle of two freeways anyways. Also, how likely was it that the highly paid employees of these tech companies lived along one of these lines and would have used it to get to work? Highly paid people are not the core loyal users of any transit system. They definitely weren't going to take a bus to the train to work, especially when the big tech companies had their own luxury private shuttles for their employee's commutes.
The East/West highest ridership lines that serve the densest and most transit dependent areas of the city have no light rail. This corridor passes directly through downtown and past Cal State SJ, De Anza College, and SJ City College as well as several large medical and commercial centers, in other words the ideal light rail corridor. I do think the city should shut down most of the existing system and keep the Capitol Ave line but extend it west to serve their core customer base and hit all these major centers on the way to Cupertino. That one good line would have far more ridership than the entire system currently does, cost much much less to run. Other light rail lines could build off of that line and example.
One thing that might put a damper on the growth of the entire transit system is that San Jose's high home prices are keeping people who would use a transit system from moving in. If you could afford a million dollar home, are you likely to use a bus and train? That leaves a dwindling transit-using population being replaced by wealthy non-transit users. This has been a problem for transit agencies throughout California's large cities.
Thank you for your detailed response! I'll do my best to respond paragraph by paragraph given you went pretty in detail on a lot of interesting issues.
Yeah the freeway ROW issue is wild, TODGod did a good demonstration of that in his videos. I agree about the tech side to a degree. I'd content some of the most expensive places in the world are also some of the most transit heavy, so clearly there is demand for it. San Francisco is also expensive but there is lots of transit. But to your point, ridership is more consistent for people with lower incomes in SF.
I think BART could help with the West/East issue? Although I think Santa Clara Blvd could use better transit lanes and be built up a lot more. Great points on there, a lot of ideas that I'm not that informed on but I get the line of reasoning.
The last point you have I think to some degree you are right, but I'd argue that it's more a question of density and stations with parking lots as moats that cause this issue. Why does Sacramento's RT have similar numbers to VTA light rail, even though houses are much cheaper there than in San Jose? Why does the N Judah line in SF get more ridership than all of VTA light rail, even though houses are similarly priced? My conclusion is that it's all highly correlated to density around stations and walk-ability. Some stations like Santa Teresa, they should be building as tall as possible there and similar stations to build up a better ridership and help make housing affordable. Then it helps stop the perpetual "tech workers don't ride transit, making transit worse" death loop San Jose is in right now.
Thanks for taking the time to make a comment!
@@offbrandurbanism San Francisco is a whole different animal. Parking. It costs a fortune to park for a day in SF and you can drive in circles for a long time to find a space on the street. Transit also takes priority in street layout, making driving less convenient. Most people use transit there for convenience. Rail stations are just a few blocks apart, not a mile apart. The city is built dense. Houses are small and right next to each other. When I lived in SF, I gave up driving. It was just too difficult to drive there and park anywhere. SF is more like Manhattan. SF is also a legacy rail city. It was built around the rail lines back in the early 1900s. Most large global cities are built dense and w comprehensive rail transit (Tokyo, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Singapore, etc). More people live and work within walking distance of the N Judah than those who live and work within walking distance of a rail station in the entire city of Sacramento.
BART in San Jose is not really being built for local use. Most East SJ people will need to take a bus to the BART station to get on BART. Most of them will just stay on the same bus that also goes downtown. Transfers cost time and are inconvenient. BART headways are usually 15-20 min. It may not be worth getting on for a 2.5 mile trip downtown. It's a commuter rail line in the burbs. BART is a more expensive option unless they set a deal w VTA bus passes.
Sacramento housing is cheaper ($ 450,000) but it's now out of reach for most middle class and blue collar families unless you already owned your house. Sacramento is also only marginally served by rapid transit. Only a small % are within walking distance of a train station. It's so widely spread out that it's hard to get to work by rapid transit w/o a transfer or two unless you're lucky enough to live and work next to a rail station, mostly downtown. Sacramento is easy to drive in and park. No incentive to take a train unless you "have to". The street layout in Sacto is not an interconnected grid, it adds a lot of distance to get to a station. It's not really built for transit. Key destinations outside downtown like Cal State Sacto and the huge UC Davis Med Ctr are 1/2 mile from it's rail station. Tough walk in 100 degree heat w little shade. Why walk 1/2 mile when it's easy to drive and park?
I'd argue that in cities like San Jose and Sacto with strong driving cultures, large parking capacity is needed to encourage people, who would mostly never take a bus to the rail station, to park and ride at the station. Look at some of the rail stations and you'll see that many have limited or difficult walkability (mostly because using RR ROW you end up in areas where most neighborhoods are built to wall themselves from the RR). Over time, develop the lands around the stations w denser housing and commercial development. Improve bus routing and frequencies, you can gradually build a better transit culture. But it won't happen overnight and neither of these cities has done much to develop their stations or improve streetscapes to encourage walking in the decades they've had them. These cities weren't built for walking like SF was.
Most CA transit companies have seen huge ridership drops in the last 10 years before Covid. LA transit use is very much in decline over the last decade. It's because their core ridership has had to move farther out into suburbs that have little transit. Car ownership has risen sharply in LA. "Choice" transit riders are not as reliable as "captive" transit riders. That's why I say plan for your core ridership. The rest will follow as you build on the core system.
Now, San Diego, even w difficult geography, has done light rail very well. Great planning and meeting many commuter patterns to key destinations. Much more densely built neighborhoods than Sacto or San Jose.
"Highly paid people are not the core loyal users of any transit system." They also don't live right beside freeways!
I've been thinking for years a light rail line down Stevens Creek/San Carlos connecting De Anza College and everything to the east to Downtown, it would be brilliant; it's also fundamentally very feasible. Obviously not a cheap or small project, but neither is it extremely unattainable or impossible to do. It's a light rail line, not rocket science. Also good transit systems serve residents at all wealth levels! The association of mass transit with lower socioneconomic classes is a rather American invention! Regular, reliable service with reasonable cleanliness and security breeds more cleanliness, respect, and security.
Highly-paid Silicon Valley software engineer and San Jose resident here. I’d love to take public transit to work. Doing so would take about twice as long as riding my bike, and I’d need to bring my bike anyway for the ~2 miles on each end to get between the station and my destination. Luckily, my team has been fully remote since the beginning of covid, but it’s still really depressing to see. I wish public transit ran later and was safe to ride at night, as even trying to get a drink downtown with friends requires driving / Lyft as there are no good ways to take transit back to our home in the SJ suburbs.
Lastly, although our home is worth well into the 7 figures, we live on a street with plenty of “blue collar” type families and folks who don’t maintain their property. Prop 13 tax benefits are largely to blame for this. Plenty of these folks can no longer afford to live here realistically, but they’re propped up by Prop 13 and can’t move anywhere else within a few hours driving due to the cost of housing, so they just stay and suffer. People being priced out of where they grew up is never fun, the reality today is that we’d need a whole lot more subsidies to enable people to actually thrive than just the tax break, so instead we just get criminally-underfunded schools and public services in neighborhoods with all 7-figure houses that look like any other crappy suburb in America. What usually happens is that these folks sell their winning lottery ticket house that they paid $50k for back in the 70s and move to somewhere like Phoenix or Houston or The Villages in Florida and retire, or rent the house out and retire. Wish I would have had the opportunity to purchase land back then instead of paying 6 figures of taxes each year while receiving the exact same benefit as our neighbors who pay 1/20th as much. My proposal to solve that would be one vote per tax dollar on city and state matters - those of us who contribute much more should also get a proportionally larger say in how that money is spent. We stole all the land here from the natives not that long ago, so don’t even try with the whole “but this is our home” angle. If you disagree and think that everyone should get an equal vote, I’d suggest educating yourself about our electoral college and how we already don’t, so let’s at least enable the biggest contributors to the city and state budgets to actually have a real voice vs all the nimbys who largely contribute far fewer tax dollars but block any attempts at progress.
This is totally spot on! I grew up in San Jose from 1970's through the present and have been a first-hand witness to most of what you've described. San Jose is one of those cities where its story is one where you can "follow the money". When you look at the history of a lot of things San Jose, a lot of decisions favored developers. You should also dig into "East San Jose" if you're inclined. It's got a history that most people don't even know about which has pretty much been erased by parking lots, strip-malls and questionable planning.
As someone born and raised in San Jose back in the 70s and 80s, I used to love driving up to San Francisco with my dad on a Saturday. I loved the vibe and energy of downtown San Francisco. Then I always wondered why downtown San Jose didn't have that same vibe and energy. To me it was no where near what a downtown should be. I actually used to think back in the day that San Jose was just one big suburb and at that time, there was even still a lot of open space and farms at the time. Today many of those farms I remember have been developed with even more single family homes. Nice to see that it was not just me that saw these issues with San Jose.
I worked on campaigns in 2020, among one of my campaign ads was pointing out how San Jose voted to run a freeway off ramp from Charcot through an elementary school's baseball field. They had no logic for doing it and insisted they must carry on with their 20+ year old planning even if the proposal was an environmental risk not just to the school, but to the neighborhood around it. I was facing about 4 million in PAC money during those races, a lot of which comes from realtor and landlords. It seems that perhaps much of the infrastructure is forced just to spend money with developers because that keeps the city council filled with those who know they can personally profit from their public service. Good luck getting the NIMBYs to get rid of the 94% single family zoning.
Yeah it will be an uphill battle, that was a super interesting story. Pretty wild.
I cannot stress enough how awe struck I was when I first set foot in California and saw San Jose. I've never imagines suburbs to be that big. I didn't know they would. I also didn't know San Jose was a city city until about a year later of moving here. I thought it was just a general area. because I didn't see a city. it also seems quieter than small cities I've lived in with 40,000 people. it's weird and twilight zone like.
I believe you! Thanks for sharing your experience.
Great analysis. Grew up in San Jose and always enjoyed going to “real” cities. When visitors came, everyone always just wanted to go to San Francisco.
Thanks! Appreciate the comment.
San Jose is truly the endless video game city with nothing but copy and pasted homes
I lived in Vancouver and the same thing happened. Lots of people wnanted single family homes ... The city then builds a Skytrains that will drop you off in super low density neighborhood. Can we just agree that people who built cities before WW2 were geniuses ?
Interesting, I rode Skytrain once, I hear it's good but I agree, we definitely got worse at city planning (with some exceptions). I think a universal rule is transit stops are a way to zone up, that is a much better solution for car dependency imo than building massive parking moats around stations. Not against all parking but man, Bay Area has a few stinkers.
I have the privilege of living in one of the few walkable, bikeable neighborhoods in San Jose, the historic, pre-war Japantown neighborhood. My neighborhood has a diverse blend of single-family, multiplex, small apartment, and large apartment residences, a walkable and vibrant commercial street with shops, cafes, restaurants, and bars, as well as churches, a dance studio, a museum, a ukulele store, and more within a block of the core of the neighborhood. The neighborhood is within walking distance of VTA light rail, and is a within a short bike ride of downtown San Jose, Caltrain, and BART, mostly along low traffic streets or protected bike lanes.
I think Japantown is a great model for the rest of the city and shows what a mixed use place would like in San José, it would look a lot like... San José!
Hah, I live near JTown as well. Totally agree.
I lived in San Jose for the first 18 years of my life, then moved to Japan for university. I visited my family once COVID restrictions eased, and let me just say sometimes you have to experience something better to realize just how terrible something is. Going from an insanely walkable city where my school, part time job, bank, post office, and grocery store are all a 5-15 minute walk away from my apartment and where cyclists/pedestrians are prioritized in the city design, to needing a car to virtually get anything done or go anywhere was a lot more jarring after I came back. I didn't realize how bad San Jose was, and I also thought about how stifling it is on your independence. Here in Japan, if I want to go somewhere I just go, no need to rely on anyone else even though I don't have a car. Back home, I'm at the mercy of my parents or other family members who own cars and whether they have the time/feel kind enough that day to take me where I need to go. Good city planning is not only about effiency and options, it also has positive effects on the development of independence and responsibility in oneself. I hope San Jose is able to improve in the future.
I would also like to add some important additional information to demonstrate just how much the history of San Jose has made changing the future so difficult.
I went to Mayor Mahan's Budget Town Hall a few days ago and one of the most striking things about that meeting, was the revenue per capita. San Jose, despite having over a million people, only has a budget of $6B. This is incredibly small for the population and level of technical skill and education that resides in the city. The reason as to why this is that case, is that San Jose is a commuter city.. in the wrong direction. The population of San Jose actually decreases during the day as workers commute to other cities like San Mateo, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, or Fremont. These workers then spend their money in those cities, but don't spend it in San Jose.
Now as federal funding dries up, San Jose is in an even more difficult position. They can't rely on the high property taxes as they only get 16 cents on the dollar and they can't rely on consumer spending to create tax revenue because it doesn't happen in the city. The mayor has all sorts of plans including affordable housing, yet the math has shown that if the city wants to meet California's expectation, it more than the entire budget to do so. Having talked quite a bit to my councilmember, which the Mayor was formally mine, they both want to improve the city in so many ways, but are held back by simply the budget.
It's really disappointing to see, but I will continue to strive and work with the City Council, DOT, and Mayor to make sure that proper planning and regulation get implemented to allow for sustainable and effective growth to happen.
Thanks for the well written comment! I agree, being a large bedroom community without density has risen San José costs for services and hurt it's budget, and good ol' prop 13 isn't helping. It will be difficult to resolve. My view is as with most American cities, you just got to let people build in a sustainable way to get a better tax base.
As a person that has lived in San Jose my whole life this is all very accurate. The bike lanes are terrible and now that i have my drivers license I just drive everywhere cause its a lot easier. Dont even get me started with how bad the roads are
Thanks for the comment, I promise I won't get you started!
We have no excuse for the shoddy roads in San Jose - we don’t have ice, we don’t salt or plow the roads, and the city is wealthy. Yet driving in San Jose involves way too much teeth-rattling for my tastes.
Spot on. Growing up in San Jose, it's really only gotten worse lately with rising home prices and the issues associated with that. I think the city is pushing to develop more medium density housing (5 over 1 apartments) for low income housing around existing stroads that they're adding bike lanes to (good!). However, there are plenty of suburbanites (including my parents) that are pushing back against this. It will be interesting to see if these developments by the city will help with transportation, housing cost, and livability.
Appreciate the comment! Definitely it will be interesting to see.
Ahh...San Jose, Phoenix, and Jacksonville. The 3 largest suburbs in America.
Would love to do a video on Jacksonville, they are effectively a city county, very interesting. Feels like Pheonix gets dunked on so hard we forget other cities.
As someone who has attended many conventions in San Jose walking this city is a painful experience
Walking, in San Jose? How fiendishly drove.
@@offbrandurbanism Only the downtown core by Paseo de San Antonio is a remotely walkable place in San Jose proper. San Jose State University is literally an amorphous blob of biking and walking friendly areas only on campus, and Philz Coffee is the eastern anchor of Paseo de San Antonio. McEnry CC is bordered on the East by some decent traffic and on the northern end by Light Rail. The South Hall area is full of traffic while the west is kinda dead (Parking for public transit, if I remember?). If you can ignore the scary intersection of Market & San Carlos (Homeless people and needles may show up here periodically), you might find yourself in a park and the Tech Museum.
And get this: San Jose is the only distinguished city that I know of with at least TWO downtowns. Downtown San Jose (the "Core") and Downtown Willow Glen (Honestly, why?). Willow Glen's downtown is great, but it's kinda San Jose's weird version of "Main Street".
Totally agree, used to live in San Jose (15 years) and it feels so disconnected. There are things to like about the small downtowns in its amorphous blob of a metropolitan area like Campbell, Willow Glen and Mountain View to the north, but never have I lived somewhere with such a bleh culture and energy before or after living there.
No night life to speak of, very little unified culture, it could be a solar and green tech city, but instead settles for being a suburban hell with horrible traffic freeways (fuck 85 and 87) and not much connecting the parts that are actually enjoyable. And even worse, they haven't had the BART extension that was planned in the 80s or 90s that is still yet to be finished.
They could actually tax silicon valley companies too to fund quality of life improvements to the metro, bus and mass transit in general, but they won't because they're terrified of all that VC money being pulled and sent elsewhere.
Lot of great points! I especially agree about the highways, just nuts how it got planned out.
a few points... what "culture and energy" do you want? BART already goes down to Berryessa and they will be connecting it to downtown in a few years, San Jose already promotes solar and recycling
If you're stating that San Jose has not night life then you clearly didn't know where to go at night.
I try to see the best in every place, but I really struggled when I visited San Jose. This place is something else. A squandering of resources at a truly colossal scale
Thanks for taking the time to watch my video (video? I swear you commented on my other video). I agree it's squandered. Great people though! Was just there.
After moving from Los Angeles to San Jose I have nothing but love for San Jose and the surrounding towns especially Campbell Los Gatos Milpitas etc . There are a lot of trails you can ride bikes on, they have worked on getting bike lanes and it seems to be working out, downtown really cool if you know what to do and how to get around, the buses are pretty good light roll get you where you need to go and they even have services available for the disabled and for people that can't afford buses so that their free or almost free. After moving to Tulare County to porterville from San Jose I realize how good I had it and I moved back. I would ever want to leave here and anytime I hear people talk trash about San Jose, I'd like to see then come here and spend some time with me and I could show them around and show them what stuff they're really is to do here and how fun it can be to be around all the technology and all the different things you could do in the area. You are so close to the beach and so close to the forest it's actually a perfect environment.
The nature around San Jose is very lovely I totally agree with you. I just think "better paratransit and bike trails than Los Angeles" is a a low bar to set. Appreciate taking the time to give such a lengthy comment!
Lmao it’s funny you mention houston, my hometown. That’s what I thought of with San Jose for having more people than SF but low density. Our skyline is cool but the sprawl isn’t.
Yeah Houston just going off it's skyline seems fine - and then you zoom out. San José oddly doesn't have *that* many more people than San Francisco. The city just has bad luck of being built up during the peak of car brain of 1950s-1970s.
I grew up in one of San Jose's sprawling, soulless, car-centric suburbs and this video is spot on.
Appreciate the comment!
@@offbrandurbanism I grew up at the southern end of San Jose, in suburb that was built around a freeway-adjacent IBM factory. It was developed without consideration for anything but cars.
Regarding the light rail... I was 10 when the light-rail system opened and my family road took a ride the first day. There was a station about a half-mile from my home, but it was never really useful outside trips to the Great America theme park when I was a teenager and had a season pass but not access to a car. There was a nearby mall - Oakridge - but the line swerved away before getting there and put the freeway between the station and the mall. Instead, they built a shuttle line nobody used because it required a transfer at Ohlone/Chynoweth to go only one stop which was at the far end of the mall. The long, unpleasant walk along a highway underpass, off-ramps, and on-ramps was just easier and faster. Especially when there's a "late to work" factor involved.
And the real kicker to this is the line was built with Highway 85 as a token transit project and really squandered the opportunity to do it right. Or at least better
Downtown the line runs on the sidewalk alongside a failed mall. When my brother's kids were young, we took a trip downtown (by car of course) and they were having fun running around on the sidewalk, checking out all the decorations and whatnot... until a train heading towards us from behind honked at us to get out of the sidewalk.
After I moved to San Francisco where transit was an option and taking Caltrain commuter rail my job in Mountain View, the end of the green line north of San Jose. They designed Mountain View as a Caltrain/VTA transfer point, and there was a station at the edge of the Netscape office. But VTA followed a strict clock-facing schedule so I'd see the VTA train departing at 9:00 am was pulling away as the 9:01 am Caltain was arriving. Unless Caltrain was early or it was raining, I road my bike instead.
That’s cars are great my guy. When you find a car you love you use it every day.
What about the San Jose Earthquakes of the MLS? And the 49ers in Santa Clara is basically the San Jose Metro....
I thought the Quakes played in Santa Clara! Honest mistake, their stadium is on the border.
It’s a very weird place but oddly charming in places
Agreed!
Yea check out Evergreen village square and Sandy wool lake. Pretty nice places.
I lived in south San Jose from 1969 to 1980 me and my friends would ride or bikes thru the orchards and eat fruit off the tress lot of memories going to Frontier Village driving over hill on hwy 17 to the beach moved to Florida now..
Great memory, thanks for sharing!
San Jose was actually envisioned to be the Los Angeles of Northern CA which is why it annexed a bunch of surrounding communities and spread out so much. Due to it being located within a V shaped valley it’s expansion was limited though. It’s a shame that the Coyote Valley in South SJ between Santa Teresa and Morgan Hill was never built out. You probably have room to add AT LEAST another 100K to 350K people (depending on density) in that space had it been developed. It could’ve been our San Fernando Valley. That may have eased our current housing and home affordability issue. I personally HATE the location of SJ Airport. It should’ve been built in Santa Teresa or near the baylands in Alviso. It’s also hilariously small to call itself an “International Airport” and literally has no room to expand as it’s surrounded by freeways on all sides. Due to the proximity of the airport and it’s downtown being located underneath the landing path, San Jose is forever stuck with a mediocre Lego block shaped downtown with buildings that cannot exceed 300 ft. And what’s up with BART having missed a golden opportunity to include a SJ Airport station in its extension plans despite having the terminus be Santa Clara Station which is literally adjacent to the airport! BART has SF and OAK stations, why not SJ? So many planning fails within this city!
I think early BART planners just couldn't imagine a need for a line in San Jose and justifying a subway there would have been hard. I agree the airport is a limit to density to some degree, but you can build very dense per sq mi with a 300ft limit. San Jose doesn't need to be midtown Manhattan to help solve the affordability crisis.
We don't need development in Coyote Valley. That space is beautiful and needs to be preserved. Just make the city core more dense and transit oriented.
I agree with almost all your points except for expansion to the open preserve area that is sanctioned for wild life. If given the opportunity it would simply be more single family housing like SJ and Morgan Hill. I always also thought the airport location that limits the height of buildings totally crushed the possibility of having an awesome downtown.
It is a miracle that Coyote valley was never developed. It would have been just another few miles of putrid urban sprawl (see almaden and santa teresa), and it would close off the last undeveloped link between the coastal and the diablo mtn ranges, forever constricting the biodiversity of the fauna that would now be trapped in the coastal range but historically migrated between the two and beyond.
Save Coyote Valley!
@@thefunktopuss930 ok NIMBY
7:34
The google translate insert killed me 😂
Really informative video- I’ve never been to San Jose, and it’s insane how depopulated the center of such a large city is.
I promise to use proper subtitles! I just didn't think more than 100 people would see this! Glad you found it informative and unintentionally funny haha
The content is really great and the explanation is so clear in both taking us through a "random walk" in the DT area and plans on how it could become better. As I tried to click for more contents on cities I'm more familiar with, I realize it's your first video. Keep up the good work and hope to see more cities on your list.
Really appreciate it! What other cities would you like to see?
@@offbrandurbanism I don't know. I'm based in SoCal. Also been to some east coast cities recently,but I guess there aren't much to criticize them for, at least by US standards. Anyways, follow your heart and we'll support you.
@@tomhwm913 Now that's a ringing endorsement, thanks!
What a great video. I was born and raised in San Jose and never looked at it with this perspective! Thank you for making this video.
Really appreciate that! I promise more San José content down the line and (hopefully) higher quality!
@@offbrandurbanism This was pretty good quality already, imho. I'd love to request a video for either McKinleyville,CA or Davis, CA if they're interesting enough for you! San Francisco, CA would definitely be an interesting one. Vallejo, CA is one that interests me too haha
3/4 I'm in in. You're going to need to sell me on McKinleyville, what about it stands out to you? I'm blanking on it rn.
10:12 They're not the only one. Don't forget about the Earthquakes.
For a while now I felt there was something off about San Jose when compared to other cities. You explained it just about perfectly in this video. Well done.
I thought PayPal Park was in Santa Clara! I promise this is not an Earthquakes slander channel!
San Jose unfortunately developed during a time when the country thought single-family homes and freeways is the future. Now we have to make do with what we have... I wish Bart would make stops to Valley Fair/Santana Row, Valco Park and De Anza. That would've gotten a lot of traffic off the roads...
A huge trend in cities is they are often tied to there hey-day. Like Barcelona when Eixample was built, San Francisco when the Muni lines were built 1917-1928 etc. Hopefully it works out for San José!
Why unfortunate? It wasn't that people thought is was the future, it was because people wanted to raise families and have a yard where kids could play or have a family barbecue. They wanted quiet neighborhoods with no traffic and no crime. They wanted their kids to be able to safely ride their bikes in those streets and not worry about them. I am glad my parents bought one of those single-family homes, it was a great place to grow up. I feel sad for the kids that have to grow up in a high-rise.
I lived in the Rose Garden/Burbank area of San Jose for about five years back in the 80's and one thing that caught me by surprise (and that I'm kind of surprised wasn't mentioned in the video) was the number of "mother-in-law" cottages, either converted garages or built from scratch in backyards. It seemed like every house had one, in my neighborhood and in other areas of the valley too, so I'm guessing the whole valley, or at least all of San Jose, was zoned for them.
I commute and ride through San Jose and the surrounding cities, and TBH it's a lot better than it used to be. The city has been executing their "Project Zero" initiative to reduce pedestrian and cyclist deaths, and they've actually been pretty successful. I can get the entire way across San Jose, (relatively) safely, some 15 miles, in about an hour and a half, which is close to how long it takes with full heavy traffic. Over the years it has gotten better, but I think there is a lot of potential. Large wide flat boulevards that are mainly unused are slowly turning into very comfortable cycling lanes. But there are still connection problems to make the entire ride through the city seamless, but I think it's getting there.
Sadly, most of these people are all about 'stopping climate change' and 'helping disadvantaged communities' but as soon as you tell them that one full lane of Hillsdale Road will be reserved for cyclists, every resident blows their gasket. A lot of these zoning issues are historical, but there's a lot of opposition from all the long time residents, who should put up or shut up when it comes to rezoning for more pedestrian and cyclist friendly neighborhoods.
Fun fact: San Jose is famous, historically, for bicycle racing some 100 years ago. At one time there were at least 5 velodrome tracks, with only one left in operation: Hellyer Velodrome
Oh my gosh, the amount of bitching and moaning about the Hillsdale lane reduction! It's literally not even a problem lmao I drive it every day and I absolutely do not get why people are whining. If anything it's easier to drive
As a driver, I hate the goofy protected bike lanes, but not for the reason that you think. I hate that the city planners are attempting to solve their lack of forward thinking by encouraging a very unpopular form of transportation in San Jose. You CAN bike around and it may be getting better for cyclists, but with the exception of the dorks that ride up and down the local foothills for fun. . .almost no one commutes on a bicycle. If the planners had actually done their jobs, we wouldn't be so wildly reliant on cars, and removing lanes for bikes wouldn't be an issue. You have to drive here, especially if you have a family, there's just no way around it.
@@life_of_riley88 it's unpopular because it is dangerous and impractical. Making it less dangerous and more practical will increase bike riding. I've already seen a relatively huge increase of cyclists on Hillsdale. Although I agree: bike lanes are inferior, they are still too dangerous. We should have separated bike paths instead. Of course public transport also needs radical improvements, but that's gonna be harder and more expensive and take longer than increasing bike lane safety. Overall, anything in the right direction is a positive in my book
@@popejaimie I agree, in fact I would ride on bike paths. I don't (motor)cycle in the south Bay because it's too dangerous, and in my mind, cycling is just as much so. Somehow we found ourselves with a huge problem and no one in the City planning department has a solution.
here before this blows up
i mean it just get like 200 views in 2 hours
You and me both! I was like oh cool maybe a hundred views for the first video. Nope!
San Jose had a tech boom from 1990 to 2020. It should have blossomed into a futuristic city like Chicago did 100 years before. Instead nothing changed and it just got more expensive to live there. Why? Because the classist and racist land-use zoning locked it in a straight jacket. America lost out on lots of prosperity due to this.
Said it better than I did in my video!
@@offbrandurbanism Thanks! I got this insight from a guest on the Strong Towns Podcast. I don't remember his name. He said the last time an American city boomed we got the likes of Chicago and New York, but this time all we got is San Jose.
Your video was an excellent deep dive into this insight.
Strong Towns is great! San José is basically the opposite, a weak city that needs to bulk up.
Great video watching it a second time because I’m such a fan! You must be a cool valuable person.
I'm flattered! Hopefully next video lives up to the high bar you set for me haha.
I live in downtown San José and can confirm the planing is wild lol
San Jo kid here. I remember decades ago in elementary school seeing in class a movie titled "Urban Sprawl." SJ was the subject.
To give "Dutch" his due, the actual Dutch were heavily into car-dependent sprawl in the '50s and '60s. It just happened a bit slower and they ran out of space to sprawl into faster.
Yes, it wasn't until the oil crisis of 1973 that a lot of changes happened so you are absolutely correct. Dutch was largely following a lot of standard policies, just possibly to a stronger degree than average. I mainly put it in as a joke to the irony of his name.
@@offbrandurbanism That being said, the Europeans in general really sat up and took notice in the '70s. Porschestrasse in Wolfsburg, Germany was pedestrianized in this time - the main street of a town literally built from scratch around cars and building cars, and named after an automotive engineer.
@nlpnt Yeah they definitely on average got up and took bigger changes.
Nice hot take. I have lived in San Jose for 30 years without a car. VTA is great. You can catch a bus every 10 minutes. You need a job at one end and a home on the other.
30 years? That's really impressive, especially at the beginning that must have been a challenge right? I can't imagine it being easy being car free in early 90s San Jose.
@@offbrandurbanism I spent all my time at the malls, amusement parks, movie theaters, and dancehalls. All just a 20 minute trip from home. The 60 will still take you to all the spots in Santa Clara.
don’t forget about Prop13 protecting some old unprofitable businesses while new businesses have easily 10x the property tax burden for the same value property and you can understand why there are so many crappy taquerias and nail salons while new shops go under in a year or two
I plan to do a Prop 13 episode. I try to be a little sensitive about it but yeah, in general it's very fair to say it subsidizes older businesses (and homeowners and corporations) and the expenses of newer ones.
You're too young to remember but San Joses freeways were not built when the majority of the United States freeways were built. San Jose, like Phoenix Arizona, got an extremely late start on their freeway systems and we started in the 1980s. I can remember before San Jose built them and traffic was god awful. I also remember driving over bridges that went over big ditches of dirt that would eventually become freeways. I don't know if you can blame that on the city planner you talked about at the beginning of the video.
Getting politically involved in local elections is very important for making change. I encourage everyone to vote for candidates that promise to make changes in the city government. NIMBY officials need to me removed.
Yup! Vote early vote often, because it's California and we have a ton of elections!
I want to try to get involved more personally, their was a hearing for a development by where I live, seemed like a total slam dunk development, but just hard to schedule around a Wednesday 1:30 meeting.
This explains so much about why San Jose has always felt so "off" to me. Great video.
The Midnight Hour of American cities...
San Jose needs a Loop line for the Light Rail. Nobody works in downtown, and to get to anywhere people work you have to ride through slow ass downtown. The light rail actualy works ok in SSJ and to Alum Rock despite the sprawl in those areas. Mtn View is so/so but they are missing huge potential by not linking south and west side directly with all the tech campuses. Also I dont know why it doesnt connect directly with the community colleges like De Anza and Evergreen.
That's a really interesting idea. I think over time with upzoning and BART a loop has potential!
@Off Brand Urbanism yea hopefully they do an extension to De Anza or at least A BRT down stevens Creek. I used to take LR and bus to de Anza and it's well over two hours when you factor in wait times and delayed busses. Also, maybe ad a direct line or BRT to the airport from Dirdon.
Your research/knowledge of the city is impressive; said a SJ resident of 37 yrs.
Thanks I'm flattered!
@@offbrandurbanismI've been here 60 and I hate to say it, but you don't know shyt ' bout SJ - except for what ppl probably tell you.
FORMER SAN JOSE RESIDENT
I was raised in San Jose from 1998-2011 and while the distances are far it isn’t unwalkable or unbikeable. A bike and my legs is all I had as a kid. I used to use the VTA all the time to travel around the city and to other Bay Area cities. What is true however is that the downtown is pretty boring, not much there, it almost feels like a hipster downtown of a small town rather than a city.
Also I know walkable has many definitions but since having moved to the southern Appalachian region, my definition of walkable has changed significantly. The VTA station was an easy 25 minute walk from my house which is quite a bit considering that I lived “in town.” But the presence of sidewalks makes a HUGE difference. It’s not like Houston or Southern Appalachia, where they build suburbs with no sidewalks whatsoever. Whether or not those sidewalks are there can save your life! San Jose also wasn’t as strict about riding your bike on the sidewalk so long as you jumped off when walking past someone. (That was never a big deal to me.)
Living where I do now is EASILY the most unwalkable place I’ve ever seen in my life, more than anywhere in the Bay Area. Extremely suburban, and it’s not because of the mountain terrain either. So if you live in SJ, know that you have some good there 😎
In case anyone was curious not long after I moved to Southern Appalachia, I was unable to drive due to medical reasons so I saw first hand how unwalkable the region was. Not in a “it’s gonna take forever to get there” way. More like “I am nearly guaranteed to get hit by a car while walking over and hour out of this suburb to get to the closest grocery store, which has narrow roads and no sidewalks.”
They're building something big near Bascom Station on the Green line. There's lots of cheap land around there and I think if it could link up with the walkable areas just to the south in Campbell it has the potential to become a really great city core.
Interesting, I'll have to read up on it!
Maybe the light rail should be turned into BRT? Or buses that link to the LRT need a massive frequency buff to make the light rail useful. For transit expansion extend BART on guideways
Frequency is a big part. I think ultimately every VTA stations needs to be upzoned to kingdom Come to build a ridership base that's sustainable. Check out @TODGod's video on the VTA.
You're 100% correct! I've lived in San Jose for almost 8yrs now, I have a valid drivers license but prefer to bike everywhere, even work! San Jose is definitely missing opportunities in turning this city into a more pedestrian/bike friendly city. Santana Row is the most popular because it's catered to pedestrians. It blows my mind that the city doesn't change planning based off of that alone. Just look at how many people it attracts on a daily, it's extremely profitable and yet they wanna design for cars still? I love this city so much, I want to see it do better.
Appreciate taking the time to watch my video and leave a comment, have a wonderful weekend!
The light rail is actually pretty useful. I used to use it and i liked it. Now i live in fremont.
The last time I saw San Jose was June 2021 and it wasn't very busy with people. From this video it looks just like Union Square, San Francisco where almost every store and cafe window is covered with plywood and "For Lease" banners. There was never much to do in San Jose and now there is even less incentive to go there. For years I said it should have the slogan, "San Jose. The City that Almost Was."
been watching a lot of urban infrastructure channels like city beautiful and alan fisher, i’m glad youtube recommended this video to me
I think people have to realize is San Jose has a strong car culture. There are like 3 tracks that surround the Bay Area that get a lot of usage. Lots of people like to drive in San Jose and why not it’s a great place to drive in.
@8:33 Yes that is Eataly. No it is not San Jose. I think you grabbed an image of the Las Vegas Eataly at Park MGM, likely from one of many opening announcement articles that did the same thing. But agreed, yes, it _is_ that good.
I apologize for my transgression, I promise to do more on location shooting in San Jose next video and will *specifically* go to the one in San Jose.
You’re missing a major factor of SJ’s development…the racism. That’s why it’s cut out and parsed the way it is.
It's my first video and I didn't feel equipped to talk about structural racism in city planning anywhere without a lot more videos and research under my belt.
santana row is a place for wealthy people btw. the apartments are ‘luxury’.
they had an opportunity to have homes for common folk in a central location.
and stevens creek that it’s on is a 6 lane nightmare to cupertino.
Yeah definitely. I think to me, if developments like Santana Row were more common before it was built, it would have more likely not had been luxury apartments. Thanks for pointing that out and commenting!
Yeah I have lots of fam there, basically a super-suburb (minus downtown). It just don’t match the housing costs AT ALL! Btw that pic of “Europe? Nope this is NY, NY” is in Boston’s North End (all evidence in actual pic), but I get what your getting at. Dope vid
Yeah my apologies to all Bostonians. I will do a pinned comment, I made a similar geographic mistake others have pointed out.
The San Jose Earthquakes play in San Jose, I accidentally assumed their stadium was in Santa Clara. In my defense, they played in Santa Clara before and their stadium is basically on the city border between the two.
our previous mayor Chuck said it all: "San Jose is a bedroom community for all of the rest of silicon valley". And thus it remains.
To this I would add:
1. I arrived here in 1987. There hasn't been a year when a Bart extension to San Jose was not on the ballot with a bond initiative.
2. I got my pilots license in SJC, the San Jose central airport. This was followed by their effectively evicting all light planes from the airport. Ah but San Jose has a light airplane airport no? Reid-Hillview. Which city hall has not spent a single year of my time here not harassing and attempting to shut it down.
I was born and raised and my grandfather was the first commercial photographer for San Jose and Santa Clara Valley, there is many reasons San Jose is built the way it was for instance if you did your research you would see that the city does not have high-rise buildings that has to do with the the path of the airport flights coming and going from San Jose they were restricted on the hype that they can build things, it's nice to grow up in a place where it is spread out unlike today where everybody lives in dog boxes and hate each other, there are plenty of things to do in San Jose got a lot of Education, a friend of mine is a journalist who did a series of on the area, endpoints out the historical history behind it all, all I can say is if you don't care for San Jose please feel free to move.
Yeah, you are very wrong on this one. San Jose is literally in the process of filling in _all_ those parking lots that you showed in the video. The one that you showed the most, around Diridon station, has a massive mid-size city of a Google campus planned. A bunch of the VTA light rail stops are getting TOD and a ton more are planned to. They've approved an ungodly amount of both office and residential downtown, enough to grow their population by 50% in the next two decades.
Yes, San Jose grew out of the annexation of a bunch of low-density suburbs by a small city. And it does definitely show. But ignoring the fact that San Jose has been painstakingly growing a downtown from scratch and adding density around it's various rail systems is quite short-sighted of you. If anything, San Jose is a success story in the process of happening. They've made a city out of a collection of villages in 60 years.
People enjoy the freedom of driving, and many are still cautious about crime and covid to be wanting to ride on a train. And if you want to be able to have space for your kids to run out back or bbq, you can’t also do that in some high rise apartment complex.
Downtown San Jose is also constrained vertically by being next to the airport. FAA regulations constrain the building height to about 25 stories to allow for a plane to safely fly over them around back to the airport in case it suffers an engine failure after takeoff. That's why the downtown skyline is mostly a straight line as opposed to varying heights of other cities.
And what about Barcelona, with similar height restrictions? Or Naples, Italy? You don't need skyscrapers to make a good downtown.
As a relative newcomer to CA and the South Bay area (Santa Clara/SJ), I have “fresh eyes” to see the city the way you’re describing it. It appears to have much more potential.
I never knew sj was so big and I literally live here, there’s nothing to do in San Jose so plans with friends always consist of leaving to neighboring or northern cities😅
I grew up in Santa Rosa (north bay) and barely ever thought of visiting San Jose. Bay Area visits used to mean going to San Francisco, Oakland, or Concord, or occasionally Palo Alto. Going to the "South Bay" meant Santa Cruz or Monterey! It wasn't until I was in my 30s that my friends took me to Winchester Mystery House and Santana Row. That was about all we did! There didn't seem to be anything else to "do" or "see" in San Jose.
The Egyptian Museum is cool! When to it like 3 times as a kid haha.
You people are insane. I love San Jose. I'm a Mtn biker, hiker and runner and there's no other place I'd rather live.
I used to take the train to Diridon station, and ride my bike to SJSU each day. I dodged cars each morning and night with very little to no room for bikes/bike lanes. Nevertheless, i love many things about SJ
7 years ago I came from Europe to visit a friend who lived next to SJSU. What a stressful ordeal it was to get from the SJ airport to my friend's! I had to exit the airport and walk 25 minutes to get to the VTA stop; there was hardly any sidewalk or path to walk to the VTA stop, and I even had to dangerously cross a Highway 101 entrance (at night) just to get to the stop... I think in total it took me 1h30 just to get from the airport to downtown.
"San Jose is so out of the national consciousness I imagine you know next to nothing about it."
Yeah... about that...
ETA: you're correct about a lot of things, especially light rail. I like it for the most part (aside from the fact that it sometimes smells like piss) because until recently I was a license-less new adult who wanted to explore the city, and whenever I was using it, I didn't really have anywhere I needed to be urgently. I only started really getting to learning more about transit and all of that within the last couple of weeks, and alongside it was stunned to learn just how low our ridership numbers are.
I think one of the other biggest factors keeping people from using it more often is that nobody actually checks to see if you paid for a ticket or tapped your transit card at the station - the only staff member on the train is the operator and obviously they're not going to get out of the front of the train to enforce that at every stop. You can effectively skip your fare. Because of that, a lot of homeless people chill in them - most stick to themselves, but obviously people are going to be unnerved by the guy using his vape in the train, the lady dumping pizza cheese packets in her mouth and making a mess on the floor, the lady obsessively combing her doll's hair and trying to talk to people about the most random shit...
(Side note, but I do have to wonder if they calculate their ridership numbers from tickets sold/Clipper card taps, because if they do, it's not the most accurate due to aforementioned reasons.)
I think one of the biggest stumbles with light rail when it came to planning the system out was having the blue/green lines run right along First St. north of downtown. I realized recently that the nearest light rail station to the airport is a full mile away. A mile. You have to transfer to a connecting bus route that takes you right up to the terminal. Fuck, there's so much lost potential with that! Seattle did it perfectly, their light rail system comes right up next to the airport, as much as it can for a bigger one. And somehow it was too impossible for our system to have that?
VTA seems to have proposed transit-oriented development near some of its light rail stations. Imo this should have been done much sooner. As for how slow their system is, I'm aware they may be looking to essentially turn some parts of their downtown stations into subway stops, so the undergrounding of the two lines in that specific area will probably coincide with BART, which will also have subway stations. (I just hope they don't replace too much of the current stations with roads when that happens, because they're some of the most walkable parts of downtown SJ.) Light rail trains do have priority over traffic signals at many intersections along the orange line that I've noticed, and the green line south of downtown has a lot of at-grade tracks with crossing gates which give the train the right of way.
Also, as an aside, their current fleet of trains is aging and will need to be replaced by the early 2030s. At the moment they look kind of old, but not terribly so. Maybe having modern-looking trains like the ones Seattle and other light rail systems use will give them more allure? Who knows.
Lastly... San Pedro is like one of the only other downtown destinations you forgot to mention. Just had to throw that out there lol
I lived near downtown San Jose for a couple of years. It’s even worse when you consider the alternatives in the South Bay. As far as urban development goes, there’s just 1 block in Sunnyvale that is urban (Murphy Ave), 3 blocks in Mountainview (Castro St), 3 blocks in Campbell (Campbell Ave) and the 3 blocks of urban development at Santana Row. That’s it! Just 10 blocks of urban development outside of downtown SJ!
I have the good fortune of being able to deliver in and around san jose for years at this point and you get a lot right. Couple of things:
Next time you visit I recommend you visit San Pedro Square and SoMa near downtown in future visits! I'd also recommend Japan Town and specifically the run of commercial buildings on jackson st between 3rd and 7th street.
A modest amount of the detached homes around downtown have been reconfigured into multiplexes, on top of quite a few legacy apartment buildings.
the sections just east of downtown on the other side of coyote creek are going to be hit really hard by gentrification in the coming years. This area is one of the most impoverished sections of the city and the arrival of BART to this section of town will mean a seachange in demographics.
A lot of VTA's woes are that in a world where zoom exists (and is headquarted in San Jose) the bulk of VTA's ridership, namely office workers that commuted to north San Jose, no longer have need of the service. It's frankly hilarious that most of the orange line's stops are in areas of the city that are practically vacant. That being said there is a future expansion further east to the very painfully neglected east side of the city.
Diridon is pronounced DEER-a-don not "Duh-RID-ee-on" . Hakone Gardens is in Saratoga, not San Jose. Like many other US cities, San Jose's downtown died in the 70s and 80s, but it's really coming back. There's South 1st St., San Pedro Square, the SoFa district. It's coming back. San Jose's issue is that it's too close to SF so that it gets sucked into its cultural vacuum. People go to SF for the symphony, the ballet, sports (but now football is in the South Bay). Had it been down near Monterey, it would have a lot more cultural autonomy.
Interesting note on if it had been more South. I made a pinned post and noted the pronunciation. I am unfortunately a very tongue tied autistic so this will likely happen in future videos for other places. I do appreciate your thoughts!
No, San Jose's downtown died in the late 50s and early 60s when the malls came to the suburbs - Valley Fair for one. Prior to the malls, it was downtown SJ to shop at Hart's or Hale's. By the mid 60s there was no real reason to go downtown anymore, except to "drag 1st Street" on a Saturday night to show off your car. Revitalization began in the early 80s with the building of the Fairmont, the convention center, and whole bunch of new office buildings. San Jose was never meant to be a big city. It was a small city that met the needs of the surrounding agricultural community.
The block of San Pedro square is the only other outdoor hang out space that I don’t mind going to. The city truly doesn’t have an architectural or cultural significance otherwise.
Well props to San Pedro Square then!
This is incredibly accurate u have no idea how incredibly boring living here was as a teen who didnt drive n didnt have any friends that drove n how incredibly frustrating it is as an adult to have to commute across the city nearly every day relying only on the buses n my own two feet bc i still cant drive so a 15min drive takes 25mins on the bus + 25mins walking (probably longer for others since my normal walk is speedwalking) bc of how far away bus stops are
As one of the many San Jose natives and urbanites here I absolutely understand why people would “grow up envying other cities” or “go away and come back and realize how awful it is” - I just moved back myself from a big East Coast city and do find myself missing a frequent Metro and the walkability of my old neighborhood.
However - when we move out and never come back we are absolutely abdicating our wishes and resigning the city to the kind of people who keep it what it is and refuse to strive for better. I get that because of housing prices it’s not feasible for everyone to stay and build a life, but for those of us lucky enough to do so, at some point we have to realize it’s partly incumbent on us to break the pattern of NIMBYs and carbrains being the only ones at city council meetings/forums, be clear about the kind of San Jose we want, and demand it from our elected officials. I would hope we could come to see that as far more respectable and impactful for the city we claim to love, a city with diverse richness of amazing peoples, cuisines, and cultures, than simply succumbing to shame or pessimism.
And frankly I’d ask well-meaning urbanists from other places and especially our denser older neighbors to the north to, if not support us, at least try to cut down on the superiority complexes and insults (“suburban hellhole”, “cultural wasteland” and get on the train! As many have noted there are many reasons to be optimistic with our TOD and new rail lines, elimination of parking minimums, etc - we need all the help we can get to seize that momentum and keep building up and moving faster. It won’t just be to the benefit of San Joseans to build SJ up - truly there aren’t many places with as much potential (infill availability, climate, wealth) as SJ left in California to develop.
Anyways, TL;DR: if you’re from here, let’s abandon pessimism and build a better SJ. if you’re not, become long SJ and put some outside pressure on us to be what California needs to get out of our housing crisis
San Jose has bike infrastructure that extends into the distal neighborhoods! No one uses it and it make driving actually more dangerous!
I should also note that since Covid, many people in the area are still working remotely or hybrid. Demand for transit is even lower for this reason (and the ones you already mentioned). That is especially true for Bart, which is suffering budget issues and has become extremely unpleasant to ride -- unless you want to catch a buzz from someone freebasing fent in the seat next to you.
There's probably no hope for San Jose to be like Utrecht, Tokyo, or Barcelona, but I think that's ok. The demand for housing in this area is testament to the fact that other people don't care either. People are ok living in an ugly city and being stuck in traffic if it means they can have a better paying job and reap *some* other benefits of living in the area.
Appreciate the comment.
I think to clarify, my point was that San José *doesn't* need to be like Utrecht or Tokyo.
Anyways, have a good weekend!
I was thinking about San Jose culture, like San Jose Bike Party and Cinco de Mayo cruising and how the cops tried to kill the bike ride at the beginning by showing up at the rides and intimidating participants with a show of force. Eventually they left it alone when they realized it was a peaceful mob of bicycle riders. It's free and fun for the whole family. Now cruising, they just made it legal again after 20+ years of stopping people of color, mostly. but when it comes time for Cinco de mayo cruising, they close off all the streets on the eastside and send everyone on to the freeways. the city should embrace this natural festive event of car culture since that's what this city is built for and take advantage and manage it better, be proactive instead reactive to the people wanting to cruise. Like San Jose viva calles event when they shut down sections of the streets for miles to allow neighborhood residences to enjoy it free of cars
That's really interesting, I'll need to look it up, honestly hadn't heard of this!
Your point is well taken Estaban, Lowriders put San Jose on the map, indeed, even Mayor Hammer took a cruise down King and Story - in a lowrider no less...
Milenials have no clue, nor does the Agenda 21 inititiative...
I looked into more on Anthony “Dutch” Hamann, the city planner you mentioned. Following are items from the website "San Jose Inside:"
It described him as completely unflappable - an open, friendly, super-salesman politician; some would say the ideal man for the city of San Jose. Dutch engineered bond drives that built sewer disposal plant. This plant was able to offer services to new industries coming to the valley as the canneries were phased out. The unemployment rate in San Jose when he took office was 11.6%; when he left office it was reduced to 3.5%. Individuals were able to afford reasonable housing and send kids to public schools without the threat of gang members slaying them. Dutch had his failures too. In 1958 City Hall was moved from downtown to North First and Rosa Streets. This created a void in downtown that led to its near death. Hamann recognized that the location of City Hall on North First was wrong and attempted to move it back in 1966. But the taxpayers had just paid for the move eight years before and defeated the move.
The city was offered the option to extend BART to San Jose in 1963, but both the council and the Mercury News were against it. By 1967 the makeup of the council was changing, and homeowner associations were offering their own candidates. A major scandal developed when City Treasurer Callison stole hundreds of thousand of dollars in parking meter fees, he served jail time for the offense.
Dutch held office at the pleasure of the council and he stood for a vote of confidence from the public every two years, always receiving a majority vote. In 1969, with the philosophy of the council changing and after he had held the job longer than any other city manager, he resigned and returned to the University of Santa Clara as vice president for development.
On March 27, 1977, KLM and Pan Am jumbo jets collided on the runway at Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Dutch and his wife Frances died on the Pan Am flight.
Great vid! FYI, the picture shown at 4:15 is from Boston, not New York. Bova's is in the North End which is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city.
Yup noted in the pinned comment, will do better QAing in future videos. Appreciate you commenting!
East San Jose resident here, because of how spread out everything is and the lack of political backing for new public transit lines, it takes far too long to get places without a car. For instance, where I live it takes just 15-25 minutes to get to the nearest BART station by car, but via bus and/or light rail, it'd take an entire hour. Getting to Diridon station to access Amtrak and Caltrain lines sucks too, about 15-30 minutes by car, but at least 1 hour by bus! The lack of connections forces the local BART stations to have lots and lots of parking, since it's such a hassle to even get there otherwise.
At least with how ubiquitous clipper cards have become, I can take public transit from here to beyond Oakland and back all on one card. It's also really nice how if you have a card, all transfers you make from light rail or bus are free for the next 2 hours after you hop on your first bus/light rail. My little brother would have to take two buses to get to school, but would only have to pay one bus fare of $1.25. He counts as a youth so he gets a discount, otherwise it'd be $2.50. BART however, is not included with the waiving of fares, but is compatible with clipper.
San Jose has the potential to be great but in practice it's so expensive that you basically pay San Francisco prices to live in the equivalent of Modesto, all because tech companies are there. It has a great doentown and light rail system exists, and it's getting bart and has Caltrain, it has the bones of a great city and i have no idea why its just a mass of sprawl.
Nobody wants to zone up there, state laws are nudging but still feels like a lot of resistance.
For anyone wanting to see thousands of people in downtown San Jose, go to 1st Street and Post St, and 1st Street and San Salvador St after midnight on Friday and Saturday, during the summer months. 1st Street comes alive as the clubs open up after dark, and the young people come together to party.
pretty sure the airport being right behind downtown prevents planning from building UP
The height limit is something I should have mentioned, although personally I view it as a somewhat limiting factor. You can do a lot with even 6 story buildings.
4:15 the absolute SLANDER! This is BOSTON’s North End!!!
I'm so sorry! Unintentional slander! I had two files and got the names mixed up, I've been to both several times and it's a really big obvious mistake. I promise better QA on future videos and forgive me for this transgressions.
@@offbrandurbanism Apology accepted. I really enjoyed the video, and I think this channel has a great future. Keep up the good work! 🙂
Audio cuts off for a second at 3:16, what did you say?
"Preferred driving to work at office parks" I'll do better next video on QA on audio quality. First time recording my voice in my life so mistakes inevitably happened. Good catch!
Good video but mistake at 4:14 that is actually the North End in Boston
I goobed on that, I think I had a few different images and they got shuffled. My bad, will make a note in the description when I have time. At least it's in America so the point still makes sense
@Off Brand Urbanism ya and it's even another large old East Coast city that also had a similar development. It isn't that big of difference really. Interestingly, Boston is distinctly more European feeling than even other east coast cities, especially the north end, due to the street layout.
I love Boston! Red Sox is my favorite AL team, have friends there and been there a few times so it is a little embarrassing. Will do better next video!
@Off Brand Urbanism definitely not a big problem! And yeah it's a great city, though I am biased towards it, having it be my hometown lol.
Actual critique on the use of the photo though. Totally fine to use the east coast for the point you were making but I think it would have been good with a bay area follow-up example as it's not even an alien concept in the region San Jose exists in.
I've lived here for most of my life and I just found out there's a light rail
Wait until you find out about the SuperSonics...
If you view it as a core city, it's not impressive. But it's really more part of the San Francisco area, no matter how much suburbia they annexed. View it among secondary cities and it does much better.
Google bought up lots of land around the Diridon train station with the idea of building a large transit oriented mixed use community. Unfortunately, that plan has stalled because of recent economic conditions. I hope it will proceed when the economy improves.
All you needed to do was, once you get to City Hall, walk one block south to San Fernando Street, where you find San Jose State University. Take a right on San Fernando, and you find all the mixed use you claim to want.
Thank you the engagement!
Lately, San Jose has been focused on building high-density mix-use housing along highways and VTA stops.
Thanks to Agenda 21 or 2030...
10:11 San Jose Earthquakes: am I a joke to you?
I thought PayPal Park was in Santa Clara 😅 forgive me for my digression!
@@offbrandurbanismimagine if an NFL team with San Francisco in it’s name and an MLS team with San Jose in it’s name both played in the same city, but none of the names above
San Jose Earthquakes play in the city of San Jose (put some respect to our soccer team that is now playing well lol).
In my defense, they used to play to play in Santa Clara, and if their stadium was moved a half mile it would be in San Jose going off Google Maps it would be in Santa Clara.
Hiking and biking in near by mountains is probably the best thing to do, good food options, that’s it. Great place to grow up on the west side, shout out feed mei mei, lastly I didn’t even know they had a light rail system when I grew up there
First commenter to shout out feed mei mei!!!! Also I agree, great hiking, love me some mountains. Used to go to Pinnacles every two years (I realize that's not in San Jose but you know, in the general area). What's your favorite San Jose food option?
@@offbrandurbanism if you are up for exploring Indian food, there is a vegetarian dosa place called “UlavacharU Tiffins”. Located in Santa Clara, but close enough.
When I first went to San Jose, my first thought was: why the hell did NHL put a team in a suburb and not a real city like San Francisco or back in Oakland?
I think the reasoning at the time was the Oakland Seals failed, San Francisco didn't have any arena bigger than the Cow Palace at the time. Plus San José was an untapped market. I don't see them moving anytime soon, they have fairly dedicated fans and have all of Nor Cal. I hope they do better next year, rebuild over when?
Yo,sdeegj, SF refused to build an arena for the Warriors when they moved to the Bay Area, their first choice, SF. Oakland was already in the process of building the Coloseum/Arena when the Warriors opted for Oakland.
As for the SJ Sharks, their initial owner opted to move the Minnesota North Stars to SJ as McEnery got his referendum approving the SJ Arena, he thus blocked the NHL from expanding to the Bay Area as a result. George Gund's cunning solidified his position in obtaining the "expansion franchise." He ultimately sold the North Stars to Dallas interests (for $38M, $12M shy of the $50M franchise fee he paid.) who then dropped "North" from the team name.
Ha !! If I have to explain it to you and others, it's because you didn't know.
So before you open your mouth, make sure you know what your talking about.
At 4:16, that is Bova's Bakery in the North End, Boston, MA, not NY
I should start a raffle for everyone reminding me about this haha. Yes it is in fact North End. I wasn't familar with Adobe and how file names worked and made an honest mistake. I promise in the future to do better on QA image assets for videos. Thank you for your engagement!