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Agreed. I grew up in the Walnut Creek/Alamo/Danville corridor, and this article feels way off the mark. > Heading north from Fremont is basically sadness. Hayward, Oakland, San Leandro, Richmond, Vallejo. They’re all poverty stricken and broken. If you're driving along the freeway looking out the window, I could see how you might think this. Surprise - people that have any amount of money don't want to live within hearing distance of a freeway. Most of the spaces slightly further away are fine. I have friends in the Oakland Hills along 13; perfectly respectable area. Those friends have parents out near Richmond - lots of typical older middle class housing from the 50s. > The only green zones I see out in that area are maybe in Dublin, Pleasanton, Moraga, etc., but I honestly don’t know much about those areas because I seldom get out there. I do get out there, and most of Alameda county away from the edge of the bay is comfortably upper-middle class (Dublin/Pleasanton/Fremont/Livermore; Hayward/Castro Valley/San Leandro feel more middle class with upper-middle surroundings + urban gentrification starting to take hold). I have friends out in Stockton; they have a comfortably middle-class house, as do their parents (though on the whole I've seen less of Stockton than I have of the Bay). I could go on (grandparents in Orinda, an uncle in Fremont, friends scattered through SF, SJ, etc.) but my main point is that most of the Bay is suburbs on suburbs, most of them are at least middle class, and our ridiculous zoning/prop 13/NIMBY problems trap people wherever they are and discourage new construction, which contributes to the crappy old look of a lot of places. |