Bay Area leaders consider merging region (2013)

These days we'd call the Cupertino/Campbell/Saratoga area "Apple", the San Jose/Fremont/Los Gatos area "Cisco", the Mountain View/Atherton/Alviso area "Google", the Palo Alto/Menlo Park/East Palo Alto area "Facebook" :-)

Back when this sort of merger was a bigger thing than it is today there was an analysis of the number of fat bureaucrat jobs that could be eliminated (replacing police chiefs, city managers, fire chiefs, mayors etc) somehow all the wind went out of the excitement.

I really do hope this does happen one day. Abag recommendations are just recommendations and cities and towns have their own prerogatives. If they all merged it could be so much better. Integrated transportation, integrated development plans, integrated politics, etc. Goodbye SF supes with their insular pet projects. Hello integrated urbanism and development, if it ever were to happen, this area could be just so much better. No Bart stopping at the San Mateo border, as initially happened.

Despite the article being from 2013, there is precedent... New York City was booming and five separate cities voted to merge and become one big NYC.

There's no reason the Bay Area couldn't do the same thing.

I would love to live in that alternative reality. The area is crippled by small town fragmentation.

POSTED: 02/08/2013 11:10:41 AM PST | UPDATED: 3 YEARS AGO

Are people realizing this is from 2013?