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Comment by jboy55 | Hacker News Reader

Its interesting, I've always been asked what the 'official' definition of Silicon Valley is, or if some specific city is 'in' Silicon Valley or out. Like say, Redwood City.

By looking at this map here, https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/plume-minimal/index.html# you can easily tell by wether the city has a Superfund site.

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This data is only for cities in Santa Clara County:

  This map shows the sites of toxic chemical "plumes" in Santa Clara County, CA

Besides one in SF (and a couple in Oakland), all the "Superfund" sites in the "Bay Area" are in Santa Clara County. https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=...

Silicon Valley should be basically Santa Clara Valley, but in practice, it basically means everywhere including SF and the east bay.

> but in practice, it basically means everywhere including SF and the east bay

Silicon Valley includes neither SF nor the East Bay, not even in practice.

You must not read much national or international media.

> "As more high-tech companies were established across San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley, and then north towards the Bay Area's two other major cities, San Francisco and Oakland, the "Silicon Valley" has come to have two definitions: a geographic one, referring to Santa Clara County, and a metonymical one, referring to all high-tech businesses in the Bay Area or even in the United States."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley

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