Comment by frutiger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frutiger | Hacker News Reader

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As all of the comments below are comparing the San Francisco Bay Area with New York City in terms of real estate, transit time, etc. it's worth noting the stark differences between the two.

The Bay Area is of size 6,000-10,000 sq. mi. with a population of 7.7-8.8 million people[1]. NYC is of size 302 sq. mi. (yes, really! That's 20x-50x smaller) with a population of 8.1-8.6 million people[2]. Perhaps it's easy to underestimate just how much of a big world city NYC is and how varied its people and industries are compared to what they might be used to on the west coast.

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City

Why are you comparing the SF bay area to the city limits of New York? Better would be to compare SF bay area to New York Metro Area, which is far bigger than the SF bay area.

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

I originally had the same reaction as you, but reading the parent's comment charitably I believe he's getting at "the population of the entire Bay Area is actually comparable to the population of just NYC proper with it's much tinier (relatively) area)."

In other words, some people tend to think of NYC as "huge major East Coast city" and SF as "huge major West Coast city", but the sheer enormous density of NYC makes it actually on a whole other level than SF.

Even coming from the Midwest SF feels like a midsize city. I've visited SF, I considered doing the SF software dev thing, but SF just feels like if Cincinnati developed a tech sector.

Chicago's urban population is 8.66m, and the urban area is 2,200 sq miles. I feel like I'm in a city here. When I go to West Coast cities I feel like I'm in a giant (sometimes quaint and charming) suburb. There's no density.

SF is a little under 50 square miles with a population of around 900,000

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