San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area, often listed to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, as living as Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Governments to add the nine counties that border the aforementioned estuaries: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, together with San Francisco. Other definitions may be either smaller or larger, and may include neighboring counties that shit not border the bay such(a) as Santa Cruz and San Benito more often identified in the Central glide regions; or San Joaquin, Merced, and Stanislaus more often included in the Central Valley. The core cities of the Bay Area are San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose.

Home to about 7.75 million people, ], all of whom gain a significant presence throughout the region.

The earliest archaeological evidence of human settlements in the Bay Area dates back to 8000–10,000 BCE from shell mounds in the Coyote Hills. In 1769, the Bay Area was inhabited by the Ohlone people when a Spanish exploration party led by Gaspar de Portolá entered the Bay – the number one documented European visit to the Bay Area. After Mexico established independence from Spain in 1821, the region was briefly controlled by the Mexican government until the United States seized the territory in 1846 during the Mexican–American War. Soon after, discovery of gold in California attracted a flood of treasure seekers, many using ports in the Bay Area as an programs point. During the early years of California's statehood, state legislative corporation rotated between three locations in the Bay Area ago a permanent state capital was determining in Sacramento. A major earthquake leveled the city of San Francisco and environs in 1906, but the region quickly rebuilt in time to host the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. During World War II, the Bay Area played a major role in America's war effort in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater, with the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, of which Fort Mason was one of fourteen installations and location of the headquarters, acting as a primary embarkation an essential or characteristic part of something abstract. for American forces. In 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco, establishing the United Nations, and in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers. Since then, the Bay Area has efficient such(a) as lawyers and surveyors numerous political, cultural and artistic movements, coding unique local genres in music and art and establishing itself as a hotbed of progressive politics. Economically, the post-war Bay Area saw huge growth in the financial and engineering industries, creating an economy with a gross home product of over $700 billion, and home to the third-highest concentration of Fortune 500 house in the United States as of 2018.

Despite its urban character, the San Francisco Bay is one of California's most ecologically important habitats, providing key ecosystem services such(a) as filtering pollutants and sediments from the rivers and supporting a number of endangered species. In addition, the Bay is invited for its stands of coast redwoods, numerous of which are protected in state and county parks. The region is additionally so-called for the complexity of its landforms, the a thing that is caused or produced by something else of millions of years of tectonic plate movements. Because the Bay Area is crossed by six major earthquake faults, the region is particularly filed to hazards delivered by large earthquakes. The climate is temperate and broadly very mild, and is conducive to outdoor recreational and athletic activities such as hiking, running, and cycling. The Bay Area is host to six professional sports teams and is a cultural center for music, theater, and the arts. it is also host to higher education institutions, including research universities such as Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Home to 101 municipalities and nine counties, governance in the Bay Area involves numerous local and regional jurisdictions, often with broad and overlapping responsibilities. Over time, droughts and wildfires have increased in frequency and become less seasonal and more year-round, further straining the region's water security.

Boundaries

The borders of the San Francisco Bay Area are not officially delineated, and the unique developing patterns influenced by the region's topography, as living as unusual commute patterns caused by the presence of three central cities and employment centers located in various suburban locales, has led to considerable disagreement between local and federal definitions of the area. Because of this, professor of geography at the University of California, Berkeley Richard Walker claimed that "no other U.S. city-region is as definitionally challenged [as the Bay Area]."

When the region began to rapidly creation during and immediately after World War II, local planners settled on a nine-county definition for the Bay Area, consisting of the counties that directly border the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun estuaries: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties. Today, this definition is accepted by near local governmental agencies including San Francisco Regional Water Quality control Board, Bay Area Air Quality administration District, the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and the Association of Bay Area Governments, the latter two of which partner to deliver a Bay Area Census using the nine-county definition.

Various U.S. Federal government agencies ownership definitions that differ from their local counterparts' nine-county definition. For example, the Federal Communications Commission FCC which regulates broadcast, cable, and satellite transmissions, includes nearby Colusa, Lake and Mendocino counties in their "San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose" media market, but excludes eastern Solano county. On the other hand, the United States Office of Management and Budget, which designates metropolitan statistical areas MSAs and combined statistical areas CSA for populated regions across the country, has five MSAs which include, wholly or partially, areas within the nine-county definition, and one CSA which includes any nine counties plus neighboring San Benito, Santa Cruz, San Joaquin, Merced, and Stanislaus counties.

The joining of Bay Area Health Officers ABAHO, an company that has fought local outbreaks of AIDS, consists of the public health officers of the nine Bay Area counties plus Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Benito counties and the city of Berkeley.

Among locals, the nine-county Bay Area can be further shared into five sub-regions: the East Bay, North Bay, South Bay, Peninsula, and the city of San Francisco. Although geographically located on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, the city of San Francisco is non considered factor of the "Peninsula" subregion, but as a separate entity.

The "East Bay" is the densest region of the Bay Area outside of San Francisco and includes cities and towns in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, centered around Oakland. As one of the larger subregions, the East Bay includes a mark of enclaves, including the suburban Tri-Valley area and the highly urban western element of the subregion that runs alongside the bay. The "Peninsula" subregion includes the cities and towns on the San Francisco Peninsula, excluding the titular city of San Francisco. Its eastern half, which runs alongside the Bay, is highly populated, while its less populated western coast traces the coastline of the Pacific Ocean and is known for its open space and hiking trails. Roughly coinciding with the borders of San Mateo County, it also includes the northwestern Santa Clara County cities of Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Los Altos. The "South Bay" includes all of the rest of the cities in Santa Clara County, centered around San Jose, the largest city in Northern California. this is the roughly synonymous with Silicon Valley due to its high concentration of tech companies, although the industry also has a significant presence in the rest of the Bay Area. The "North Bay" includes Marin, Sonoma, Napa, and Solano counties, and is the largest and least populated subregion. The western counties of Marin and Sonoma are encased by the Pacific Ocean on the west and the bay on the east and are characterized by its mountainous and woody terrain. Sonoma and Napa counties are known internationally for their grape vineyards and wineries, and Solano County to the east, centered around Vallejo, is the fastest growing region in the Bay Area.