Comparing Sydney to Silicon Valley

One thought on “Comparing Sydney to Silicon Valley”

1. I wish I could tell how many years ago this was as I recently moved from Brisbane to the Bay Area. So perhaps a few updates? Housing prices have doubled since this was written.

   First – some geography – but first a political lesson for the Aussies – A county in the US is the basic civil division for our courts, birth/death/marriage records, jails, social services, etc and most local infrastructure (roads, transit, water, sewer, etc) and parks funding also happens at this level. Counties are then usually broken up into smaller municipalities which govern things like schools, police, fire, garbage collection, etc. Many counties with a big city are consolidated so that the city government and county government are one and the same. San Francisco is one such city.

   Geography then – the Golden Gate is where San Francisco Bay meets the Pacific. North of the Golden Gate is also known as the North Bay – which is also wine country – in Napa, Sonoma, and Marin Counties. Directly east of the Golden Gate is the East Bay which includes Alameda and Contra Costa Counties and where you’ll find cities such as Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville, Fremont, etc. What you might be tempted to call the West Bay is known as “the Peninsula” which covers most of the area between SF and San Jose. That would be all of San Mateo County and the northernmost towns in Santa Clara County (Palo Alto & Mountain View). The South Bay is mostly synonymous with Santa Clara County. Silicon Valley stretches from Redwood City in San Mateo County, down through Santa Clara County and back around the Bay to Fremont.

   While the tech monoliths still dominate the Valley a whole lot of web and app based companies have sprung up in San Francisco with still more being driven to Emeryville and Oakland in search of cheaper office rents. SF is by far the most expensive part of the Bay Area for housing. Santa Clara County, especially around Palo Alto, is a close second with San Mateo County (between SF and Santa Clara Co.) is a bit cheaper if for no other reason than it now finds itself between these two great job centers. The East Bay (Hayward, Fremont, etc) is still a good deal cheaper.

   All of the bridges have tolls. They vary between $4 and $6 depending on the time of day. The FasTrack toll pass is a good companion for your car. Traffic can be nightmarish during peak periods. Most of the larger employers are required by the State to run their own shuttle services so that places like Google and Facebook offer their employees a “free” transit service right to those campuses. For the smaller firms you’re on your own. For the most part each county runs its own transit system but one only need to keep a Clipper Card topped up to use all of them seamlessly.

   San Francsco has MUNI which runs all of the buses, trams, and light rail in SF. San Mateo County runs buses as “SamTrans”. Caltrain runs trains through San Mateo County from San Francisco down to San Jose. San Jose, which is the center of Santa Clara County, has the VTA which runs all of the buses and light rail in Santa Clara. BART is the subway system that connects SF with Berkeley, Oakland, and the rest of the East Bay. There is a ferry network that connects downtown SF with the East and North Bay but it’s small by Sydney standards. Part of the reason for that is that the Bay is quite shallow in many spots south of San Francisco and environmental regulations make dredging especially costly and time consuming.
   The Bay Area is far from the best when it comes to public transport but it’s hardly the worst either.

   Healthcare – quite a few things have changed in the last 2 years. If you lose your job now you get to keep your insurance (if you want to) without having to pay exorbitant prices. If you can prove little to no income you get full coverage health care for nothing. When I lived in Oz I was required to have a private health cover and, as a non-citizen/non permanent resident I had no access to the public health system. It’s fairly similar here.

   The weather – we’re in the midst of a bad drought but nothing that Aussies would be alarmed by. Since the area is dominated by the Pacific, the Bay, and mountains there are a variety of microclimates. You can see in the picture at the top of this page the fog rolling over the hills in SF. That hill is actually a ridge that runs north/south from SF all the way down past San Jose and the hills get much larger as you move south from SF. To the west of that ridge the weather is often just as you see it in that picture – cold, damp, and shrouded in fog. You’ll find the cheapest rents in the Bay Area west of the hills. To the east of the hills you’ll enjoy more sunshine and warmer temps although SF itself is often cooler and windier than the rest of the Bay Area. For instance, during the summer months it’s quite common to see a high temp of 65F/18C in the miserable parts of SF, 72F/22C in the sunny parts of SF, 80F/27C in Oakland, and 87F/30C in San Jose. In fact, most larger apartment complexes in the South Bay/Santa Clara County have swimming pools. It’s unheard of in SF, the North Bay, and the East Bay north of Oakland.

   One last important point – Australia made it through the GFC with nary a bruise compared to what happened in the US. Throughout the country it was nearly impossible to get financing to build a house or apartment block for a solid 4 years and for 2 years after that it wasn’t that much easier. The Bay Area was one of the few places in the country where there was rapid job growth but in a place that is famously anti-development to begin with there were very few houses built over the last 7 years. 500,000 new people have moved in while fewer than 100,000 new housing units have been built. You can do the math on that one. This is why housing prices are so out of control here. Keep that in mind when looking for a place and don’t be surprised if you wind up paying a ton of money to live in a suburban house with 4 other people.

   Reply