The Northern California Megaregion comprises 164 cities, 21 counties, and four regions: the San Francisco Bay metropolitan area, the Monterey Bay area, the Sacramento area, and the northern San Joaquin Valley. The Bay Area (more specifically, the San Francisco Bay Area), which surrounds San Francisco Bay in Northern California, is a large and geographically diverse metropolitan region that is home to more than 7 million people in cities such as San Francisco, Oakland and San José. Formerly it was the center of Spanish missions and gold rush prospectors, but now it is better known for its lifestyle, liberal politics and high-tech industry (Silicon Valley). Interstate 280 and South Bay highways tend to be less congested than Peninsula highways and East Bay.
The San Francisco Bay Area has long been understood as a region made up of the nine counties that touch the bay. For example, the Central Valley is a region that differs culturally and topographically from the California coast, although in the divisions of Northern and Southern California, the Sacramento Valley and most of the San Joaquin Valley are usually located in Northern California. The Bay Area's subregions are described in a variety of ways, which can give the first-time visitor the impression that the Bay Area is larger than it actually is. The Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, regional transportation planning agencies in the northern San Joaquin Valley, and railroad agencies in the Northern California Megaregion have begun working together to promote mega-regional planning.
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is an extensive regional subway system that connects San Francisco to the East Bay, as well as to parts of the peninsula, the eastern half of Silicon Valley, and the airports of San Francisco and Oakland. The census showed that the Bay Area grew at a faster rate than the Los Angeles metropolitan area, while the Sacramento metropolitan area had the highest growth rate of any California metropolitan area. Two long-distance trains, the California Zephyr to Chicago and the Coast Starlight between Seattle and Los Angeles, run through the Bay Area with stations in Martinez and Emeryville, and the Coast Starlight also stops at Jack London Square Station in Oakland and San Jose. Despite its urban nature, San Francisco Bay is one of the most ecologically sensitive habitats in California, providing important ecosystem services, such as filtering pollutants and sediments from rivers and supporting several endangered species. The Northern California Megaregion, one of the 11 megaregions of the United States, is centered in Northern California and extends from the Fresno metropolitan area north to the Sacramento metropolitan area, and from the Bay Area east across the Nevada state border to encompass the entire Lake Tahoe-Reno area.
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a region of California that surrounds and includes San Francisco Bay, and is anchored by the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. In the early 1960s, the Bay Area and the rest of Northern California became the center of the countercultural movement. Make substantial investments in education outside the Bay Area The issue of educational attainment is key to economic prosperity in the Northern California mega-region, and is an issue where mutual promotion at the state level can lead to better funding results. San Mateo and the northern part of Santa Clara counties comprise the peninsula, while Contra Costa and Alameda counties comprise the East Bay of the Bay Area.
It is comprised of nine Bay Area counties, the six-county Sacramento region, the three-county Monterey Bay Area, and three counties north of the San Joaquin Valley...
