Why is the size of San Francisco so small?
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  Political Geography & Demographics (Moderators: muon2, 15 Down, 35 To Go)
  Why is the size of San Francisco so small?
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Author Topic: Why is the size of San Francisco so small?  (Read 2946 times)
retromike22
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« on: September 05, 2013, 03:35:49 PM »

It's about 46 square miles, smaller than Fargo, North Dakota. How come it didn't annex areas south of it, including the area that has the San Francisco Airport? I recognize that below it is a different county, but why not annex the northern parts and combine it with the consolidated San Francisco city-county?
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Torie
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« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2013, 04:28:36 PM »

Ask the folks of Alpine County, which is small both in population and size, and bifurcated with no through road by a little mountain range called the Sierra Nevadas to boot. I don't think SF wants to annex Daly (the houses look all the same) City under any circumstances.
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muon2
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« Reply #2 on: September 05, 2013, 06:15:45 PM »

Ask the folks of Alpine County, which is small both in population and size, and bifurcated with no through road by a little mountain range called the Sierra Nevadas to boot. I don't think SF wants to annex Daly (the houses look all the same) City under any circumstances.

I actually had a very nice and scenic drive across the breadth of Alpine back in the summer of 2011. Smiley
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jimrtex
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« Reply #3 on: September 06, 2013, 06:15:19 AM »

It's about 46 square miles, smaller than Fargo, North Dakota. How come it didn't annex areas south of it, including the area that has the San Francisco Airport? I recognize that below it is a different county, but why not annex the northern parts and combine it with the consolidated San Francisco city-county?
There was a proposal to annex San Mateo and form some sort of consolidated government.  I think that San Mateo (or the urban parts adjacent to San Francisco) would have been made a borough.  I think this was around 1920 or so, but it was defeated.   Remember that New York City wasn't converted to its modern form until the early 20th Century, when Brooklyn was annexed, the southern tip of the mainland chopped from Westchester to become the Bronx, and eastern Queens chopped off to become Nassau County, while Queens was annexed.

IIRC, there was some other proposal that would have partially annexed Daly City, maybe so that it could get water from Hetch Hetchy.
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« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2013, 09:35:32 AM »

New York is a good point of comparison. As I recall, there was a great push to create a City of Greater San Francisco (much like the City of Greater New York) around the time of the 1939 World's Fair; this would have meant the annexation of land not only on the San Francisco Peninsula, but also north and east of the bay.

As it is, San Francisco today is roughly equivalent to what Manhattan would be if it were independent of the outlying counties. Its minute size compared to other Western cities is the result of geography, since it is constrained by water on three sides. In theory it could attempt to annex land to the south, but there have been no such efforts that I know of since the War, and even the northern portions of San Mateo county are very much unlike San Francisco. It wouldn't make sense.
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« Reply #5 on: September 06, 2013, 03:30:25 PM »

Remember that the Fargo municipality still contains some rural areas.
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