Part 1: Reno and Death Valley

Part 2: Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, and Valley of Fire

Part 3: San Diego

Part 4: Downtown LA and Hollywood

Part 5: More LA and Long Beach

Part 6: Santa Barbara and the California Coast

Part 7: San Francisco

Part 8: Sacramento

 

 

Sacramento is yet another city on this trip that I had never visited before. Overall the city had a very good feel to it and it's a place I'd like to spend more time. In some ways it reminded me of Portland... I'm not sure if that's because of the scale of buildings, the number of breweries, or the 1980s-era light rail vehicles. Anyway, onto the photos!

 

West Sacramento

 

The Ziggurat is an office building in West Sacramento modeled after a Mesopotamian ziggurat. It was built for The Money Store but is now leased and occupied by the California Department of General Services:

 

 

 

Looking across the Sacramento River at Sacramento:

 

 

 

Old Sacramento

 

Old Sacramento is a 28-acre historic district with 53 historic buildings and is registered as a National and California Historic Landmark. It seemed to be filled with a bizarre mix of chain restaurants like Joe's Crab Shack, olde tymey candy shops, and tattoo parlors. But, the architecture was cool and I'm glad these buildings have been preserved.

 

 

 

 

 

A parking garage given a "historic" facade on the side facing the historic district:

 

 

Downtown Sacramento

 

There was a common them in many of the California cities we visited on this trip. It seemed like old downtown shopping malls were being demolished everywhere to make way for other uses. In Sacramento's case, a portion of the old Downtown Plaza shopping mall was demolished and is being replaced by the new Golden 1 Center, a new arena for the Sacramento Kings.

 

 

 

Several historic facades along K Street were preserved while the interior of the block was demolished. When completed, the 700 Block project will contain 137 apartments and 65,000 square feet of retail:

 

 

The K Street transit mall is used by Sacramento's light rail system. If the proposed Sacramento Streetcar plan moves forward, these tracks will be used by streetcars and the LRT will be re-routed up to H Street.

 

 

 

 

(Proposition B failed, by the way, but several other funding mechanisms are being studied to build the Sacramento Streetcar.)

 

The California State Capitol:

 

 

 

The state capitol is surrounded by a variety of different types of trees representing the different geographic areas of the state:

 

 

Walking around the urban core:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This lady didn't get the memo about the drought:

 

 

Obligatory brewery stop at Rubicon Brewing Company:

 

 

 

And finally, a nice sunset:

 

 

And the Great Urban Ohio West Coast Roadtrip of May 2015 is over! It was great getting an overview of all of these places and hopefully I'll be able to visit and spend more time in each of them.

I totally agree on the Portland comparison.  Shame Sacramento is the fourth largest metro in the largest state in the country.  It would get much more shine otherwise.  Excellent thread and excellent series!

That boat looks identical to the Delta Queen, because it is. 

Sacramento is basically the Midwest transplanted to California, but the people are friendly and down-to-earth. For some unknown (or more fearful) reason, it gets a ton of hate from SF and Oakland (though Oakland tends to hate on everyone) despite being more diverse and friendlier than anywhere in the Inner Bay. I think a lot of the hate is because so many people have to commute from there who still work in the Bay. That commute is many Bay Arean's greatest fear. IMO, it pretty much negates the massive housing cost savings compared to the Bay (prices in Sac are about 1/5 SF, 1/4 Oakland). It's a popular place for people to move after they get evicted from San Francisco or Oakland. The commute on I-80 is nuts...

 

With that said, all those ex-Bay Areans have brought a lot of fancy food stuff with them, so Sac Town's dining scene is moving up in the world. I've even heard Oaklanders refer to it as "Oakland Junior" or "Oakland without the gentrification."

 

*Portland isn't the best comparison since Sacramento is much, much more diverse being in California. Portland is one of the whitest and least diverse cities in America. Sacramento's cultural connections are mainly with Oakland and inland Midwestern cities. It's basically a less urban, inland version of Oakland with friendlier, less violent, less hipster people.

Yeah, the diversity was actually one of the first things I noticed when I landed in the Sacramento trip, which is where I began the trip (making a big loop and returning to Sacramento to fly home).

 

I didn't get a chance to explore it while I was there, but in some of the research I've done since I got back, it seems like there are a good number of new urbanist style developments happening in close-in neighborhoods. That would be interested to check out if I get the chance to return.

 

It's so funny to me that people make comments like "Sacramento is Oakland without the gentrification." Newsflash: cities are on the rise. Just about any city that doesn't intentionally stifle growth and development is going to gentrify because the decades-long trend of unlimited suburban expansion and urban decay is over. I don't know why it's so hard for people to accept that idea.

I didn't get a chance to explore it while I was there, but in some of the research I've done since I got back, it seems like there are a good number of new urbanist style developments happening in close-in neighborhoods. That would be interested to check out if I get the chance to return.

 

Yes, there are some neighborhoods with good urban infill targeted at middle class San Francisco-Oakland transplants. There is a lot of great stuff happening in Midtown and in East Sacramento. They're also doing a good job with the riverfront, and downtown continues to see new development that is well-executed. The city is really changing while maintaining its diverse population.

 

It's so funny to me that people make comments like "Sacramento is Oakland without the gentrification." Newsflash: cities are on the rise. Just about any city that doesn't intentionally stifle growth and development is going to gentrify because the decades-long trend of unlimited suburban expansion and urban decay is over. I don't know why it's so hard for people to accept that idea.

 

It's quite the opposite in California. Gentrification happens in cities that stifle growth (SF/OAK, parts of LA and San Diego), even if they're growing much slower than inland cities. When there is population growth without housing unit growth, you get gentrification (hyper-gentrification in the case of insanely NIMBY, anti-growth cities like Oakland and San Francisco). Sacramento is not gentrifying and it's still a fraction of the cost of Oakland and San Francisco. That giant price gap will always remain. There is very little gentrification pressure in Sacramento since it has tons of vacant land (so does Oakland), but more importantly, it's pro-growth. Gentrification is most pronounced in anti-growth cities. Oakland is not "on the rise" in the typical sense since it still has all the crime issues and lack of retail which has plagued it for decades. It's not bringing in adequate tax revenue and the city still can't afford to fund a real police department (but this gets into California's Prop 13, which is a different discussion).

 

Oakland still has tons of urban decay despite a booming population and explosive growth in wealth. Oakland is still mostly a dead industrial port city with very little nightlife despite being the nation's fourth most expensive place to live. It can't hold a candle to San Francisco and will forever live in its shadow. It's more Newark than Brooklyn. :wink: All of its growth is owed to SF. Even Oakland's new largest company, Uber, came from SF. Gentrification does not improve a city unless that city's underlying problems are fixed. Only smart political choices make that happen. True hyper-gentrification can actually destroy cities like what's happening in Oakland where two old bars close down for every new high-priced bar that opens. This extends across most retail and small businesses too. Multiple middle class businesses shut down to be replaced by one new spot catering to the 1%. Oakland is still a shockingly sleepy town despite its iconic hipster reputation and young, wealthy population. It goes to bed hella early.

 

San Francisco is certainly "on the rise" (and has been since the late 70's) due to high-income job growth, but its hyper-gentrification is due to housing supply growth not being anywhere near job growth levels (*Oakland is all spillover). And honestly, SF is less vibrant in many areas today than it was four years ago due to businesses being priced out of the city. The Bay has reached a point where its hyper-gentrification/anti-growth politics are killing off local businesses. Some whole streets in dense urban areas are dying. Oakland is littered with dead streets where everyone on them is a millionaire (or homeless).

 

By contrast, local businesses are booming in Sacramento. It's much easier to open a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant in that type of pro-growth city. Sacramento may in fact have more overall nightlife and general street activity than Oakland despite having none of the legendary hipster reputation or nearly the density. It's Oakland without gentrification, but it's also what Oakland should be. Sacramento is to Columbus as Oakland is to Buffalo or Toledo.

 

True gentrification happens when demand outstrips supply. It's really that simple. By limiting supply, it creates a bid war situation for housing. The middle class can easily survive in cities that build adequate urban housing. They get priced out if demand outstrips supply. Pro-growth cities limit or even prevent gentrification from happening, hence the existence of middle class burgs like Sacramento, Portland (they may complain about us ex-Bay Areans, but their pipeline will maintain the middle class), Queens, Bronx, etc. Gentrification is the wrong word to use in cities that just see overall urban development. What we call gentrification in the Bay is a very different thing. It means eviction of the middle class and now also the upper middle class (hyper-gentrificaiton is the second wave and results in eviction of anyone under 100k salary or anyone who doesn't own housing/have rent control). It's not gentrification when your city gains a middle class. It's gentrification when your city loses its middle class and laws are passed to limit any newcomers to just the 1%.

 

Gentrification is a result of urban planning choices and zoning laws, not an inevitable result of cities being in vogue again. Plenty of high growth cities still maintain a large urban middle class since they build enough housing units. Sacramento is the gold standard on this.

 

*But true, as a nation, our cities are vastly underbuilt in terms of both housing and transit infrastructure. We're paying that price today with soaring rents. The housing crisis only made this worse since it's a lot tougher to get financing for first-time homebuyers today. By investing so much in freeways at the expense of rail infrastructure, we were not ready for this pro-urban generational shift underway (Gen Y and Gen Z), which is likely permanent.

 

**But Sacramento is a big exception to this rule. Its population is exploding with ex-Bay Areans, but housing costs are still dirt cheap since they approve massive infill projects. Sacramento is an example of how to handle explosive population growth correctly. The city is getting denser, more urban, more diverse, and maintaining a large middle class. It may be one of the only American cities where the majority of people are actually still middle class...

 

If anything, Sacramento is the nation's best model on how to avoid gentrification in the true SF/Oakland/NYC/Boston sense of the word. Many lessens on how to avoid gentrification can be learned from it. It is truly one of the nation's most progressive and most liberal cities in the classic pro-labor sense. Its political culture is unique even in California. It's also extremely integrated and people really do get along well. It flies under the radar since it can't compete with the Bay and LA for the global spotlight, but the rest of the country has more to learn from Sacramento than it does from coastal California...people move there not just for the cheap housing, but also the friendly people open to class diversity and racial diversity. Socially-spaeking, I think Sacramento is a model American city. It sucks it's not on the water. It also sucks it's not where Reno is located. If you put Sac Town in the Reno-Tahoe area, it'd be pretty damn amazing. Instead, it's a totally flat, inland city with bad weather. It's unfortunate it was built where it was...if it were in Marin County or Contra Costa County, the Bay Area would be much better off. We need more progressive, pro-growth, open-minded people like that...

 

It's important to remember that everything happening in hot coastal cities is by political choice.

 

"Real California" is becoming an elusive thing on the coast these days. Many native Californians now consider Sacramento to be much closer to the social ideal...

That boat looks identical to the Delta Queen, because it is. 

 

Good catch.

 

As I recall, both of them were built in Europe for use on the West Coast, or maybe Alaska. The Delta Queen has the distinction of being the only steam powered riverboat to have passed through the Panama Canal.

They were made to negotiate the choppy waters of San Francisco Bay.  So they could come down from Sacramento on its river and across the bay to Oakland and San Francisco.  It's a bit odd that the Delta Queen has come to symbolize the Mississippi system when it definitely was not built for it.