by Noah Baustin : sfstandard – excerpt (includes some charts)
San Francisco is not as big as its boosters like to think.
While locals love to compare SF to New York and Los Angeles, the Big Apple is 10 times bigger than the City by the Bay and we’re less than a quarter of the size of LA.
With just north of 815,000 residents, we don’t even make it onto the list of the nation’s top 15 most populous cities.
But as a center of culture, technological innovation and political power, SF has always punched above its weight. So when the U.S. Census Bureau released a trove of new data about cities across the country, The Standard set out to discover: Where did San Francisco lead the nation in 2021?
We compared San Francisco to the 37 American cities with over 500,000 residents on hundreds of metrics recorded by the 2021 American Community Survey. Here’s what we found…
Deep Chinese American Roots
Chinese Americans made up a larger share of San Francisco’s population than any other major city. Over a fifth of San Franciscans, about 180,000 people, had Chinese roots in 2021. This, of course, aligns with the city’s rich Chinese history that dates back to the Gold Rush days…
Streets Paved With Gold, Sort Of
San Francisco had more households in the top earning bracket, $200,000 and up, than any other major city in 2021. Nearly a third of San Franciscan households brought home that much…
An Aging Metropolis
San Francisco is the nation’s oldest major city. Or at least its people are…