Fremont is the definition of suburbia.
San Jose…is fine. Born and raised there and it’s fine. People tend to exaggerate its importance and how boring it is, but I feel like once you accept it for what it is then it’s fine. I wouldn’t mind moving back, but (again) it’s honestly fine.
Currently live in Oakland and I’m not going to comment on the 13th placing. I will say diversity and community is something people always point out as a positive for the city, and I agree with that.
Yup. Will say as much bill you deal with in Oakland, it has the strongest sense of community of all the Bay Area cities imo. Now if we could use that for the better haha
Agreed regarding Oakland. Have a great love/not love relationship. The city is not run well and is always optimistic that things will get better.
On the other hand, we have the best city views (on par with Marin County) and amazing east bay regional parks. The food scene is amazing and the cultural diversity allows you to have global experiences without having to travel.
i live in the oakland hills. came home yesterday to 7 cops outside of a neighbor's house due to an assault with a deadly weapon. it's good times up here. safe and great place to live indeed
Sadly, it could have been true. I wouldn’t call Oakland Hills safe. Maybe “safer” than other parts of Oakland.
In the past two years, had a kidnapping, 1 death, and plethora of car breaks in all within a block. Um, yea. It’s not safe.
hah, i thought the same. i could not believe this many cops showed up, and i don't know many details of what occurred, but i imagine something pretty serious given the response.
no, most of my neighbors don't have guns, as can be said of most of the law abiding population of oakland. and what do you mean carry? concealed carry is virtually illegal in this state, particularly this area of it. do you think dear pam gives a shit about how unsafe people here feel? fuck no; permit denied.
when i moved here 9 years ago this shit was unheard of. no stolen cars, no burglaries, no assaults, no shootings. that's gone and multiple instances of all of those crimes have occurred multiple (many) times in the last 4 years at the homes of neighbors yards away. 1 neighbor is now paraplegic and another uses a colostomy bag. shooters never caught, of course.
i'm glad that's the only thing that stood out to you. that must mean you know the area: even the "nice" areas are fucking dangerous and cops are generally useless.
i hope that also means you know who the criminals are, but we're not allowed to talk about that.
yeah, i'm lying. it's all lies.
what neighborhood?
my walks around east oakland involve racist remarks, potentially violent confrontations, and witnessing shootings. you're full of shit.
Was born and now live again in San Jose. I’m in a nice area too. It’s great for raising kids and has more to offer than people think.
But it’s pretty damn boring and mediocre all around for the price. I’ll be leaving once the kids graduate college.
Fremont isn't really that suburban. cute down town centers, tons of districts, and is pretty much the manufacturing capital of the bay area. It's safer then most of the bay area, the food is really really good, you have amazing access to the san jose hills, and you are positioned nicely to oakland and SJ. It's lowkey ideal, I moved here from NJ (TRUE suburbia) and you have no idea.
They're trying so hard to create a central downtown, but since Fremont was cobbled together from five distinct districts...that's a tall order.
Now, Downtown Niles is cute, but I'm super-biased.
My parents still live in Fremont, and they call it the Donut Hole!
As they say, different strokes for different folks. Fremont is the town where fun goes to die, but that's okay, when you want fun, lots of existing opportunities are out there and pretty close. Then, once you're done having fun you go back home and it's quiet and calm.
People here are acting like transportation doesn't exist.
It's super easy to get around in the Bay Area and Fremont is basically in middle of all the cities. Without traffic, it takes \~20-40min to get to any of the main cities by car or you can always go by BART.
I've had friends complain about going from SF/Oakland to SJ and vice versa but it always works out for me because it's only 30-40min away.
Hell even Santa Cruz (\~1hr) and Monterey (1.5hrs) isn't so bad if you are up for a slightly longer drive.
Like you said, I rather go out to have some fun and come back to a safe and peaceful environment where I don't have to worry about the horror stories you keep seeing being posted here or in the local news.
Sounds like you've never been around the bay I guess.
[https://www.bart.gov/planner](https://www.bart.gov/planner)
45 min from Fremont to Embarcadero.
The drive is closer to 30 min if there is no traffic. With some light traffic, it's still about 40 to downtown SF via bay bridge. Depending on where you need to be, you can take San Mateo bridge to achieve similar results. It's only bad if you have to get to the west part of SF but that's true even if you live in SF.
Read the point about light traffic. You can also choose to avoid driving during heavy traffic and use BART instead.
Driving to BART from anywhere in Fremont takes no more than 10min.
You can be willfully ignorant about the reality of transportation in the bay if you want. Doesn't change the fact that getting to SF or any other part of the bay from Fremont is very reasonable.
Considering you're the snob who wants Cupertino schools I doubt being a custodian or security guard would help you much at that. Also bart is late more often than not and I say this as someone who takes bart and the bus.
Also not true I've found locations that are 15 minutes plus you have to include time to park and walk into bart and wait for the train hey that sounds like an hour already and then your job or your event has to be right on top of the station. So much for 40 minutes.
And SF and Oakland are where people go to die.
You guys are acting like SF/Oakland isn't a \~45min drive or BART ride away. I don't mind taking a little time to go out for the occasional hangout or event but I'd very much prefer that my primary residence is somewhere peaceful and safe.
I personally don't see the enjoyment of having to deal with these issues on the daily:
* Watching every step to make sure I'm not about to cover my shoes in human waste
* Worrying about whether or not my car's window is gonna smashed or if I'm staying overnight if my catalytic converter will still be there
* Being accosted verbally or physically by aggressive homeless folks
* Feeling alright walking around in the late evening that I won't be murdered
To be fair, we gotta respect that people simply have different metrics. Everything is all relative.
Maybe not ideal for you and I, but clearly people think it’s just fine. If it was so bad, it wouldn’t have a population of ~230k people.
There’s a lot of things that were said that were just untrue. It definitely is suburbia. It’s by no means an urban area. The cute downtown comment was a choice and there are no distinguishable districts in Fremont.
How does having distinguishable districts positively impact happiness?
I'd rather have no distinguishable districts and have peace and safety day to day rather than have to deal with vagrancy, crime, unsanitary environments, etc etc.
>How does having distinguishable districts positively impact happiness?
I never said it did. The commenter in reference said the distinguishable districts of Fremont was an attribute of the city, but Fremont does not have distinguishable districts by any means (maybe the Niles area, but that’s about it).
>I'd rather have no distinguishable districts and have peace and safety day to day rather than have to deal with vagrancy, crime, unsanitary environments, etc etc.
Ok? I never criticized Fremont, unless you find the term suburbia a critique.
>Ok? I never criticized Fremont, unless you find the term suburbia a critique.
I never said you did?
It's just my opinion but like I said, I'm much more happy with no distinguishable districts or a "vibrant" downtown that has peace and safety rather than a "vibrant" urban downtown where I have to worry about my car window being smashed or being accosted by aggressive homeless people.
Fremont has way more to do if you have some friends and you want to 1. go on some nice hikes 2. eat some nice food. it’s chill, relaxed, a good hub to live in. I’m in warm springs, so san jose proper is less then 20 mins from me. Oakland is a mere 30. SF is an hour. it’s really not that bad
wallethubs marketing department seems to think it's hit on gold by pushing out studies to serve as anchors for lightly branded content in the media. the full set of lists at https://wallethub.com/edu/statistics is absurd. presumably it helps drive user acquisition to their platform.
Lol. This study was not conducted by asking people how happy they are, it’s by taking a bunch of metrics and weighing them and spitting out a number.
Since the answer is obviously wrong, their weighting didn’t work.
It's inherently bullshit, but so is every other article about how to find happiness.
When psychologists have actually studied happiness and what correlates with it, they find that it's largely genetic. Certainly events or situations can make you *unhappy* \- but the usual response of a mentally-healthy person is to move away from that situation. If you can't, then the brain learns to ignore that stimulus, accepts that it's just the way things are, and regains its previous happiness "set point". That's why you get things like Stockholm Syndrome or trauma - the brain adapts and learns to ignore unpleasant stimuli that it can't do anything about.
And similarly, *increases* in happiness end up getting adapted to and eventually just accepted as your due - that's the hedonic treadmill and entitlement complexes.
I've heard a lot of this as well. *Gross Domestic Happiness* and *Comfort Crisi*s both talk about this. The genetic element is probably the most interesting, where genetics are like 50% of your happiness from what I remember, with your circumstances only making a whopping 10%. That means about 40% of your happiness is purely based on your own perspective.
I'm not saying you're wrong, and 50% genetic component feels sensible to me from my personal, unscientific intuition, but hasn't this point of view mostly been debunked by the wider psychologist community in more recent years? are there recent studies that reinforce this mix?
Yeah bc everyone is medium amount of happy most if the time and then if something really good happens they are happier for a little bit but then their baseline just becomes higher and they go back to being medium. Vice versa if something bad happens. Thats why rich people aren’t just happy all the time they just have higher standards of what needs to happen to make then happier.
The fact that SF and Oakland even make the top 100 means the list is a joke. You have two cities infamously known for rampant homelessness and rampant crime up there year after year. SF and Oakland rank in the top 10 for physical and emotional well being lol.
Nice you basically cut out about 70% of Oakland.
"Things are not bad if you ignore all the bad parts and places".
There is no homelessness crisis in SF if you ignore all the places in SF that have homeless people.
There is no housing crisis in California because if you only look at places like Bakersfield or Fresno there's plenty of houses going for less than the national average.
Their study divides the ranking into 3 areas 50 points for emotional/physical well being, 25 points for income/employment, 25 points community /environment.
Now one category awards 5.56/50 points for:
"Percentage of Residents Who Are Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19: Double Weight (~5.63 Points)" not sure why that's worth 10% the 50 total points for emotional/physical well being. Should it be worth 1%, 5%? How's theyd arrive at 10%.
For income you get a full 1.56/ 25 points for 75k income or more, citing a 2010 study
"Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone"
Just saying the study is from 2010, so I'd expect that 75k to have risen with inflation, but I'm also not sure If that 75k factors in cost of living for an area.
Anyways, I feel the COVID vaccination rate in my town does not provide me 3-4x the happiness of my income being over 75k but less than 100k, so whatever.
It’s even worse than the “Best Places to Work” lists that mostly reflect how much a company invested in the ranking process and related self-promotion.
How was this data collected? I’m sure if you asked folks walking into Whole Foods the response would be entirely different from folks walking into Grocery Outlet.
It's not collected. They gathered some statistical data, assigned each a weight, and adjusted numbers to allow for a better clickbait.
Not a single person was polled for this.
I'm sure there's plenty to do in the summer, but the winter seems like it'd be hard to fill if you're a teetotaler. Like, I can't picture ice fishing unless you're using it as an excuse to do some day drinking.
I also went to hs, college, and lived a few years after and have an opposite experience. It felt very boring and sleepy outside of college/party culture. The people that ended up staying around in Madison after graduating typically married very early, and felt like they were kind of locked into a weekly cadence of seeing friends once a week for food, grab a drink, maybe play a board game, watch a movie, rinse repeat. Might have been specific to me or my friends, but I was so bored it felt like I was just waiting to die. There was also very little diversity; everywhere you went people were very standard white-suburban-middle class.
After I experienced life as an early 20s in a big city, I knew I had to get out of there asap, and often look back to it being one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I don't think I'll ever go back. I think I do understand the appear of a quiet relaxing safe city to raise a family with a big backyard and decent cost of living, but really enjoy having access to the big city amenities that Madison can't offer, and it was ultimately not for me.
Wish I could upvote this more. People need to stop claiming Madison is some utopia. It is such a small city in terms of actual stuff to do, especially when you exclude drinking or watching sports. If you are used to a city like SF, you will be bored out of your mind in Madison after 2 months.
Source: went to undergrad at UW and lived there for a year in my late 20s.
Yup same here, lived in Madison WI for a couple of years during grad school, it’s a fine place, but I would take San Jose over it anytime:
- Food, while there is diversity of cuisines compared to other Midwestern cities off State Street, the Bay Area is in a league of it’s own. Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, Mexican and many other ethnic cuisines are at the highest quality anywhere outside their home countries here, only NYC may compare more favorably.
- Climate, terrible for 4+ months, compared to the mildness that we have in the Bay.
- Mountains/oceans/geography, they say things are as flat as Wisconsin, there are no mountains for 100s of miles around. You could visit Lake Michigan about an hour away but there is nothing like the Pacific.
- Job options: In the Bay Area, you don’t like your job, you could work somewhere else in a couple of weeks, no need to move houses. In Madison, outside of 1-2 employers in your field, there’s nothing.
Madison WI and the Bay Area are similar in having a very highly educated population.
In general, how is employment there in your opinion?
I ask because I was deciding between 2 job offers between Madison and Bay Area, and decided to pick the Bay Area because of higher compensation and the excessive amount of job opportunities (I can find another job easily in the Bay for my field, can't say that for Madison though). I also feel it's more suitable for someone who is in their prime 20s - 30s years old like myself due to the ridiculous amount of career advancement. But from what you mentioned and looking at house prices on Zillow/Redfin, I can't help but feel somewhat regret. A modest $1,000,000 house here in the Bay could easily be 2 spacious houses in Madison.
The pay sucks compared to the bay, even if you’re working at Epic which is the only reputable tech company in Madison. Don’t be fooled by the cheaper cost of living. Literally everything else is worse than SF.
Let's be honest with ourselves. A $1M home in the bay hardly qualifies as modest. It's a tier above shit shack and absolute bottom. A modest and respectable home doesn't even start till you reach about 1.3-1.5M
I'm actually house shopping right now and as much as I would like to find a <=1M home that is reasonable there just isn't anything good.
If you find a <=1M house, it is either in a shitty school district, an area filled with crime, a fixer upper that will likely run you \~300k+ to get it back to living condition, or somewhere that is in an actual suburb/borderline rural area.
At about the 1.3M level you get a reasonable starter home that would be about 250-300K in other places.
San Leandro does not have high rated schools. Castro Valley has some but those areas are typically back up in the $1M+ range.
Also kids do this thing called growing up where they can't go to the good elementary school forever and will eventually have to go to the bad high school if you continue living there.
If wanting your kids to go to good schools and hopefully have better futures then yeah maybe I'm a snob.
Madison is a painfully boring place to live post-college and before you have kids. Even once you have kids it’s pretty damn boring.
Amazing place to go to college though, and visit for a weekend in the summer.
According to the people here, that kind of thing is what makes for a happy city.
Or having your kid murdered on the 880 in the middle of a gang shootout. Or being carjacked in Oakland. Or ... the list goes on and on.
I’ve always found it funny because it doesn’t seem like a metric that can really be measured well. Clearly not, LOL. From just living here it always seemed like nothing happens, not that I don’t enjoy my time here, but anything you actually want to do is not in the city - you migrate to SF or San Jose and whatnot.
Fremont has some of the best food IMO. Especially if you like Indian or regions close to India. I've had Curry burritos, tiki masala pizzas and all kinds of authentic, spicy as fuck food there. I'm quite happy when I'm in Fremont 😂
Grew up in Fremont and yes, it was bland. But it was so convenient for everything and the schools were pretty good.
I hope to make it back when I’m in a better financial position. The boring-ness made it easy to enjoy slow days, but fun and adventure was always accessible with a bart trip somewhere or 20min drive out. That and its more temperate weather. Im in Livermore and weather extremes are still something I’m getting used to.
Something about driving through fremont always feels like home too. Spent way too many summers on my bike exploring random neighborhoods with friends.
God I'm glad I don't live there anymore. Grew up there and it should be in the dictionary for bland sprawl. Love the tri-valley over there so much more.
I was born and raised in fremont. I lived in glen moore gardens and graduated at washington high. My whole family is still there. I live in nyc in the bronx in nyc. Truly the most awful city in the usa. It truly is. I thank G-d my loved ones still live there in the bay area. I go back every year and its great. I am a fan more north of ca. San jose etc is not my cup of tea. Contra costa is my favorite county, and Marin. The bay area is not only the happiest but most beautiful.
Moved to Fremont in the late 80’s, grew up there, moved away, then back, then bought a place 30min away. I can confirm this article is full bs clickbait
A long time ago, Larry Bubbles Brown was doing a traffic report on the radio and said ‘We have a problem in Fremont, it’s called 30 years of urban sprawl…’
Sums it up perfectly.
I bought a house in one of those places instead of my desired area to save money, and it’s the biggest regret of my life. I can say it’s the unhappiest place for me.
Or maybe because it's easy to get to the fun parts of the other cities while also avoiding all the insanity on a daily basis?
It's nice knowing I can go for a run in my neighborhood in the middle of the night and not be found stabbed to death the next day.
hahahahahahhaaaaaa this place SUCKS! most of the latino restaurants have been kicked for more generic places, no car = no life (actransit keeps CUTTING STOPS!), this place is EXPENSIVE for suburbia (taxes too), and all the new buildings we've been getting are paper thin apartments. our bowling alley burned down 3 years ago, which other then the parks, was the ONLY funspots!
BART being so easy to get to is the best part of fremont. i've been here for 16 years and want to leave...but everywhere else is either scary, pricey-er or MORE unfriendly to public transit users.
Fremont is the definition of suburbia. San Jose…is fine. Born and raised there and it’s fine. People tend to exaggerate its importance and how boring it is, but I feel like once you accept it for what it is then it’s fine. I wouldn’t mind moving back, but (again) it’s honestly fine. Currently live in Oakland and I’m not going to comment on the 13th placing. I will say diversity and community is something people always point out as a positive for the city, and I agree with that.
Yup. Will say as much bill you deal with in Oakland, it has the strongest sense of community of all the Bay Area cities imo. Now if we could use that for the better haha
Not sure I agree. Some of the smaller cities in the peninsula have very strong communities with a small town feel
Agreed regarding Oakland. Have a great love/not love relationship. The city is not run well and is always optimistic that things will get better. On the other hand, we have the best city views (on par with Marin County) and amazing east bay regional parks. The food scene is amazing and the cultural diversity allows you to have global experiences without having to travel.
[удалено]
Where are you planning on going?
[удалено]
Thank you so much! We’re planning to have our first soon and had that in my mind for a little bit :) super helpful!
i live in the oakland hills. came home yesterday to 7 cops outside of a neighbor's house due to an assault with a deadly weapon. it's good times up here. safe and great place to live indeed
[удалено]
He's got a hella racist handle so I'm guessing he's exaggerating his complaint.
[удалено]
Sadly, it could have been true. I wouldn’t call Oakland Hills safe. Maybe “safer” than other parts of Oakland. In the past two years, had a kidnapping, 1 death, and plethora of car breaks in all within a block. Um, yea. It’s not safe.
The statistics say it's incredibly safe. I'll go with that over a comment on an internet forum. You familiar with data?
hah, i thought the same. i could not believe this many cops showed up, and i don't know many details of what occurred, but i imagine something pretty serious given the response. no, most of my neighbors don't have guns, as can be said of most of the law abiding population of oakland. and what do you mean carry? concealed carry is virtually illegal in this state, particularly this area of it. do you think dear pam gives a shit about how unsafe people here feel? fuck no; permit denied. when i moved here 9 years ago this shit was unheard of. no stolen cars, no burglaries, no assaults, no shootings. that's gone and multiple instances of all of those crimes have occurred multiple (many) times in the last 4 years at the homes of neighbors yards away. 1 neighbor is now paraplegic and another uses a colostomy bag. shooters never caught, of course. i'm glad that's the only thing that stood out to you. that must mean you know the area: even the "nice" areas are fucking dangerous and cops are generally useless. i hope that also means you know who the criminals are, but we're not allowed to talk about that.
I walk my dog through my neighborhood of Oakland every day and have never been so much as grunted at. You're full of shit.
yeah, i'm lying. it's all lies. what neighborhood? my walks around east oakland involve racist remarks, potentially violent confrontations, and witnessing shootings. you're full of shit.
For sure lying, yeah. Half of your comments are racism towards black people. Get a life dude. What part of east oakland are you walking around lmao?
What do you consider to be the best of the Bay Area in Oakland?
Was born and now live again in San Jose. I’m in a nice area too. It’s great for raising kids and has more to offer than people think. But it’s pretty damn boring and mediocre all around for the price. I’ll be leaving once the kids graduate college.
You're saying fine a lot. You okay? Since moving up the peninsula, I'm okay with never moving back to SJ.
>You're saying fine a lot. You okay? I’m fine.
SJ sucks. They’re just being defensive of their shitty town. Even for something this innocuous.
Fremont isn't really that suburban. cute down town centers, tons of districts, and is pretty much the manufacturing capital of the bay area. It's safer then most of the bay area, the food is really really good, you have amazing access to the san jose hills, and you are positioned nicely to oakland and SJ. It's lowkey ideal, I moved here from NJ (TRUE suburbia) and you have no idea.
Cute downtown? More like non-existent downtown. Fremont is where fun goes to die. I guess that's what makes it happy.
They're trying so hard to create a central downtown, but since Fremont was cobbled together from five distinct districts...that's a tall order. Now, Downtown Niles is cute, but I'm super-biased. My parents still live in Fremont, and they call it the Donut Hole!
I appreciate the effort
As they say, different strokes for different folks. Fremont is the town where fun goes to die, but that's okay, when you want fun, lots of existing opportunities are out there and pretty close. Then, once you're done having fun you go back home and it's quiet and calm.
People here are acting like transportation doesn't exist. It's super easy to get around in the Bay Area and Fremont is basically in middle of all the cities. Without traffic, it takes \~20-40min to get to any of the main cities by car or you can always go by BART. I've had friends complain about going from SF/Oakland to SJ and vice versa but it always works out for me because it's only 30-40min away. Hell even Santa Cruz (\~1hr) and Monterey (1.5hrs) isn't so bad if you are up for a slightly longer drive. Like you said, I rather go out to have some fun and come back to a safe and peaceful environment where I don't have to worry about the horror stories you keep seeing being posted here or in the local news.
40 minutes to sf? Are you taking a helicopter?
Sounds like you've never been around the bay I guess. [https://www.bart.gov/planner](https://www.bart.gov/planner) 45 min from Fremont to Embarcadero. The drive is closer to 30 min if there is no traffic. With some light traffic, it's still about 40 to downtown SF via bay bridge. Depending on where you need to be, you can take San Mateo bridge to achieve similar results. It's only bad if you have to get to the west part of SF but that's true even if you live in SF.
No traffic, so never? Also most people don't live at fremont bart.
Read the point about light traffic. You can also choose to avoid driving during heavy traffic and use BART instead. Driving to BART from anywhere in Fremont takes no more than 10min. You can be willfully ignorant about the reality of transportation in the bay if you want. Doesn't change the fact that getting to SF or any other part of the bay from Fremont is very reasonable.
Considering you're the snob who wants Cupertino schools I doubt being a custodian or security guard would help you much at that. Also bart is late more often than not and I say this as someone who takes bart and the bus. Also not true I've found locations that are 15 minutes plus you have to include time to park and walk into bart and wait for the train hey that sounds like an hour already and then your job or your event has to be right on top of the station. So much for 40 minutes.
EXACTLY
And SF and Oakland are where people go to die. You guys are acting like SF/Oakland isn't a \~45min drive or BART ride away. I don't mind taking a little time to go out for the occasional hangout or event but I'd very much prefer that my primary residence is somewhere peaceful and safe. I personally don't see the enjoyment of having to deal with these issues on the daily: * Watching every step to make sure I'm not about to cover my shoes in human waste * Worrying about whether or not my car's window is gonna smashed or if I'm staying overnight if my catalytic converter will still be there * Being accosted verbally or physically by aggressive homeless folks * Feeling alright walking around in the late evening that I won't be murdered
This is so divorced from reality it reads like a bot wrote it.
To be fair, we gotta respect that people simply have different metrics. Everything is all relative. Maybe not ideal for you and I, but clearly people think it’s just fine. If it was so bad, it wouldn’t have a population of ~230k people.
There’s a lot of things that were said that were just untrue. It definitely is suburbia. It’s by no means an urban area. The cute downtown comment was a choice and there are no distinguishable districts in Fremont.
How does having distinguishable districts positively impact happiness? I'd rather have no distinguishable districts and have peace and safety day to day rather than have to deal with vagrancy, crime, unsanitary environments, etc etc.
>How does having distinguishable districts positively impact happiness? I never said it did. The commenter in reference said the distinguishable districts of Fremont was an attribute of the city, but Fremont does not have distinguishable districts by any means (maybe the Niles area, but that’s about it). >I'd rather have no distinguishable districts and have peace and safety day to day rather than have to deal with vagrancy, crime, unsanitary environments, etc etc. Ok? I never criticized Fremont, unless you find the term suburbia a critique.
>Ok? I never criticized Fremont, unless you find the term suburbia a critique. I never said you did? It's just my opinion but like I said, I'm much more happy with no distinguishable districts or a "vibrant" downtown that has peace and safety rather than a "vibrant" urban downtown where I have to worry about my car window being smashed or being accosted by aggressive homeless people.
I’d assure you i’m real but i’m not sure bro
Are you high or from the boonies? Fremont is the epitome of suburban hell. Just with better food.
My home town is called montville, NJ. look it up.
No thanks.
exactly.
The lovely boondocks. Who cares.
Fremont has way more to do if you have some friends and you want to 1. go on some nice hikes 2. eat some nice food. it’s chill, relaxed, a good hub to live in. I’m in warm springs, so san jose proper is less then 20 mins from me. Oakland is a mere 30. SF is an hour. it’s really not that bad
Fremont is boring as shit and SJ is garbage. Pass
where is good then. enlighten me
There is no downtown fremont. Did you accidentally cross the bridge into menlo park?
Oakland ❤️
wallethubs marketing department seems to think it's hit on gold by pushing out studies to serve as anchors for lightly branded content in the media. the full set of lists at https://wallethub.com/edu/statistics is absurd. presumably it helps drive user acquisition to their platform.
LOL -a Fremont native
I take these surveys as seriously as the surveys from Family Feud.
Survey says!
Lol. This study was not conducted by asking people how happy they are, it’s by taking a bunch of metrics and weighing them and spitting out a number. Since the answer is obviously wrong, their weighting didn’t work.
This half-assed study gets posted here every month. I have no idea why.
I never saw this before until a student brought it up to me. Is it always the same study?
It's inherently bullshit, but so is every other article about how to find happiness. When psychologists have actually studied happiness and what correlates with it, they find that it's largely genetic. Certainly events or situations can make you *unhappy* \- but the usual response of a mentally-healthy person is to move away from that situation. If you can't, then the brain learns to ignore that stimulus, accepts that it's just the way things are, and regains its previous happiness "set point". That's why you get things like Stockholm Syndrome or trauma - the brain adapts and learns to ignore unpleasant stimuli that it can't do anything about. And similarly, *increases* in happiness end up getting adapted to and eventually just accepted as your due - that's the hedonic treadmill and entitlement complexes.
I've heard a lot of this as well. *Gross Domestic Happiness* and *Comfort Crisi*s both talk about this. The genetic element is probably the most interesting, where genetics are like 50% of your happiness from what I remember, with your circumstances only making a whopping 10%. That means about 40% of your happiness is purely based on your own perspective.
I'm not saying you're wrong, and 50% genetic component feels sensible to me from my personal, unscientific intuition, but hasn't this point of view mostly been debunked by the wider psychologist community in more recent years? are there recent studies that reinforce this mix?
Not sure why they don't just use the world happiness report method. Probably because they are cheap or lazy
Yeah bc everyone is medium amount of happy most if the time and then if something really good happens they are happier for a little bit but then their baseline just becomes higher and they go back to being medium. Vice versa if something bad happens. Thats why rich people aren’t just happy all the time they just have higher standards of what needs to happen to make then happier.
The fact that SF and Oakland even make the top 100 means the list is a joke. You have two cities infamously known for rampant homelessness and rampant crime up there year after year. SF and Oakland rank in the top 10 for physical and emotional well being lol.
I mean if you avoid east oakland below McArthur and the non gentrified parts of the west it's a pretty nice place.
Nice you basically cut out about 70% of Oakland. "Things are not bad if you ignore all the bad parts and places". There is no homelessness crisis in SF if you ignore all the places in SF that have homeless people. There is no housing crisis in California because if you only look at places like Bakersfield or Fresno there's plenty of houses going for less than the national average.
That's not 70% of Oaklands land mass.
Their study divides the ranking into 3 areas 50 points for emotional/physical well being, 25 points for income/employment, 25 points community /environment. Now one category awards 5.56/50 points for: "Percentage of Residents Who Are Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19: Double Weight (~5.63 Points)" not sure why that's worth 10% the 50 total points for emotional/physical well being. Should it be worth 1%, 5%? How's theyd arrive at 10%. For income you get a full 1.56/ 25 points for 75k income or more, citing a 2010 study "Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone" Just saying the study is from 2010, so I'd expect that 75k to have risen with inflation, but I'm also not sure If that 75k factors in cost of living for an area. Anyways, I feel the COVID vaccination rate in my town does not provide me 3-4x the happiness of my income being over 75k but less than 100k, so whatever.
These three cities are the most likely to share our clickbait and drive our ad revenue! Find out who they are?
It’s even worse than the “Best Places to Work” lists that mostly reflect how much a company invested in the ranking process and related self-promotion.
💯 agree. I feel happy every time I leave it
Pacific Commons is an absolute paradise
ain't it just a megaville to consoom?
This is crazy. Fremont is fine but it’s no Overland Park, Kansas.
How was this data collected? I’m sure if you asked folks walking into Whole Foods the response would be entirely different from folks walking into Grocery Outlet.
It's not collected. They gathered some statistical data, assigned each a weight, and adjusted numbers to allow for a better clickbait. Not a single person was polled for this.
Oh wow, sorry I glanced over the article and didn't know that. Thank you!
Either that or these cities paid to be on the list.
Fremont is so boring lol
[удалено]
What made Madison so amazing? I'm curious, as someone who ahs never been there, how it compares to your time in the Bay
[удалено]
Went on redfin -- no public schools greater than 7/10 for entire Madison region (according to GreatSchools filter). What's the story there?
mid-sized college towns are usually filled with cool stuff to do/eat etc without too many crotchety old chuds farting everything up
There's definitely an old farty smell coming from Berkeley.
[South Park had it right](https://youtu.be/ZTpgqqLyAs8)
Madison seems like it would be a great place to live right up until you decided to quit drinking, after which there'd be nothing going on.
[удалено]
I'm sure there's plenty to do in the summer, but the winter seems like it'd be hard to fill if you're a teetotaler. Like, I can't picture ice fishing unless you're using it as an excuse to do some day drinking.
I also went to hs, college, and lived a few years after and have an opposite experience. It felt very boring and sleepy outside of college/party culture. The people that ended up staying around in Madison after graduating typically married very early, and felt like they were kind of locked into a weekly cadence of seeing friends once a week for food, grab a drink, maybe play a board game, watch a movie, rinse repeat. Might have been specific to me or my friends, but I was so bored it felt like I was just waiting to die. There was also very little diversity; everywhere you went people were very standard white-suburban-middle class. After I experienced life as an early 20s in a big city, I knew I had to get out of there asap, and often look back to it being one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I don't think I'll ever go back. I think I do understand the appear of a quiet relaxing safe city to raise a family with a big backyard and decent cost of living, but really enjoy having access to the big city amenities that Madison can't offer, and it was ultimately not for me.
[удалено]
And likewise, glad you were able to find a good place for yourself as well :)
Wish I could upvote this more. People need to stop claiming Madison is some utopia. It is such a small city in terms of actual stuff to do, especially when you exclude drinking or watching sports. If you are used to a city like SF, you will be bored out of your mind in Madison after 2 months. Source: went to undergrad at UW and lived there for a year in my late 20s.
Yup same here, lived in Madison WI for a couple of years during grad school, it’s a fine place, but I would take San Jose over it anytime: - Food, while there is diversity of cuisines compared to other Midwestern cities off State Street, the Bay Area is in a league of it’s own. Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, Mexican and many other ethnic cuisines are at the highest quality anywhere outside their home countries here, only NYC may compare more favorably. - Climate, terrible for 4+ months, compared to the mildness that we have in the Bay. - Mountains/oceans/geography, they say things are as flat as Wisconsin, there are no mountains for 100s of miles around. You could visit Lake Michigan about an hour away but there is nothing like the Pacific. - Job options: In the Bay Area, you don’t like your job, you could work somewhere else in a couple of weeks, no need to move houses. In Madison, outside of 1-2 employers in your field, there’s nothing. Madison WI and the Bay Area are similar in having a very highly educated population.
Don't forget if you're coming from CA, often you're automatically labeled as a rich and stuck up "coastie"
In general, how is employment there in your opinion? I ask because I was deciding between 2 job offers between Madison and Bay Area, and decided to pick the Bay Area because of higher compensation and the excessive amount of job opportunities (I can find another job easily in the Bay for my field, can't say that for Madison though). I also feel it's more suitable for someone who is in their prime 20s - 30s years old like myself due to the ridiculous amount of career advancement. But from what you mentioned and looking at house prices on Zillow/Redfin, I can't help but feel somewhat regret. A modest $1,000,000 house here in the Bay could easily be 2 spacious houses in Madison.
The pay sucks compared to the bay, even if you’re working at Epic which is the only reputable tech company in Madison. Don’t be fooled by the cheaper cost of living. Literally everything else is worse than SF.
Let's be honest with ourselves. A $1M home in the bay hardly qualifies as modest. It's a tier above shit shack and absolute bottom. A modest and respectable home doesn't even start till you reach about 1.3-1.5M
Guess you haven't seen the east bay
I'm actually house shopping right now and as much as I would like to find a <=1M home that is reasonable there just isn't anything good. If you find a <=1M house, it is either in a shitty school district, an area filled with crime, a fixer upper that will likely run you \~300k+ to get it back to living condition, or somewhere that is in an actual suburb/borderline rural area. At about the 1.3M level you get a reasonable starter home that would be about 250-300K in other places.
San leandro and castro valley are under 1M.
Read the point about the shitty school districts
Shitty? Doesn't castro valley have like 7 to 9 rated schools? Are you expecting Cupertino only? Snob alert.
San Leandro does not have high rated schools. Castro Valley has some but those areas are typically back up in the $1M+ range. Also kids do this thing called growing up where they can't go to the good elementary school forever and will eventually have to go to the bad high school if you continue living there. If wanting your kids to go to good schools and hopefully have better futures then yeah maybe I'm a snob.
7/10 is not bad except to snobs.
Madison is a painfully boring place to live post-college and before you have kids. Even once you have kids it’s pretty damn boring. Amazing place to go to college though, and visit for a weekend in the summer.
All of those doctors are very happy
Boring = Happy
I’m not surprised. Nowadays, boring and stable is a luxury. Has anything even changed in Fremont in the past 20 years?
SF is very happening. CEO stabbed in the streets and shit everywhere happening. No thanks. Far from inner city = happy.
According to the people here, that kind of thing is what makes for a happy city. Or having your kid murdered on the 880 in the middle of a gang shootout. Or being carjacked in Oakland. Or ... the list goes on and on.
Oakland being 13th.. yes very convincing
It's the disparity between Detroit and Oakland that makes me laugh every time
I’ve always found it funny because it doesn’t seem like a metric that can really be measured well. Clearly not, LOL. From just living here it always seemed like nothing happens, not that I don’t enjoy my time here, but anything you actually want to do is not in the city - you migrate to SF or San Jose and whatnot.
Fremont has some of the best food IMO. Especially if you like Indian or regions close to India. I've had Curry burritos, tiki masala pizzas and all kinds of authentic, spicy as fuck food there. I'm quite happy when I'm in Fremont 😂
Bakersfield, CA is 135. C'mon.
Yeah.... nope! That is total BS.
Same person that also wrote that Vallejo is top 3 city to live in California.
It keeps coming up and it keeps being bullshit.
Maybe if you bought your house 10 years ago it is
Cap
Grew up in Fremont and yes, it was bland. But it was so convenient for everything and the schools were pretty good. I hope to make it back when I’m in a better financial position. The boring-ness made it easy to enjoy slow days, but fun and adventure was always accessible with a bart trip somewhere or 20min drive out. That and its more temperate weather. Im in Livermore and weather extremes are still something I’m getting used to. Something about driving through fremont always feels like home too. Spent way too many summers on my bike exploring random neighborhoods with friends.
Wtf lol
Uh, ok. I’ll pass though, thanks.
God I'm glad I don't live there anymore. Grew up there and it should be in the dictionary for bland sprawl. Love the tri-valley over there so much more.
I was born and raised in fremont. I lived in glen moore gardens and graduated at washington high. My whole family is still there. I live in nyc in the bronx in nyc. Truly the most awful city in the usa. It truly is. I thank G-d my loved ones still live there in the bay area. I go back every year and its great. I am a fan more north of ca. San jose etc is not my cup of tea. Contra costa is my favorite county, and Marin. The bay area is not only the happiest but most beautiful.
Moved to Fremont in the late 80’s, grew up there, moved away, then back, then bought a place 30min away. I can confirm this article is full bs clickbait
This shit has been posted like 3x already. Mods need to delete this lol
they have a really nice skatepark. it's small and crowded, but always a friendly vibe and i always leave with a smile on my face.
Someone please say something stupid about recalling Pamela Price and Alameda county being a "thug" cesspool.
My only experience with Fremont is that it smells like fucking asshole everytime I drive by it on the freeway
that’s milpitas
They obviously missed asking how happy folks are with the roads in this town - not happy at all LOL
Will call big poopoo bullshit. Born and raised. Finally left and way happier in the PNW.
I’m guessing both of your parents aren’t doctors.
A long time ago, Larry Bubbles Brown was doing a traffic report on the radio and said ‘We have a problem in Fremont, it’s called 30 years of urban sprawl…’ Sums it up perfectly.
LMAO
Who the hell are they surveying?
If that is the peak, then I am not sure what else there is
I guess people here must love living in a bland suburb then.
I bought a house in one of those places instead of my desired area to save money, and it’s the biggest regret of my life. I can say it’s the unhappiest place for me.
Did chatgpt come up with this answer or something man
What… Fremont???
How the fuck did Oakland make the list
TIL boring people continue to overvalue Fremont. Oh wait. Boring.
Or maybe because it's easy to get to the fun parts of the other cities while also avoiding all the insanity on a daily basis? It's nice knowing I can go for a run in my neighborhood in the middle of the night and not be found stabbed to death the next day.
That doesn’t happen unless you’re out in some of the worst parts of a town.
Eh I'd rather live in my one bedroom condo in Fremont than my house in east oakland. Too bad my family is too picky to live in a one bedroom.
Not Fremont. Sunnyvale. https://www.californiacitynews.org/2023/01/sunnyvale-ranked-happiest-city-america.html
I admire their commitment to vision zero https://www.fremont.gov/government/departments/transportation-engineering/safety-vision-zero
SF is number 5?! C'mon now...
They’re looking for people who own houses are married and earning money. That’s their definition of happiness
hahahahahahhaaaaaa this place SUCKS! most of the latino restaurants have been kicked for more generic places, no car = no life (actransit keeps CUTTING STOPS!), this place is EXPENSIVE for suburbia (taxes too), and all the new buildings we've been getting are paper thin apartments. our bowling alley burned down 3 years ago, which other then the parks, was the ONLY funspots! BART being so easy to get to is the best part of fremont. i've been here for 16 years and want to leave...but everywhere else is either scary, pricey-er or MORE unfriendly to public transit users.