South Bay (San Francisco Bay Area)

San Jose is the major city of the South Bay

South San Francisco Bay viewed from Mission Peak Regional Preserve in Fremont, California

The South Bay is a subregion of the San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States and is roughly synonymous with Silicon Valley, the Santa Clara Valley, and Santa Clara County (in general). The South Bay is one of several Subregions in the Bay Area including: San Francisco, the North Bay including parts of the Wine Country, the Peninsula, and the East Bay, among others.

San Jose is the largest city in the South Bay and the Bay Area.

The incorporated cities in the South Bay are:^[1]

Additionally, the following incorporated cities are sometimes considered part of the South Bay:

Many other cities, towns or census designated places are also sometimes considered part of the South Bay, such as the San Lorenzo Valley towns between Saratoga and Santa Cruz.

Some cities in the East Bay or especially on the Peninsula sometimes are referred to as part of the South Bay. Many of these cities including Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Redwood City, Newark, and Fremont are considered part of the Silicon Valley (and therefore the South Bay) because of their relative peripheral location to Santa Clara County, history, or concentration of high-tech companies. The conception of the South Bay as a region is relatively new compared to that of the Peninsula and coastal East Bay, and the cities of northwestern Santa Clara County (Palo Alto, Los Altos, Mountain View, and sometimes as far as Cupertino and Sunnyvale) maintain an identity more strongly connected to the Peninsula and the Stanford campus than the City of San Jose. Additionally, the counties of Santa Cruz and San Benito are considered part of the South Bay by the Bay Area media although the two counties are often considered to be their own subregion centered on the city of Santa Cruz.