Santa Clara

Situated in the heart of the Silicon Valley, Santa Clara is known for its bustling high tech business quarters and high aspirations for a better community tomorrow. It shares its name with the larger Santa Clara County and incorporates more than a dozen other cities. The town is rather large in size, covering 18 square miles of land area and harboring three seasonal creeks that flow into the southern tip of the San Francisco Bay. Demographically speaking, the city is approaching 120,000 residents. According to the 2010 US Census, Santa Clara is split between white and asian ethnicities (both 34%) with a large minority of hispanic residents. Its also a widely democratic community with residents overwhelmingly voting for Obama (70%) in the 2008 election.

Santa Clara is a very large, family-friendly community. Its one of the safest cities in Silicon Valley and is surrounded by acres of plains and level grasslands. Its residential quarters are just as appealing, or unappealing. Driving through the neighborhood, you’ll be met with lower middle-class aesthetics including stumpy homes, shallow yards and old cars lining the streets. Streets are relatively well-maintained or newly paved. Residences are mostly one story in size, unless you travel to the city’s outskirts where you’ll find homes a step above the norm. But be weary, because some areas look like dumps. For perspective residents, $82,000 is the estimated median household income, while house values are typically between $400,000 and $750,000.

With Silicon Valley in its backyard, Santa Clara has become a bustling metropolitan community in the past two decades. The city’s commercial district lies in the city’s northern third, just above US Route 101. Its thriving commercial and industrial areas make it an attractive residential area for job seekers and techies alike. In fact, its most known for it headquartering companies of Intel, Applied Materials (solar equipment) and Sun Microsystems (information technology services). Intel, along with Kaiser Permanente, are the city’s two highest employers within the city’s limits, creating over 1,200 jobs combined.

Santa Clara is more than just your typical middle-class suburban city, but has plenty of entertaining options for its residents. Firstly, the town is home to the practice fields of the San Francisco 49ers and will likely be the venue of their home games in the near future (with the addition of the newly built stadium). Moreover, the city is home to the San Jose Earthquakes of major league soccer prestige and play their home games at Buck Shaw Stadium. For young families, you’ll be interested to know that California’s Great America amusement park in the northern reaches of Santa Clara. The theme park provides more than three dozen rides for all ages and offers the only water amusement ride in Northern California.

Students within Santa Clara have the option of picking between 20 schools within the Santa Clara Unified School District (from elementary school to high school). Its also home to one of the oldest learning institutions of higher learning in the state of California, Santa Clara University. Many students also attend Mission College, the area’s two-year community college program. For public transit, they have the option of taking the Great America-Santa Clara rail or the Caltrain which connects residents to San Francisco and along its peninsula. San Jose International Airport skirts the eastern edge of the city for out-of-state commuters.