I've been in the Central Valley for 25 years, four in Bakersfield and 21 in Modesto. Since I'm here, you might think I'm good with it, and you'd be right.
Weather: It's not as hot as Yuma or Phoenix or [list of other too-hot cities]. It's still too hot.
Air Quality: It's gotten better since I've been here -
Education: I don't really see Davis as genuinely a CV spot even if technically is, but there is a UC school - UC Merced. There are other colleges and universities in the Central Valley, but the area doesn't have high education levels overall.
Politics: "[M]ost people in the Valley are conservative." Relative to California, for sure, hard yes. Relative to everything, I don't think so.
If you look at the counties in the Central Valley, Sacramento's middle-blue, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, and Fresno are light blue, while Madera, Tulare, and Kern are light red. My district has usually been pretty purple, with centrist D's and R's winning, though districts that attach to the mountain areas are red and those that head west get bluer.
This isn't all that new, either - Obama won most of the CV counties vs. McCain.
The LA Times: Look, I still subscribe to the Times, but this story isn't persuasive to me. To their credit, they quoted the late Carol Whiteside, who was one of the people who moved things forward here - downtown Modesto's not downtown (pick Bay Area town), but it's nice. Plus that's 23 years ago.
Per capita income: Cost of living is still much less, but housing prices have really spiked once again. We were ground zero (OK, maybe some areas in Michigan, but...) in the 2007ish crash; we had a wild, obvious bubble. This feels less bubbly. Housing prices are a genuine issue.
Sorting by violent crime rate... yeah, not great. The top five counties include just one CV county, but the next five include three.
Brain Drain: I can only say what I've seen in dealing with really smart kids around here: Yeah, they're out. I helped coach some kids in middle school on a robotics team, and the four strongest kids are all the children of immigrants, all have done well (Stanfordx2, Cornell, MIT, and one of them is now at Yale Medical School, so... yeah, smart, high achieving kids.) They're not coming back, and I don't think there's a good argument that they should. That's a problems for lower education areas.
Commute: I commute eight minutes to work. I have done the long commute, and there are heavily commuter-based towns way far away from the Bay Area. This seems awful. Proposed solutions are outside this comment's scope.
Vibe: Look, I'm not going to form a Jonathan Coulton fan club that meets every Tuesday, and I'm pretty sure there will never be an active Modesto ACT group. I get it. But we've got some culture - even if some of the acts that come through are the elderly versions of long-ago bands, our county has the Gallo Center for the Arts, which is really nice; an arthouse theater; and places to walk and see a lot of birds.
Plus a ton of really cool cars. It's a thing.
The restaurant scene is pretty good. Is it Cambridge? It is not. But I like it here.
Caveat: I also have a job where I don't break a literal sweat and in the summer, we have air conditioning for the human-unfriendly weather. There is real poverty, which I am not oblivious to.
Some notes:
I've been in the Central Valley for 25 years, four in Bakersfield and 21 in Modesto. Since I'm here, you might think I'm good with it, and you'd be right.
Weather: It's not as hot as Yuma or Phoenix or [list of other too-hot cities]. It's still too hot.
Air Quality: It's gotten better since I've been here -
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1352231020305525?via%3Dihub (less ag burning)
https://www.iqair.com/us/usa/california/fresno (everything is terrible, but meaningfully less terrible than it was)
Education: I don't really see Davis as genuinely a CV spot even if technically is, but there is a UC school - UC Merced. There are other colleges and universities in the Central Valley, but the area doesn't have high education levels overall.
Politics: "[M]ost people in the Valley are conservative." Relative to California, for sure, hard yes. Relative to everything, I don't think so.
https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-political-geography/
If you look at the counties in the Central Valley, Sacramento's middle-blue, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, and Fresno are light blue, while Madera, Tulare, and Kern are light red. My district has usually been pretty purple, with centrist D's and R's winning, though districts that attach to the mountain areas are red and those that head west get bluer.
This isn't all that new, either - Obama won most of the CV counties vs. McCain.
The LA Times: Look, I still subscribe to the Times, but this story isn't persuasive to me. To their credit, they quoted the late Carol Whiteside, who was one of the people who moved things forward here - downtown Modesto's not downtown (pick Bay Area town), but it's nice. Plus that's 23 years ago.
Per capita income: Cost of living is still much less, but housing prices have really spiked once again. We were ground zero (OK, maybe some areas in Michigan, but...) in the 2007ish crash; we had a wild, obvious bubble. This feels less bubbly. Housing prices are a genuine issue.
Crime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_locations_by_crime_rate#Counties
Sorting by violent crime rate... yeah, not great. The top five counties include just one CV county, but the next five include three.
Brain Drain: I can only say what I've seen in dealing with really smart kids around here: Yeah, they're out. I helped coach some kids in middle school on a robotics team, and the four strongest kids are all the children of immigrants, all have done well (Stanfordx2, Cornell, MIT, and one of them is now at Yale Medical School, so... yeah, smart, high achieving kids.) They're not coming back, and I don't think there's a good argument that they should. That's a problems for lower education areas.
Commute: I commute eight minutes to work. I have done the long commute, and there are heavily commuter-based towns way far away from the Bay Area. This seems awful. Proposed solutions are outside this comment's scope.
Vibe: Look, I'm not going to form a Jonathan Coulton fan club that meets every Tuesday, and I'm pretty sure there will never be an active Modesto ACT group. I get it. But we've got some culture - even if some of the acts that come through are the elderly versions of long-ago bands, our county has the Gallo Center for the Arts, which is really nice; an arthouse theater; and places to walk and see a lot of birds.
Plus a ton of really cool cars. It's a thing.
The restaurant scene is pretty good. Is it Cambridge? It is not. But I like it here.
Caveat: I also have a job where I don't break a literal sweat and in the summer, we have air conditioning for the human-unfriendly weather. There is real poverty, which I am not oblivious to.
That's all the CV I have for the moment.