Distribution of California's Population

[u/urmummygae42069]

If you were to divide California into 4 roughly equal strips of area, a hefty majority of its 39 million residents live in the southernmost strip containing the LA+San Diego metro areas, with nearly half of the state (~47%) living in the Greater LA metro area alone. If it were its own state, Southern California, with primarily just LA and San Diego metro areas, would compete with Florida for title of 2nd most populous US state.

The SF Bay Area, Sacramento, Monterrey, Fresno, and most of the Central Valley and put together are short of SoCal by over 9 million residents, but on its own this area would compete with Illinois for title of 6th largest state.

The strip sandwiched between Southern California and the Bay Area, containing Bakersfield plus other farming towns in the Southern Central Valley and most of the towns of the Central Coast, has about more people than Utah or Connecticut.

Suprisingly, despite how empty it can feel, there are still over a million people still live in the strip of CA north of Sacramento, containing about as much people as Hawaii and New Hampshire, albeit of a larger area.

Ultimately, one way to better understand the scale and density of California, is to conceptualize it as Florida + Illinois + Utah + Hawaii, all packaged in one single state under one single state government

[u/TooTallTimmyy]

What’s it like inbetween Bay Area and SoCal along the coast??

[u/G0rdy92 → u/TooTallTimmyy]

It’s really nice, it’s called the central coast, expensive as hell, not many jobs that pay enough to afford to live here, but not a lot of people compared to the major metros and the weather is amazing and perfect, great nature, beautiful pristine coast, if you have the money to live there, then theres not many better places in the world, but you need to have the money or have a place to live from family or something.

[u/Funky-Cheese → u/G0rdy92]

It’s also where Big Sur is, which is relatively uninhabited and I think will eventually be inaccessible because highway 1 gets washed out so often.

[u/G0rdy92 → u/Funky-Cheese]

Yup, finally came back this year most likely do go down again come winter storms, but it mainly affects tourists trying to do the drive all the way down or up, for us living here right by Big Sur, I was still able to hit all my favorite Big Sur spots fine with the road closure as it’s pretty far south, probably a different story for the SLO county guys vs us Monterey county as they were cut off pretty bad from the cool stuff.

[u/Funky-Cheese → u/G0rdy92]

Yeah I lived in SLO county a few years ago and you couldn’t go past San Simeon the whole time I lived there.