It is hard for me to believe that the blog has been running for 9 years. I still remember writing the initial post fueled by the desire to prove San Jose is worthy of being the 10th largest city in the county and the capital of Silicon Valley (I re-posted it below, just for fun). Since then, there have been 3,406 additional posts and 3.34 million visitors to The San Jose Blog.
There is still much we can improve as a city, but it is no longer a challenge to argue San Jose is a world-class city. Rarely does a week go by without San Jose being in the national news. We are getting new development proposals weekly and across all sectors (office, housing, hotel, etc.), major infrastructure improvements such as BART and an airport expansion are moving forward, new landmarks such are a modern Light Tower are now an actual possibility--and most importantly--we have a culture that revolves around innovation. That means a willingness to grow, recognize where we can do better, take risks, and try things that push the world forward. As long as we keep innovation as a core value in our culture, the future will always be just a little bit brighter.
Thank you all for supporting this blog over the years. Special shout out to Jennifer Bullock and Kimberly Vacca who have moved out of San Jose for their next adventures. We appreciate all of their contributions to the blog and wish them the best on their future adventures--hopefully they will find their way back to SJ in the future ;)
Now for a quick step back in time...
Josh, why do you say San Jose is a world class city? What makes San Jose a world class city?
ReplyDeleteIt is not easy to be objective in answering this question, but their is one organization that does study and rank global cities and San Jose has moved from "High Sufficiency" in 2000 to a "Gamma+" global city in 2016. The rankings are based on many factors including cultural institutions, education, infrastructure, jobs, etc.
DeleteThe link to the rankings would be nice as well, right ;) http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/world2016t.html
DeleteThese British people are still not knowledgeable about San Jose and what SJ is truly like. They're still stuck in the 70's
DeleteJosh, congrats to you and thank you for your constancy. ~Massimo Chisessi
ReplyDelete