Airport / North San Jose, San Jose

The central feature of North San Jose is the Mineta San Jose Airport. Once an international hub, the San Jose Airport has not had links outside of the United States since 2005, I believe—though it does have regular flights to Hawaii. Following the fortunes of this airport is like reading a history of Silicon Valley. When the Valley is doing well, the airport sees increases in traffic as businessmen from all over the world travels in to meet with Silicon execs. After declines like the crash of the Tech Bubble in the late 90’s, the airport suffers as well.

Recently the airport finally opened its hypermodern Terminal B (to add to terminals A and C). It has done so just in time for the current tech boom. As anyone who has been around Silicon Valley can tell you, the Great Recession is over for tech firms and has been for over a year.

Apropos of this, North San Jose is not just about the airport. In fact, north of the landing strips you will find a number of office parks filled with high tech firms. Chief amongst these is Cisco Microsystems, whose sprawling campus here in North San Jose (in what is technically a micro-neighborhood called River Oaks) houses the largest private workforce in San Jose (Cisco employs over 11,500 workers here). But Cisco is just one of many firms in the area with Qualcomm, Apache and several lesser known tech companies such as Lattice Semiconductor also choosing North San Jose for their headquarters.


It is this congregation of technology minded companies all in one location that makes Silicon Valley the throbbing heart of tech innovation and the engine of California’s economy. When a company like Cisco sets itself up here not only can it keep an eye on its competitors (and poach talent from nearby companies) but also they can forge partnerships with congruous companies so that their individual strengths are multiplied. In fact, companies will often toggle from being competitors to partners and back to competitors over the course of years—collaborating on some products, aggressively challenging each other (sometimes even engaging in patent wars) at other times.

This is Silicon Valley—the Florence of High Tech. Thus is appropriate that a northern micro-neighborhood here should be named “Renaissance.”

Of course, there are also residential sections of North San Jose. There are older homes, condos and some apartments. Typical rent prices run around $2200 for a two bedroom and it is not uncommon to see 1 bedroom for around $1800. As always, it is about the great location. A Cisco worker who puts in a lot of hours at work might be more than happy to pay the extra cost so as to save on commute times.

While the surrounding neighborhood is subject to noise and is fairly residential by comparison to the rest of the city, I stand by the fact, time and time again, that San Jose Airport is the best in Silicon Valley. Traffic is a fraction of what you will see at SFO, and accessibility is better than Oakland for all but North Bay residents.

But efficiency is truly what makes SJC stand out. Security checkpoints are down to a science, and I have never been stuck in traffic outside at any hour of the day or night. The Delta terminal seems to have better options than the United terminal, but considering you can get away with hardly any wait time if you time it right, it doesn't really matter. Flights are frequent, delays are rare, and certain aircrafts even let you board from both sides! Genius. Even the positioning near Guadalupe Parkway is supreme and avoids some obvious traffic malfunctions that could occur.