Northern California

 

Northern California, often abbreviated NorCal, is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, in contrast to the 10 counties of Southern California, its main population centers include the San Francisco Bay Area (anchored by the cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland), the Greater Sacramento area (anchored by the state capital Sacramento), and the Metropolitan Fresno area (anchored by the city of Fresno). Northern California also contains redwood forests, along with the Sierra Nevada including Yosemite Valley and part of Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta (the second-highest peak in the Cascade Range after Mount Rainier in Washington), and the northern portion of the Central Valley, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions.

 

The 48-county definition is not used for the Northern California Mega region, one of the 11 mega regions of the United States. The mega region’s area is instead defined from Metropolitan Fresno north to Greater Sacramento, and from the Bay Area east across Nevada state line to encompass the entire Lake Tahoe-Reno area.

 

Northern California's largest metropolitan area is the San Francisco Bay Area which includes the cities of San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and their many suburbs. In recent years the Bay Area has drawn more commuters from as far as Central Valley cities such as Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno, Turlock and Modesto. With expanding development in all these areas, the San Francisco Bay Area, Monterey Bay Area, and central part of the Central Valley and Sierra Nevada foothills may now be viewed as part of a single megalopolis.The 2010 U.S. Census showed that the Bay Area grew at a faster rate than the Greater Los Angeles Area while Greater Sacramento had the largest growth rate of any metropolitan area in California.

                                                             

                                                             

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                       

 

                                                   Downtown Fresno

Third most populated city in northern California and fifth in California, from Fresno Convention Center.

 

 

 

 

 

 

      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                 Downtown Oakland

The state's larger inland cities are considered part of northern California in cases when the   state is divided into two parts. Important cities in the region not in major metropolitan areas include Eureka on the far North Coast, Redding, at the northern end of the Central Valley, Chico, and Yuba City in the mid-north of the Valley, as well as Fresno and Visalia on the southern end. Though smaller in every case except for Fresno than the larger cities of the vast region, these smaller regional centers are often of historical, and perhaps inflated economic importance for their respective size, due to their locations, which are primarily rural or otherwise isolated.

 

For more information visit this website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_California#cite_note-2