Running in San Francisco

(or, Running in Brooklyn, part two)

In terms of surface area, San Francisco is about one third smaller than Brooklyn (121.4 compared to 180km²) and about half as dense (7,022 compared to 14,182/km²), largely because of its parochial penchant for low-rise G+1 and G+2's that got codified in decades of backward urban planning.

On the flip side, San Francisco has much more interesting topology, unheard of in any other alpha world city, with mountains and a bona fide cloud forest in its geographical center.

All this makes running in San Francisco quite fun, and nearly every route I took managed to surprise me with grand vistas and understated architectural gems.

The routes are color-coded based on when I actually ran them

which tends to be every weekend, when the weather is favorable and I am not travelling. I prefer to run along the street grid to maximize my exposure to the surrounding urban tissue; however except for a very few blocks, running in San Francisco, unlike running in Brooklyn, is a solitary experience.

Except of course, the Bay to Breakers race, which with over 100,000 participants is one of the largest races in the world.

I quite liked Nathan Yau's Where People Run in Major Cities post on Flowing Data, although having lived in San Francisco for a while now I cannot escape the feeling that the aggregated trajectories for San Francisco are more a socio-economic commentary than anything else.