Virtually all metropolitan areas consist of a city and its suburbs.
This is a typical convention of demographics and population study in
which San Francisco is not especially different from other cities.
Seattle's metropolitan area, for instance, includes not only the city of
Seattle proper, but many of the rapidly-growing suburbs around Seattle,
like Bellevue.
Regional government in the Bay Area is already dominated by suburban
wants and needs. The MTC and the BART Board are suburb-dominated and
reflect suburban needs almost exclusively in their efforts.
> I was offering an interpretation of two visions, and you changed it
> to a rather drastic black and white choice. SF's big business
> connections will subside as other areas grow into prominence. How
> will we respond? What will happen to systems like MUNI, will they
> vanish, or will ghostly buses run empty through the foggy night...
I'm not sure what you mean by that. If business leaves San Francisco,
there won't be nearly as much need for Muni, will there? Show me a
dense urban area where business left and it didn't turn into an awful
empty shell, like Detroit.
Furthermore, I don't know why you think SF's big business connections
will subside as other areas come into prominence. Other areas, edge
cities, have come well into prominence and downtown SF is still pretty
healthy. Not that we can't kill it if we try. But the rise of
Multimedia Gulch shows that there's still quite a bit of life left in
the urban milieu. Economics isn't necessarily a zero-sum game.