Silicon Valley One World – Page 4 – Demographics, Culture & Life

Oh Baby! San Francisco Births on the Rise

9Apr

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Demographics

Oh Baby! San Francisco Births on the Rise

State demographers said San Francisco, San Mateo and Alameda counties would experience declining births. They were wrong. By Sharon Simonson With wildly expensive housing and poorly perceived public schools, San Francisco has not enjoyed a reputation as a child-rearing mecca. As recently as 2010, state demographers predicted the number of births in the city each year would drop by a quarter over the coming decade. Trend lines were the same in Alameda and San Mateo counties. New U.S. Census Bureau birth estimates illustrate anew the pitfalls of future-telling: the number of babies born each year in both San Francisco and Alameda counties in fact rose from 2010 through 2015 and stayed steady in San Mateo County. A state demographer says their estimates erred in two, relate...

An Iranian-American Walks Common Ground with West Oakland’s Homeless

7Apr

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Demographics, Events

An Iranian-American Walks Common Ground with West Oakland’s Homeless

By Sharon Simonson The mean streets of West Oakland seem an odd place to uncover kinship and hope. But that’s what Iranian-American filmmaker Amir Soltani found as he made his 95-minute documentary, “Dogtown Redemption,” about the homeless recyclers who make their lives there. Though his family came to America when he was 16 years old, pushed from their homeland by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and he attended high school in Boston and later Harvard University in Cambridge on a scholarship, it wasn’t until he moved to Oakland eight years ago that he felt true community in the U.S. What he discovered in West Oakland were people, who — like immigrants and refugees — had lost their connections to family and friends and their lifelines to better lives. As he learned the daily ri...

American Dream Department, Silicon Valley Style

3Apr

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Demographics

American Dream Department, Silicon Valley Style

By Sharon Simonson SAN JOSE—Hours after organizers planned to wind down Citizenship Day 2016 on Saturday at San Jose City College, dozens of would-be citizens still stood in a 60-foot queue that began at the glass doors of the school’s Main Gym and passed through a central campus plaza. Those waiting anticipated the free advice and application assistance of a volunteer team of immigration experts and attorneys, who sat inside the gym, with pens and pencils and big, multilingual brains, at dozens of long folding tables aligned end-to-end in rows across the gym floor. Earlier in the day, Rocio Zamora, 27, waited in the same line with her 7- and 5-year-old daughters. Dressed in pink, with her face carefully made up, she speaks in Spanish. Her husband and children are already U....

Foreign-born People Stoke Innovation Metros Across the U.S.

28Mar

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Demographics

Foreign-born People Stoke Innovation Metros Across the U.S.

By Sharon Simonson International migrants are fueling population growth coast to coast in U.S. counties with technology- and innovation-centered economies. From the boroughs of New York City to Boston, Los Angeles and San Jose, existing residents are leaving tech-oriented metros, and international migrants are replacing them. Without the immigrants and returning U.S. residents in the last five years, many of the metros would have seen their population growth slow dramatically. Only tech centers Austin and Seattle are drawing steady streams of new residents from neighboring counties and other states and from overseas. The two metros have population growth at more than twice the rate of the nation at large, according to the 2015 population estimates released by the U.S. Census B...

Global Immigration to the Bay Area at 5-Year High

24Mar

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Demographics

Global Immigration to the Bay Area at 5-Year High

By Sharon Simonson International migrants are pouring into the Bay Area at the highest rate in five years, driving population growth and cultural change across the region. More than 238,000 foreign-born people and some Americans returning from abroad moved into Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Contra Costa and Alameda counties in the last five years — more than 92,000 came to Santa Clara County alone, according to new U.S. Census Bureau population estimates released today. All five counties have seen their highest rates of international migration since 2010 in the last two years. People coming from overseas or outside the United States accounted for two-thirds of the population growth in both San Francisco and Santa Clara counties from mid-2010 to mid-2015. They represen...

20Mar

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Culture

A Turk in San Francisco

By Sharon Simonson SAN FRANCISCO—Near midday on Monday, March 14, Marc Benioff, founder and chief executive of San Francisco’s Salesforce.com, paused to look up as he entered his company’s new offices at 350 Mission St. Wearing his signature dark sports vest, jeans and running shoes with a Salesforce-blue, short-sleeved collared shirt (tucked in), the 6’ 5’’ tech visionary focused on the huge (2,800 square feet) LED screen that dominated the glass-walled, 50-foot lobby. As he watched, dozens of electric-red spaghetti noodles rose from the bottom of a black screen. After a few moments, they were replaced with a slowly moving blue, aqua and white mosaic. The images—both abstractions and identifiable city scenes—are part of a first-of-its-kind artwork by Turkish-born media art...

13Feb

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Culture, Demographics

Department of Peace

By Sharon Simonson MILPITAS—On a recent rainy January evening one of Silicon Valley’s most diverse communities made a very good start toward world peace—or at least some understanding. Inside the India Community Center on Los Coches Street in Milpitas, Hindu, Jew, Muslim, Jain, Zoroastrian, Buddhist and Christian congregated in anticipation of the World Culture Festival in mid-March in New Delhi. India’s Art of Living Foundation, with five Bay Area centers, and its founder, “spiritual leader, humanitarian and ambassador of peace,” Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, expect 3.5 million world citizens. The purpose, Shankar explains in a video to launch the global event, “is to give the world a message that the whole world is one family, that we can all co-exist. To create a buzz in the world about ‘we ca...

3Dec

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Demographics

One World Plays Soccer, Thinks Better

(Editor's note: One World Play Project and SiliconValleyOneWorld.com are unaffiliated.) WEST BERKELEY, Calif. — In the narrow streets with clapboard housing, old industrial buildings and funky restaurants that constitute West Berkeley, the offices of One World Play Project fit comfortably next to the Westside Café and Ashtanga Yoga Berkeley. Chief Giving Officer and co-founder Lisa Tarver executes her duties for the five-year-old company from a second-story loft office. On a recent workday afternoon, a handful of casually dressed young women and men sit at modern work stations in two large open rooms below. Pink, blue, green and yellow balls clutter shelves and other surfaces throughout. Tarver is joined by Frew Tibebu, an Ethiopian-American and East Bay resident engaged in a One...