I should have clarified this better but I&#x27;m talking more about &quot;villages&quot; really. Places that are too tiny to be classified as a city center (by my arbitrary east coast standards at least), but afford a little pocket of shopfronts and rental units amongst lower density residential housing.<p>Of the cities you listed that I know well, Pinole is actually the best Norcal example I can point to. It&#x27;s just 2 blocks of shopfronts and most of the residents could walk to the post office if they wanted to. A little 19th century main street that got attached to it&#x27;s sprawling suburbs much later.<p>Sure there&#x27;s more places like this in Norcal than Socal, but it&#x27;s overall pretty rare anywhere in CA to live in a low-density outer suburb and still comfortably walk to a legacy village center rather than a strip mall or gas station. By contrast most &#x27;burbs in the Northeast have these pockets of villages available to incorporate into mixed use zoning plans (but seriously fail at appreciating their potential).<p>Just an unfortunate roadblock in the way of balancing suburban housing density in Western states that I don&#x27;t feel a lot of people are even fully aware of