This article is really poorly research when it tries to make historical comparisons.  As recently as the 1960s, San Jose was a <i>fraction</i> of its current size.  Subsequent city councils and managers gobbled up adjacent towns and almost every unincorporated parcel available (almost 1,400 annexations under Dutch Hamann alone!)  Almost all of that growth was residential.  Combine that with the difficulties and costs of doing business within SJ, and San Jose became just a &quot;bedroom community&quot; for the smarter-run Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Cupertino, etc. and SJ was doomed from a tax-base standpoint.  Mineta and Hayes presided over the bulk of that.