Living in San Mateo

Neighborhoods — The flats

Sunnybrae

The flat middle of the city — modest 1950s houses on a regular grid, with seventy years of tree growth over them.

A low mid-century house in Sunnybrae under a broken sky — shallow-pitched roof, a band of clerestory windows above a red board-and-batten front, and a wide concrete driveway running to a double garage
The postwar stock with nothing done to it: low roof, clerestory band, garage across the front and most of the lot.

On the map

On the slope

Elevation cross section of San Mateo, west to east: the Crystal Springs watershed at 560 feet falls to San Francisco Bay at sea level in roughly four miles. San Mateo Highlands — 310 ft Laurelwood & Sugarloaf — 330 ft Baywood — 130 ft Aragon — 90 ft North Central — 38 ft Downtown — 28 ft Hillsdale — 22 ft Bay Meadows — 14 ft Sunnybrae — 11 ft Shoreview & Fiesta Gardens — 8 ft Coyote Point & North Shoreview — 5 ft
The hills The flats, between the freeway and the corridor. The Bay Drag toward the Bay →
Elevation
11 ft
Band
The flats
Nearest platform
Hayward Park
Getting to it
20 minutes, or a 6-minute bike ride
Street pattern
A regular grid, flat enough to teach a kid to ride on
Fog
No
Tree canopy
Good — the trees the first buyers planted have had seventy years
Noise
US-101 along the eastern edge, varying block to block more than distance predicts

Sunnybrae was built quickly in the years after the war for people who worked on the Peninsula and wanted a small house with a yard. Seventy years on, the trees those buyers planted have matured, the houses have been added onto once or twice, and the neighborhood has the settled feeling that new subdivisions take decades to earn.

The park at its center — fields, playground, a school beside it — is the organizing feature, and Sunnybrae Elementary and the surrounding blocks form one of the more tight-knit patches of the city. The eastern edge is the freeway, and the closer to it the more it is audible.

What it's actually like

Flat, sunny, and warm — no fog to speak of, and afternoons here run several degrees above the hills. Streets are quiet and safe for kids on bikes. Shopping is strip-mall shopping along the arterials rather than anything to stroll.

Freeway noise is the downside, and it varies block to block more than distance alone predicts. A weekday afternoon on the specific street settles it.

Getting out

By bike, six minutes to Hayward Park, on streets flat enough to teach a kid to ride on. The Delaware Street Safe Routes to School improvements run along the neighborhood's eastern side.

By train, Hayward Park is a twenty-minute walk with time to spare.

On foot, the grid interior is flat, shaded, and pleasant, and the school is in walking distance for much of the neighborhood. The shopping is strip-mall shopping on the arterials — reachable on foot, not enjoyable on foot.

By car, 101 is right there, for better and worse. SamTrans covers the arterials at useful frequencies.