The way to save San Francisco is to stop talking about San Francisco — and start talking about the Bay Area. San Francisco has 850,000 residents, about half of Manhattan’s 1.6 million and barely registering on the list of America’s biggest cities. The Bay Area, on the other hand, has almost 9 million residents, making it the fifth largest combined statistical area (CSA) in the United States. A CSA is defined as as adjacent areas with significant social and economic ties.

We need to make those ties much stronger, and we need to make them physical. We need radical, transformative infrastructure investments to integrate our region and create a broader array of housing options. Not more high-rise micro-units in Hayes Valley, but integrated neighborhoods that are less expensive but still accessible to jobs, recreation, and friends.

Because the truth is, we are one city.

The map below shows groups of people who commute into San Francisco, based on data from the American Community Survey. Data for Santa Clara and Alameda counties looks similar. Hundreds of thousands of people are already passing between Bay Area counties each day.

This shows where people commuting into SF are coming from. Via CurbedSF.

These dots are zooming around in spite of our lack of regional integration, and most of these commuters are spending long hours sitting in their cars.

We need more dots. And to do this, we need better mass transit providing people fast, cheap, and reliable access to our urban cores, whether they are going to work in the morning or returning from a night on the town at 2am. The urban cores are not going to get more affordable, no matter how many high rises we build. Affordable housing within neighborhoods is also important, of course, but it’s not a systemic solution. Diversity-by-lottery only takes us so far.

Ultimately, we need more neighborhoods that appeal to people who want to be connected to San Francisco (and Oakland, and San Jose) but can’t afford to live in the urban center. We need neighborhoods like Bushwick — neighborhoods for the young, the old, people with different occupations, aspirations, and bank balances. We need places for the misfits and weirdos that used to flock to Northern California. These are the people who make the Bay Area dynamic and keep it real.

And these neighborhoods must be integrated with our urban cores, culturally and physically. Specifically, we need a monthly pass that gives us unlimited access, 24/7, to high-frequency, wide-ranging rapid transit. A community that values diversity and inclusion commits to integration.

Where is the Bay Area’s commitment?