Oakland has a thriving technology scene, but many of its denizens don’t see it as a wannabe Silicon Valley. In fact, they eschew what they call the valley’s conformist, insular nature. Oakland’s tech culture, they say, mirrors the city’s rich culture and diversity.

While communities nationwide piggyback on Silicon Valley cachet with names like Silicon Alley, Silicon Prairie and Silicon Beach, it’s unlikely that Oakland will proclaim itself “Silicon Town” anytime soon. The city wants the valley’s upsides — job growth and economic vitality — without the downsides of gentrification, elitism and a lack of diversity.

“We don’t want to benchmark against Silicon Valley,” said Lili Gangas, chief technology community officer at Oakland’s Kapor Center for Social Impact, calling the valley’s racial homogeneity “a broken model.” “We don’t want to duplicate or imitate or re-create it. We want to create an inclusive and diverse tech ecosystem.”

“When I go down to Mountain View, sometimes I might be one of two people of color in the room,” said Brian Dixon, a partner at Kapor Capital, the venture capital arm of the Kapor Center, which shares its commitment to diversity. The enterprises are all backed by Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein, who are investors and philanthropists. “That should not be the norm.”

As he spoke, a DJ spun hip-hop tunes while dozens of young tech workers and executives mingled in the circular atrium of the Kapor Center, a nonprofit that works to increase diversity in tech. Later they assembled in an auditorium to hear a presentation by Dixon and another venture capitalist.

The monthly First Friday event for the Oakland Startup Network, run by the Kapor Center and the city, underscores how backers try to think differently when it comes to Oakland tech. The Kapor Center, with an accelerator program, innovation lab, summer internships, science and technical education for underserved youth, impact awards and venture capital arm, is leading a charge to support entrepreneurs who are women and people of color. That’s also a major focus for Oakland itself.

“We’re making a big push to create a tech sector that looks like who we are as a city,” said Marisa Raya, the city’s liaison to the tech community, a role she’s held for almost four years.

It’s a delicate balancing act to keep tech growth from turning Oakland into another home of $7 avocado toast and entitled “brogrammers.”

“We want to embrace the tech sector and help it grow in Oakland, but we want it to be sustainable and equitable growth, to counter some of the trends and cultural impacts we saw elsewhere,” Raya said.

Encouraging local hiring is a big part of that. Increasingly, she sees enterprises embrace that ethos.

She cited local software maker Propeller Labs, with headquarters downtown, as having hired Youth Radio, a nonprofit that trains diverse young people in media skills, to create a virtual reality tour of Oakland.

Likewise, when the mayor’s office meets with tech firms considering a move to Oakland, “We make it very clear that our values are striving for equity and committing to diversity,” said Jose Corona, director of equity and strategic projects for Mayor Libby Schaaf. “We want them to support our local economy, use local sources for their supply chain, be part of the fabric of the Oakland community.”

For Berkeley native Leandrew Robinson, founder of Hingeto, which makes drop-ship technology for online retailers, Oakland was an obvious place for the 14-person firm that grew out of a T-shirt enterprise he started during his senior year at UC Berkeley.

“I like locations that are not in a bubble but still have access to the talents and tools and conversation and networks,” he said. “Oakland is more authentic.”

Joel Flory, CEO and founder of VSCO, which makes digital photo tools, had a similar take.

In Silicon Valley, “you can get too caught up in the echo chamber of one approach to business, the same conversation topics at every coffee shop,” he said. “Oakland provides an opportunity to really engage with the general population and hear different perspectives; ultimately, a really rich environment.”

Flory, a Bay Area native, moved his 100-person company to Oakland in 2014, after stints in San Ramon and Emeryville. Among the draws: “Oakland embraces and celebrates the arts.”

While Silicon Valley companies treat their workers to fabulous perks from on-site dining to massages and car detailing, Oakland companies are scrappier. Even giants like Pandora don’t have in-house catering, so workers leave the office at lunchtime and patronize local businesses, Dixon said.

Oakland tech covers a range of sectors: music, education, art and design, solar energy, biotech, cloud software, logistics, food. Most of the 350-plus companies have fewer than 100 on staff, but overall they add up to some 7,000 tech employees in Oakland. Bigger companies include Pandora, Ask.com, 99 Designs and GT Nexus. Annual tech salaries averaged $122,000 in 2016, according to a Tech Trends report from the Chamber of Commerce, comparable to those in San Francisco and the South Bay.

The report showed that Oakland’s tech companies employ a larger share of African Americans than valley companies. Blacks are 11.7 percent of Oakland tech workers, versus 1.3 percent in San Jose, it said. Blacks account for about 27 percent of Oakland’s population.

Women were slightly more represented in Oakland, accounting for 34.4 percent of tech workers, versus 32.6 percent in San Jose.

Even if the city itself rejects being tagged as part of Silicon Valley, others may still see it as an adjunct.

“You don’t have to proclaim yourself Silicon Valley, but Silicon Valley is here,” said Jeremy Owens, who works in San Francisco as MarketWatch’s bureau chief and lives in Alameda.

Oakland office rents have increased dramatically in the past three years, said John Dolby, executive director of brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. Office space with services now averages $54 to $62 per square foot, still a bargain compared with San Francisco’s $80 per square foot.

About a third of new tenants pick Oakland for the cost, Dolby said, but those firms tend to be older-line enterprises such as insurance companies. The venerable Sierra Club, founded in San Francisco in 1892, moved its headquarters to Oakland in 2016.

The rest of Oakland’s commercial growth is heavily tech-centered, he said, including startups and companies relocating or creating Oakland divisions to improve their employees’ quality of life.

“They look at the demographics and see that more than half their employees live in the East Bay,” he said. “Why have them crowd into BART or inch across the bridge?”

Developers are orienting buildings to lure tech firms, he said, citing TMG Partners’ newly renovated 1330 Broadway, which landed Oracle, Clovis Oncology and engineering firm Arup as tenants.

“They installed bike storage, showers, high-tech elevators, exposed ceilings — that whole new creative look,” Dolby said.

Oakland is rapidly adding office space, including its first new office tower in a decade, the 24-story 601 City Center, which Shorenstein Properties expects to complete next year. Meanwhile, CIM Group is renovating Uptown Station, the 391,000-square-foot 1920s-era former Emporium Capwell’s department store building. Uber originally bought Uptown Station but scrapped its plans to open an East Bay headquarters there.

Oakland brokers are confident that those buildings’ quality will draw other large tech enterprises.

“They’re an opportunity for Oakland to attract firms that need several hundred thousand square feet and can’t find it in San Francisco,” Dolby said. “They can just look through their binoculars from S.F. and see a brand-new, state-of-the-art building just across the bay.”

As larger, powerhouse tech companies move into Oakland, the city may well be seen as a Silicon East Bay, like it or not.

“I agree that to call Oakland a part of Silicon Valley feels wrong, but will it feel wrong in five years?” said Leslie Berlin, Silicon Valley collection archivist at Stanford and author of “Troublemakers: Silicon Valley’s Coming of Age.”

“There was a time when I never would have considered companies in San Francisco part of Silicon Valley.”

Now, she says, Silicon Valley “has become a shorthand for all tech.”

San Francisco Chronicle business editor Owen Thomas contributed to this report.