What is Special About Santa Cruz？

What Kind of City is Santa Cruz？

Located in California on the West Coast about 100 Km south of San Francisco, Santa Cruz is nestled between lush green mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Once a thriving fishing and forestry town, Santa Cruz has a diverse economy including high tech, agriculture, tourism, and food processing. The city is also very active in the arts and the citizens regularly put on events every year featuring local artists, dancers, crafts, music, and so on.  

Santa Cruz has a strong tourism strategy and presently boasts an annual revenue of about 500 million dollars a year producing about 14 million in tax revenue every year for the city and local county. Santa Cruz is famous as the birthplace of surfing in the US and is therefore particularly popular with the surfer community. The University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) student population accounts for about 20,000 of the 56,000 inhabitants which has lowered the average age of the population to 31.5 years old.

Santa Cruz is also well known for its citizens actively supporting the local economy and organic agriculture through such programs as 'Think Local First' and 'Buy Fresh Buy Local'. It also has a vibrant youth population and groups such as 'Santa Cruz Next' actively participating in the visioning and creation of their city. This has led to what is called the 'Santa Cruz Uniqueness' and is reflective of the pronounced underlying awareness of the population regarding issues of sustainability, autonomy, and health of the community. The main challenges for Santa Cruz are the management of development in ways that are able to be in keeping with the spirit of the Santa Cruz population and lead toward long term sustainability and a high happiness index.


Santa Cruz is also well known for being the first local government to stand up and protest the war in Iraq. After the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, Santa Cruz put together a visionary committee to led the reconstruction of Santa Cruz and is a successful example of co-operation between the citizens, business, and government to craft a clear vision and implement it. The result is now a vibrant downtown core that all citizens, including the youth, are proud of. 

Present Problems Facing Santa Cruz 

  • Due to the expansion of the university, Santa Cruz is dealing with the issue of dealing with a transient youth population and how they integrate with the local long time residents (traffic jams, voting trends, housing, etc).
  • Housing issues due to soaring land prices
  • Outflow of talented people to Silicon Valley, etc.
  • Low income households and the unemployment issue
  • Transportation policy and the rehabilitation and maintenance of roads.