Davis

"Ten square miles surrounded by reality."

I <3 Davis. Davis from the air. Courtesy of terraserver.microsoft.com.

The City of Davis is a medium sized city (2004 pop. about 65,000) located in the northern part of California's central valley, about one hour east of the Bay Area and 15 minutes west of Sacramento. Specifically, it is located at 38.554643 latitude and -121.745001 longitude. Davis is about 50ft. (16m) above median sea level and enjoys a Mediterranean climate with blistering hot summers and mild winters.

Davis is largely famous for being the home to the University of California, Davis - one of the best research universities in the world, and an institution that swells the city population by approximately 20,000 nine months of the year. Demographically, Davis has been lauded as the most educated city in California and is known for its liberal, college-town atmosphere. Considering themselves so well-educated, Davisites are also very outspoken and rarely does anything happen without the local population weighing in... even college students want a say in how the city is governed. Davis has recently been rated by CNN Money Magazine as the second most educated city in the US (in terms of percentage of residents with college degrees), after Arlington, VA.

Also well-known as "Bike Capital" of the United States, Davis won the moniker Bike City, USA as it has more bicycle ridership and ownership per capita than anywhere else in the nation. The city embraces this reputation and scores of professional and amateur bicyclists call Davis home. With tons of bike circles, bike lights, bike paths, and sometimes even bike sculptures, the town is very nice for bicycling. Davis is also home to a great deal of other things and implemented the nation's first energy conservation building code. We invite you to skim through our town history to get a glimpse of how we got to this place. Outside Magazine recently called Davis one of the best towns in the U.S. and the California State Auto Association reviewed the town in the Jan 2006 issue of Via Magazine.

If you're new to Davis then the wiki is a great place to find out what's here. You might also check out the Davis Conference & Visitor's Bureau. If you're visiting Davis for the first time, you may want help navigating Davis and a local map. To get a pretty good feel for why some of us live here beyond the time required to graduate, check out why I Love Davis.

Davis can be divided into several regions: North Davis, South Davis, East Davis, West Davis, and Central Davis.