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Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara,
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berkeley featured

Berkeley is a city in Northern California on the east side of San Francisco Bay. It’s home to the University of California, Berkeley, birthplace of the 1960s Free Speech Movement. The 1914 Sather Tower, known as the Campanile, has views of the campus and the bay. The open-air Hearst Greek Theatre stages major concerts. Clustered on and near Telegraph Avenue, south of the university, are cafes, shops and music stores.

Berkeley is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321.

Berkeley is home to the oldest campus in the University of California, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is managed and operated by the university. It also has the Graduate Theological Union, one of the largest religious studies institutions in the world. Berkeley is considered one of the most socially progressive cities in the United States.

Demographics:

The 2020 United States Census reported that Berkeley had a population of 124,321. The population density was 11,874 people per square mile of land area (4,584/km2).

The racial makeup of Berkeley 

  • 62,450 (50.2%) White
  • 9,495 (7.6%) Black or African American
  • 24,701 (19.9%) Asian,
  • 253 (0.2%) Pacific Islander
  • 226 (0.2%) from Native American
  • 1,109 (0.9%) from other races
  • 9,069 (7.2%) multiracial (two or more races).
  • 17,018 (13.7%) Hispanic or Latino ancestry, of any race.

Education:

The Berkeley Unified School District operates public schools.

The first public school in Berkeley was the Ocean View School, now the site of the Berkeley Adult School located at Virginia Street and San Pablo Avenue. The public schools today are administered by the Berkeley Unified School District. In the 1960s, Berkeley was one of the earliest US cities to voluntarily desegregate, utilizing a system of buses, still in use. The district has eleven elementary schools and one public high school, Berkeley High School (BHS). Established in 1880, BHS currently has over 3,000 students. The Berkeley High campus was designated a historic district by the National Register of Historic Places on January 7, 2008. Saint Mary’s College High School, a Catholic school, also has its street address in Berkeley, although most of the grounds and buildings are actually in neighboring Albany. Berkeley has 11 public elementary schools and three middle schools.

The East Bay campus of the German International School of Silicon Valley (GISSV) formerly occupied the Hillside Campus, Berkeley, California; it opened there in 2012. In December 2016, the GISSV closed the building, due to unmet seismic retrofit needs.

There is also the Bay Area Technology School, the only school in the whole Bay Area to offer a technology- and science-based curriculum, with connections to leading universities.

Berkeley also houses Zaytuna College, the first accredited Muslim, liberal-arts college in the United States.

Berkeley Public Library serves as the municipal library. University of California, Berkeley Libraries operates the University of California Berkeley libraries.