It's not everyone's idea of paradise, but San Jose seems to be practically the only city in the Bay Area that is trying to plan at all realistically for growth of over half a million more residents. It has historically had a hard time attracting startups and high-growth companies, but it looks like the city is extremely serious about giving it another shot.

San Jose has a much lower cost of living than Mountain View or even Sunnyvale, but the main constraint right now is places to work.

Sounds like San Jose is working on a plan to attract more employers:

The biggest game changer on the drawing boards for North San Jose is the proposal by realty firm Peery Arrillaga to develop a 2 million-square-foot complex of 10 buildings of seven stories each where up to 10,000 people could work.

Add to this the new Samsung and Polycom campuses, and we're off to a good start.

Yes but where are the high-growth companies? Where is the WhatsApp, the Pinterest, the Eye of Sauron, the Square?

I personally know of exactly ONE startup that used to be in San Jose (but isn't any more), one newish small VC firm, and a couple of stable/declining startups. Does San Jose have much insight into why startup people would rather pay thousands of dollars a month for what amounts to a cardboard box over human feces in San Francisco than a reasonable office in SanJo? Or do they just plan to go with their strength which is big companies with older workforces?

WhatsApp is staying put in Mountain View, and Palantir is staying put in Palo Alto.

That Pinterest would move to San Francisco where Twitter, Square, etc., are speaks to your point.

Not sure how realistic this is but apparently San Jose wants to DRASTICALLY cut down on singleton driving:

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_25248596/andy-ball-and-tom-werner-todays-ambitious-bike

Ambitious. I'm eager to see how this progresses.

This article explains the BART extension:

http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_25302661/bart-extension-san-jose-is-moving-right-along