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Coordinates: 37°58′32″N 121°18′03″W 37.97556, -121.30083

Stockton

Stockton is a city in California, USA, the county seat of San Joaquin County and is currently the 13th largest city in the state. Stockton is located in Northern California between Sacramento and Modesto. Stockton's population estimate for January 1, 2008, according to the California Department of Finance, is 290,141.Encompassing Interstate 5, State Route 99 and State Route 4, Stockton is surrounded by the rich and fertile farmland of the California Central Valley and is home to the first inland seaport in California. In and around Stockton are thousands of miles of waterways and rivers that make up the California Delta.Over the past decade, Stockton and the nearby cities of Tracy and Manteca have experienced a population boom, due in large part to thousands of people settling in the area in an effort to escape the San Francisco Bay Area's relatively high cost of living. This influx of new residents, however, resulted in a sharp increase in the cost of living of Stockton (although it is still significantly lower than any Bay Area city of comparable size).As a result of the population increase, Stockton found itself squarely at the center of the United States' speculative housing bubble in the 2000s. Real estate in Stockton more than tripled in value between 1998 and 2005, but when the bubble burst in 2007, the ensuing financial crisis arguably hit Stockton harder than any other city in America. Stockton housing prices fell 39% in the 2008 fiscal year, and the city had the country's highest foreclosure rate (9.5%) as well. Because of the shrinking economy, Stockton also had an unemployment rate of 13.3% in 2008, one of the highest marks in the U.S. Stockton has also been called one America's most dangerous cities because of its crime rate.^[1]

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