Med Center, Sacramento, CA

Med Center is exactly what its name says, the district built around the UC Davis Medical Center along Stockton Boulevard southeast of downtown. The footprint is dominated by the hospital and academic campus, the research buildings, and the dense weave of jobs and services that orbit a facility of that size, with housing mixing older homes, apartments, and student and staff rentals on the surrounding blocks. The position is central-east and well connected. The Stockton Boulevard corridor runs through it, the light rail on the Highway 50 line is close, and Oak Park and the Elmhurst area are right at the edges, which keeps the district plugged into the rest of the city. The tradeoffs are the ones any hospital district carries. Traffic is heavy, parking is under constant pressure, and the setting turns institutional as you near the campus core. Med Center's real value is as the region's major medical anchor rather than as a place to settle in the usual sense. The genuine residential life sits in the bungalow pockets like Elmhurst and the Fairgrounds area that ring it, close enough to the campus to serve it without being swallowed by it.