Seven Trees North, San Jose, CA

Andrew P. Hill High School fills the middle of Seven Trees North, the northern end of San Jose's Seven Trees area, and its campus and playing fields set the rhythm of the surrounding blocks. Houses here are postwar single-family tract homes on modest lots across level ground. The arterials on the edges carry the commercial traffic, and the streets around the campus stay residential and fairly calm. Open space is a short drive rather than a block away. Up Senter Road, Kelley Park spreads along Coyote Creek with a zoo, a Japanese garden, History Park and a disc golf course set among old walnut trees. To the south, Solari Park and the Seven Trees Community Center, with its renovated gym, make up the civic heart of the wider Seven Trees area. Food runs along Senter Road and Capitol Expressway. Banh Cuon Tay Ho sticks almost entirely to one dish, the thin steamed rice roll. Oc Lau Nuong covers Vietnamese seafood cravings with crab, crawfish and garlic noodles, and BackAYard Caribbean Grill on East Capitol Expressway serves jerk chicken and oxtail. Coffee means a short drive north to Story Road's Vietnamese food district, where Lacaphe is known for coffee brewed drop by drop through a metal filter. Errands happen along Senter and Monterey, VTA buses run on the main roads, and the freeways are close. Caltrain stops at Capitol station on Monterey Road, though only a handful of trains call there during weekday peak hours. What you get in exchange is a real neighborhood at a genuinely accessible price, close to the freeways and to the civic core just to the south. For buyers priced out of the leafier parts of San Jose, north Seven Trees keeps a foothold in the city around a well-known high school.