Santa Barbara is a larger medium-sized coastal city (ie. on the ocean or tidally-influenced rivers) located in the state of California. With a population of 92,196 people and 24 constituent neighborhoods, Santa Barbara is the 66th largest community in California.

Santa Barbara is neither predominently blue-collar or white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Santa Barbara is a city of professionals, sales and office workers, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Santa Barbara who work in office and administrative support jobs (13.70%), sales jobs (11.62%), and management occupations (10.26%).

Of important note, Santa Barbara is also a city of artists. Santa Barbara has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Santa Barbara's character.

Also of interest is that Santa Barbara has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.

Santa Barbara is a nice balance between life in a moderately big city and the interesting diversions and culture that come from having a big college student population. The thousands of students who arrive on campus every fall will find that Santa Barbara has plenty of amenities and opportunities for them, while residents of Santa Barbara enjoy the lectures, music, art, and economic trickle-down that colleges typically provide. "Town and Gown" complement each other in Santa Barbara!

Not only is Santa Barbara a city with many college students, but it also retains many recent graduates who are looking to start new careers, shaping the character of the city into a place that is geared toward, and considered attractive to, many single, educated people. Many singles consider Santa Barbara a good place to live without being in a really big city, with opportunities for friendships and fun with others like themselves.

In addition to being popular with young singles, Santa Barbara is also home to many people who can be described as "urban sophisticates." Urban sophisticates are educated, wealthy, executives and professionals, who have urbane tastes in books, food, and travel, whether they actually live in a big city, or choose to reside in a small town. In big or medium-sized cities, urban sophisticates tend to frequent art institutions such as opera, symphonies, ballet, live theatre, and museums.

The city is also nautical, which means that parts of Santa Barbara are somewhat historic and touch the ocean or tidal bodies of water, such as inlets and tidal rivers. Quite often, nautical areas such as these attract visitors and locals who come to enjoy the scenery and various waterfront activities.

One of the benefits of Santa Barbara is that there is very little traffic. The average commute to work is 16.74 minutes, which is substantially less than the national average. Not only does this mean that the drive to work is less aggravating, but noise and pollution levels are lower as a result.

Santa Barbara Information and Demographics

The citizens of Santa Barbara are very well educated compared to the average community in the nation: 39.60% of adults in Santa Barbara have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.

The per capita income in Santa Barbara in 2000 was $26,466, which is upper middle income relative to California, and wealthy relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $105,864 for a family of four.

Santa Barbara is a very ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Santa Barbara home come from a variety of different races and ancestries. The most prevalent race in Santa Barbara is White, followed by Asian. Santa Barbara also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 35.02% of the city's residents. Important ancestries of people in Santa Barbara include English, German, Irish, and Italian.

In addition, Santa Barbara has a lot of people living here who were born outside of the US (25.31%).

The most common language spoken in Santa Barbara is English. Some people also speak Spanish.