There is a ban on billboards in Marin County (on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco).
Legally speaking, billboards are only banned within 500 yards or some other distance from the highway with the most traffic (where billboards would be most valuable, namely, US 101) but actually there are no billboards anywhere in the county and this has been the case since the 1960s (according to an old newspaper article). My guess is that the community has some way to exert "informal" (not based on formal governmental processes) pressure on landlords. Real estate prices are very high here in part because it is a very attractive landscape with plenty of hills and greenery and bodies of water, so maybe most landlords perceive that billboards have the potential to depress prices and keep the occasional landlord who contemplates erecting billboards in line somehow.
Also as an exception to the general rule, bus shelters (structures owned and maintained by the city or the county to keep the rain and the sun off people waiting for a bus) near US 101 have ads on them (4' by 6' or so) and the buses themselves do, too, or at least they used to--it's been a few years since I noticed.
At least one billboard, along 101 at the highway cut between San Rafael and Larkspur, survived until the late 1970s or early 1980s, but was burned down in what has been described as the closest an act of arson has come to earning an award of commendation by the Marin County Board of Supervisors.
More recently, a "flower billboard" was created, and in 2010 removed, along US-101 in Novato:
When I was a kid, I lived on lake which was connected to Lake Ontario.
One summer a job was across the our small lake, a 40 minute drive by car, but maybe 10 minutes by boat as the crow flies. Sure, I got wet during rain and wavy days, but clothes get dry, and it sure was convenient.
I often wondered, if the job was in SF itself, do people take boats to get to work? If so, why not? I presume docking costs? The place I worked had their own dock, so ... "sure, just tie up over there every day".
When I was a kid in Miami, I read about people commuting to work by jet ski. This was before they replaced the Rickenbacker Causeway drawbridge with the William Powell Bridge, and the commute from Key Biscayne into Miami could be delayed and backed up, as boats had the right-of-way.
I had a friend who lived in New Jersey in a water front property - he used to ride a jetski over to New York to stop for a drink at a bar in a marina. The issue was you had to pay marina fees to be allowed to dock there, so while it was fun it was actually a pretty pricey way to get to NY (and you'd be wearing damp clothes) - but he still thought it was a lot of fun.
He was OK but apparently the was a lot of boat theft in that area too.
There are people who live waaaaay out there and commute to their Silicon Valley job via a light airplane like a Cessna, quarterly, monthly, weekly, probably even daily. "Commutes, uh... find a way"
I knew one of those too. I consulted for a company across the street from the Palo Alto general aviation airport. The doc/pubs manager lived some place north of Sonoma. She would fly in, walk across the street, and go to work.
At another job, the project manager lived in WA but worked in Palo Alto. He flew (commercial) in early Monday, with a small apartment to live in during the week, then take off mid-afternoon Friday to be back in WA with his family for the weekend.
And resort/premium retirement areas like Aspen. I'd also argue that although jobs helped create a lot of the "elite" cities, once they were created, there's a fair bit to keep people in their orbit if not in the city proper even if employment opportunities become less of a consideration.
Legally speaking, billboards are only banned within 500 yards or some other distance from the highway with the most traffic (where billboards would be most valuable, namely, US 101) but actually there are no billboards anywhere in the county and this has been the case since the 1960s (according to an old newspaper article). My guess is that the community has some way to exert "informal" (not based on formal governmental processes) pressure on landlords. Real estate prices are very high here in part because it is a very attractive landscape with plenty of hills and greenery and bodies of water, so maybe most landlords perceive that billboards have the potential to depress prices and keep the occasional landlord who contemplates erecting billboards in line somehow.
Also as an exception to the general rule, bus shelters (structures owned and maintained by the city or the county to keep the rain and the sun off people waiting for a bus) near US 101 have ads on them (4' by 6' or so) and the buses themselves do, too, or at least they used to--it's been a few years since I noticed.