The Bay Area is mostly an outlier compared to most other places. (And the Bay Area is a bit unusual in that, if you're commuting, it's hard to reasonably commute out of expensive housing because the South Bay, Marin, Berkeley, are also hugely expensive not just the city.

In the East Bay you can start to approach reasonable but if you're working in the South Bay, your commute won't be reasonable and access to the city for recreation may not be great either.