Berkeley sits on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in Alameda County, directly across the bay from the Golden Gate and roughly a dozen miles northeast of San Francisco. The city's identity is inseparable from the University of California, Berkeley, the flagship campus of the UC system, whose presence shapes the local economy, housing demand, and civic life. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, located in the hills above campus, reinforces the city's role as a research and technology center. Founded in the late nineteenth century and named for the Irish philosopher George Berkeley, the city became a center of twentieth-century counterculture and political activism; the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s began on the campus's Sproul Plaza. That legacy of intellectual and cultural energy persists in independent bookstores, farmers' markets, and the celebrated food district on Shattuck Avenue often called the Gourmet Ghetto. Berkeley's geography moves from the flats of West Berkeley near the bay, through the commercial core around downtown and Shattuck Avenue, and up into the Berkeley Hills, where neighborhoods climb to wooded ridgelines with sweeping views of the bay and, on clear days, the Golden Gate Bridge. Roughly 124,000 residents live in the city, which draws a mix of university faculty and staff, graduate students, technology workers, artists, and long-established families. The largest employer is the university, but the city also hosts biotechnology firms, software companies, and a well-known artisan food scene. Its blend of walkable urban neighborhoods, hilltop open space, and direct transit access to San Francisco gives Berkeley a character distinct among Bay Area cities.