Many years ago I stayed at the SJ Fairmont for a couple of days of meetings. Pretty much never got out of the hotel except to arrive & depart, but have to say they did a decent job of muffling the aircraft noise. I think if the "river" and SJ State weren't there the downtown area might be more like San Diego with higher buildings on the sides forming a slot for the glide slope. But then, maybe not, since the job & economic center isn't there - it's in Santa Clara/Cupertino/Mountain View to the northwest. As it is, the place looks architecturally interesting in a 90s-early 2000's redevelopment-area style, but by reputation has a serious homeless problem (many live along the "river" just to the west), and limited nightlife. The museums are a good daytime destination, but don't offer much incentive to do other things in the area. Those pictures are lovely architectural shots, but did you notice how few PEOPLE are in them?

Then there's the light rail - the pictures make it look like a nice touristy streetcar (and at one time they did run vintage cars on the downtown loop), like something a "new urbanist" planner would love, but it's really the connection between heavy-duty light rail lines north and south of downtown. I don't expect that many people ride the trains TO downtown other than college and local government types, and support staff for the hotels and such; more traffic probably wants to go THROUGH downtown to get from southern SJ housing to jobs in North SJ, Santa Clara, etc. So that cute-looking (but very slow) downtown track is actually a major bottleneck. Should have been subway or otherwise better-separated, but I understand there were cost issues at the time and nobody wanted the streets torn up for several years or horrible elevated structures.

Sacramento light rail has a similar operating issue through downtown, but seems to deal with it better. That's probably because more of its commute traffic actually is going downtown (local and state workers) rather than through so street-running delays aren't as significant. And if Sacramento ever needs to fix it the tunnel could be much shorter than what SJ would need.