I should have clarified this better but I'm talking more about "villages" really. Places that are too tiny to be classified as a city center (by my arbitrary east coast standards at least), but afford a little pocket of shopfronts and rental units amongst lower density residential housing.

Of the cities you listed that I know well, Pinole is actually the best Norcal example I can point to. It's just 2 blocks of shopfronts and most of the residents could walk to the post office if they wanted to. A little 19th century main street that got attached to it's sprawling suburbs much later.

Sure there's more places like this in Norcal than Socal, but it's overall pretty rare anywhere in CA to live in a low-density outer suburb and still comfortably walk to a legacy village center rather than a strip mall or gas station. By contrast most 'burbs in the Northeast have these pockets of villages available to incorporate into mixed use zoning plans (but seriously fail at appreciating their potential).

Just an unfortunate roadblock in the way of balancing suburban housing density in Western states that I don't feel a lot of people are even fully aware of