Is San Francisco a lot like Oakland?

You can still drive and park in Oakland. You can no longer drive nor park in San Francisco, especially during the weekends when large portions of roads and streets are turned into pedestrian pathways. Unfortunately, Oakland is following the same path although slower making driving in town difficult. A good example is Telegraph Avenue which leads from Oakland to Berkeley and has one lane of traffic instead of two as before, parallel parking, a bicycle lane and finally the sidewalk. Utterly confusing and dangerous to both pedestrians and cyclists since the driver' s view is blocked by other vehicles.

Not even close .

Oakland has a much higher crime rate .

SF is more costly to live .

Only that they are both in California 

Not even a little bit. We live in Oakland and have a business in downtown SF. Every day it's like traveling to another planet and back. Not bad things, just different.

Oakland is more sparsely populated and I think has more violent crime per capita. Oakland is not as gentrified as SF so it has more low-income people and people of color. San Francisco is a popular tourism destination; Oakland is overlooked for being across the bridge and not having as much to do. It's very quick and easy to move between Oakland and SF on BART.

No.

Oakland is much less densely populated and has a smaller "high rise business district".  It is more spread out than San Francisco.   Still a lot of strip malls and one story business buildings.  Oakland covers 77 square miles SF is only 49.

Not at all. They don’t look anything the same.  Different harbors different socio economic background different topical layout even. Different history. Completely different