Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California 

Los Angeles is the second-most populous city and metropolitan area in the country (after New York City), and it serves as the county seat of Los Angeles in southern California. In the considerably larger Los Angeles county, which includes the city and includes 90 other incorporated communities, such as Beverly Hills, Pasadena, and Long Beach, the metropolis spreads out across a huge coastal plain between mountains and the Pacific Ocean. More than 900 square miles (2,330 square km) of desert, 75 miles (120 km) of coastline, and two of the Channel Islands, Santa Catalina and San Clemente, are also included in the county. Mount San Antonio, popularly known as Mount Baldy or Old Baldy, rises 10,046 feet (3,062 meters) above sea level.

Geographically, culturally, and economically, the city and the county are intertwined, therefore both must be taken into account when discussing Los Angeles. In hilly places, population density can be as low as one person per square mile and as high as 50,000 per square mile close to downtown Los Angeles. Area County: 4,070 square miles; City: 466 square miles (1,207 square km) (10,540 square km). Pop. (2010) 3,792,621, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale Metro Division 9,818,605, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana Metro Area 12,828,837; (2020) 3,898,747, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale Metro Division 10,014,009, and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim Metro Area 13,200,998. 

Character of the City 

Southern California's epicenter, Los Angeles, very recently attained city-state status. This ascent is all the more impressive given that the city originally lacked some of the key building pieces associated with cityhood, such as a natural port. At the beginning of the 20th century it was merely "a huge village." Despite these limitations, it overcame them and became a significant hub for manufacturing, agriculture, tourism, and trade. It has been inextricably linked for more than a century to a pleasant climate, plenty of leisure time, outdoor activities, and the unique celebrity aura that comes with Hollywood. The Angelenos (those who live in Los Angeles) idealize the single-family home, rely heavily on automobiles, and prefer an informal way of life. The skyline is mostly horizontal, with a few noticeable vertical deviations. Due in major part to immigration, Los Angeles is a city with unparalleled racial and ethnic diversity. Like other global cities, it also shows a widening wealth divide.

Los Angeles has been the target of numerous criticisms. It is referred as either as a carefree "la-la land" or, alternatively, as a region plagued by earthquakes, fires, smog, gang wars, and riots. The city's supporters praise its warm climate and diverse geography. They contend that its primary social issues are comparable to those of all major cities and may even be less severe there than elsewhere. In fact, some experts believe it to be the most contemporary and representative American city. 

Landscape of Los Angeles 

 City Site 

The county of Los Angeles is a sizable and diverse geographic area. There are several inland valleys, a lengthy seacoast, an arc of even higher mountains separating the coastal plain from the interior, and low mountains with sharp passes in between. Mountains cover almost half of the county, with the majority of them running east-west and a dynamic history of earthquakes, firestorms, and mudslides. The enormous and sweeping San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains are to the north and northeast. The Santa Monica Mountains, Puente Hills, Repetto Hills, and San Jose Hills stretch out in front of them, running roughly parallel to one another from west to east. The San Fernando, San Gabriel, and San Bernardino valleys are separated by these chains. The Santa Ana Mountains are located further south, roughly between the counties of Orange and Riverside. The diverse beaches along the coast of Los Angeles County, which draw millions of sunbathers each year, are a stunning natural feature. 

In the north, the Santa Clara River runs westward; in the south, the Los Angeles River flows from the San Fernando Valley east and south to the Pacific Ocean; and in the north, the San Gabriel River emerges from the San Gabriel Mountains and goes south to the ocean. Large portions of Los Angeles have occasionally been submerged by massive floods, and many people have worked hard to contain the waterways within concrete channels. The Los Angeles River channel was historically altered by a flood in the year 1825, changing its westward outflow into Santa Monica Bay to a south-flowing outlet emptying into San Pedro Bay. The western portion of the Los Angeles basin resembled a network of lakes with islands scattered throughout during the winter of 18661–62 due to flooding. A new channel known as the Rio Hondo was created when the San Gabriel River burst its banks and eventually joined with the Los Angeles River. 

The southernmost region of the county is largely occupied by the enormous, expansive, and tortuously structured city of Los Angeles. Its topography is very varied, rising from the sea level at the coastal town of Venice to Mount Lukens, which is over 5,100 feet high (1,550 metres). When the city first established an absolute legal monopoly over the Los Angeles River watershed and then brought in a new water supply from the Owens River, it significantly expanded through a series of annexations. The city had originally been founded in 1781 as a small village of 28 square miles (73 square km) (which rises from the Sierra Nevada, 230 miles [370 km] northeast of the city). Neighboring settlements choose to annex to the city in order to share in this rare water resource and to gain much-needed police and fire protection. Los Angeles built a port and connected it to the city proper, which led to the annexations of Wilmington, San Pedro, and a thin "shoestring" of territory (1909–10). By incorporating the entire San Fernando Valley and the Palms neighborhood, Los Angeles had tripled in size by 1917. 34 unincorporated regions and five cities amalgamated with Los Angeles between 1922 and 1928. Five autonomous cities—Beverly Hills, Culver City, West Hollywood, Universal City, and San Fernando—were ringed by Los Angeles as it expanded. 

Boyle Heights, Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Hollywood, San Pedro, Encino, and Watts, for instance, still go by their original neighborhood names and identities. Neighborhoods, on the other hand, never had formal boundaries since the city never recognized them as such.

Climate 

Most people would describe the climate in Los Angeles as semiarid or Mediterranean. The region's latitude is far enough south to dissipate the most powerful North Pacific winter storms, a layer of chilly marine air moderates the summer sun, and the tall mountain ranges protect the area from potentially intense bursts of desert heat and cold. Together, these three natural factors contribute to the region's favorable climate. Photochemical haze, which has persisted in the area since the 1940s, is another well-known Los Angeles phenomenon that thrives in the area's warm climate and bowl-like alignment of the mountain ranges. State and municipal governments have passed stringent anti-pollution legislation that have helped reduce the motor vehicle emissions that cause smog to occur, but air quality has remained a significant problem in Los Angeles and many other cities in the state.

There are two distinct seasons in the area, with the first lasting generally from April to November and the second from November to April being damp, fairly cool, but rarely frigid. The average temperature in the city is roughly 64 °F (18 °C). 

Location can have a big impact on temperature. In the summer, the San Fernando Valley can be 10 °F (5.5 °C) warmer than Santa Monica, and in the winter, it can be 10 °F colder. In addition to elevation and wind speed, fog also affects temperature. The average temperature difference between Los Angeles' downtown and the beach is 10 to 15 °F (5.5 to 8 °C). August, the hottest month, averages 68 °F (20 °C) at the ocean, which is just 15 miles (24 km) away, and 85 °F (29 °C) in the city center. The San Gabriel Valley can see daytime highs of 100 °F (38 °C) and nighttime lows of 40 °F or 50 °F (low to upper 20 °C). January is generally the coldest month, and ice roads can cause passes to be closed. However, the plains seldom experience temperatures below 40 °F (4 °C).

In Los Angeles, annual precipitation averages 15 inches (380 mm). El Nio, a weather phenomenon in the central Pacific, has occasionally (but not always) resulted in more than twice the average amount of precipitation during a given rainy season. Mud slides (more properly known as debris slides) can be caused by prolonged rain or brief, powerful downpours, especially when fires have stripped hillsides of their vegetation.

The numerous sunny days and comparatively little rain contribute to a feeling of physical well-being. In the fall and winter, Santa Ana winds that are often warm and dry rip across the mountain passes. As Raymond Chandler, a master of mystery, put it, "Meek little ladies feel the edge of the carving knife and examine their husbands' necks" during these "red breezes."

Natural Environment 

Although the natural environment of the area is quite attractive, its other, less appealing features—prolonged droughts, heavy storms, pounding waves, mud slides, wind-fanned fires, and notably earthquakes—present significant difficulties for human habitation. Over the course of the region's documented history, earthquakes have been noticed. When Gaspar de Portolá's expedition crossed the Santa Ana River in 1769, a soldier was knocked off his horse by a temblor lasting "as long as half an Ave Maria," according to missionary Junpero Serra's colleague Juan Crespi. The San Andreas Fault is the main fault line that runs through the region, and it is only 33 miles (53 km) from downtown Los Angeles at its closest point. The largest earthquakes were those that hit Northridge in 1994, Sylmar in 1971, and Long Beach in 1933, all of which had a magnitude of 6.4. (6.7). The vast Pacific Plate, which contains the portion of California that is west of the fault, is eroding past the North American mainland at a rate of around 2 inches (5 cm) every year; theoretically, southern California and Los Angeles will eventually pass San Francisco in tens of millions of years.

Much of the region's original flora and wildlife have been destroyed by ranching, farming, and urbanization, but native trees including oaks, maples, sycamores, and willows are still common. Near Lancaster, some 80 miles (130 km) north of the city, the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) blooms widely in the spring, and natural chaparral covers the mountains. In the meantime, hundreds of new exotic trees, shrubs, and flowers have been planted. The flora is extremely diverse due to the area's propensity for practically every type of plant to flourish. The majority of the common palm trees, along with the eucalyptus and pepper trees, are exotics. Animals that were widespread in the 1850s, such grizzly and black bears and pronghorn antelopes, have long since disappeared, but some places are still home to deer, raccoons, and coyotes. In the steep areas of Beverly Hills, Tarzana, and Chatsworth, there are even a few nocturnal mountain lions, a protected species. The county is home to the critically endangered El Segundo blue butterfly (Euphilotes battoides allyni).

City Layout 

Los Angeles is made up of a number of sporadic neighborhoods that are only tangentially connected to the city center. The prominent Chicago school of urban theory, which maintained that a downtown was the major center of a community's life and that its influence spread outward in a series of concentric circles into the hinterlands, does not apply to this situation.

The vast majority of Angelenos, with the exception of those who work there, have little interaction with downtown in their daily lives and are content to work, shop, and engage in leisure activities in the suburbs that extend in all directions. Hollywood, northwest of downtown, Encino, Van Nuys, and North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley, Century City, Westwood, and Venice on the West Side, San Pedro and Wilmington in the harbor area, and Boyle Heights immediately east of the river are a few of the outskirts that fall within the city limits. Some of the more recent outlying villages, like Warner Center, resemble independent mini cities.

The well-known Los Angeles highways, which crisscross the region in a massive network of concrete ribbons, serve as the primary conduits linking downtown and the suburbs. Any drive will take you across various landscapes. The Los Angeles River, which resembles a sizable, cement-lined flood control channel, is crossed by certain roadways. There are occasional homes scattered among the bushes, grass, and canyons with sheer walls that line the mountains. Drivers catch glimpses of some breathtaking panoramas, such as a nighttime picture of the San Fernando Valley from the San Diego Freeway's Mulholland crest. From the motorways, though, it is generally difficult to tell one community from another. Moving slowly at rooftop level through single-story residential neighborhoods, shopping centers, and malls are massive masses of cars and trucks.

In Los Angeles, there isn't just one location used for manufacturing. The usual industrial location is a single-story structure next to a sizable parking area, sometimes next to a railroad line or a major thoroughfare used by enormous vehicles. All of this tends to show why author Dorothy Parker allegedly once called Los Angeles "72 suburbs in quest of a city." 

Anyone who is familiar with Chicago and its grid-based street layout would reasonably assume that Los Angeles wasn't planned. However, the Spanish colonists had established the original pueblo in 1781 in accordance with a plan laid out in the 16th-century Laws of the Indies, and the county later maintained a general grid for outlying tracts, roads, and highways.

The English architectural writer Reyner Banham called planning in Los Angeles "a self-canceling concept." The planning company led by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. produced a creative and comprehensive regional planning concept to conserve open space in 1924, but it was not successful in garnering enough support to halt the strong trends toward urban sprawl and the demand for automobiles. But smaller planned communities in remote locations, like Westwood and Palos Verdes Estates, have won praise for their innovative architecture.

Thousands of Angelenos frequent the commercial, governmental, and cultural facilities in downtown Los Angeles. Civic Center, Music Center, Spring Street, Broadway, Chinatown, Olvera Street, Little Tokyo, Library Square, and the Staples Center are some of its distinguishing subareas. Even though these places are bustling during the day, most of them are almost uninhabited at night. Bunker Hill is home to several of the city's tallest, most modern, and most ominous structures. When the motorways were built, much of the downtown's notable department stores, theaters, restaurants, and apartments were gone. Downtown also has a small population. However, southern California's wholesale markets for clothing, jewelry, toys, furniture, flowers, and fruit are among the busiest businesses in the region.

The city has made substantial efforts since the 1980s to revitalize the downtown area by building more homes, providing space for fresh recreational and cultural events, and encouraging pedestrian movement. New condominium living areas have been created through loft conversions. A significant resource for recreation is the river. The biggest problems with downtown are the size of Skid Row (also known as Central City East), the shortage of housing for middle-class and lower-income families, and the absence of the businesses and amenities that make living pleasant on the street. 

The People 

In Los Angeles, the relative positions of various ethnic and racial groups have changed substantially throughout time. Whites, or those with European origin, were in the minority when Spanish authority over the city officially began in 1781. The original 44 settlers included 26 people of African, Native American, or mixed descent. With the exception of some eastern European Jews who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, southern California drew relatively few of the immigrant groups from eastern and southern Europe that populated the cities of the eastern United States. From the late 19th to the early 20th century, whites became dominant; so many white Midwesterners arrived in Los Angeles during that time that it was nicknamed "the seacoast of Iowa." The non-white population started to rise with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and the concurrent inflow of Mexican agricultural laborers in California. Los Angeles began to draw in many more ethnic groups in the 1970s, and during the ensuing decades it grew to be one of the most varied cities in the nation, if not the entire world.

California became a "minority-majority state" in the early years of the twenty-first century, meaning that the total number of minorities is greater than the population of the majority. The largest Hispanic, Asian, and Native American populations of any county in the US are found in Los Angeles County (also known as Latino in southern California). A little bit in the early 21st century, middle-class families left the historically African American neighborhoods for newer suburbs as far away as San Bernardino County, which resulted in a slight reduction in the population of African Americans, who make up around one-tenth of the entire population. Previously predominately African American communities, Compton and Inglewood are now largely Latino.

Immigration as well as natural population growth (greater birth rates than death rates) have contributed to the changes among the major ethnic groupings. Federal immigration policies have stopped favoring European immigrants since the middle of the 1960s and have instead favored immigrants who have family in the country as well as those with better education and skills. In the meantime, illegal immigration from rural areas of Mexico and Central America, where the birth rate has been quite high, has rapidly grown. The county has the highest percentage of Mexicans outside of Mexico due to both legal and illegal immigration. The county of Los Angeles today has residents from more than 140 nations. More Koreans, Filipinos, Iranians, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Cambodians reside in Los Angeles than any other city in the world. The county also has the highest number of Native Americans, the majority of whom were born in states other than California.

Although the city and county as a whole may now have a more diversified population, low-income Latinos, African Americans, and Asians in the core city still live in mostly segregated homes. Families from all socioeconomic classes who could afford it typically relocated to the suburbs in search of better housing and to get away from dangerous neighborhoods.

In households all around Los Angeles, there are more than 90 languages spoken in addition to English, with Spanish, Vietnamese, Hmong, Cantonese, Tagalog, Korean, Armenian, Russian, Farsi, Cambodian, and Hebrew being the most common. There are more than 50 foreign-language publications published in the county, and radio listeners can occasionally hear a dozen or more distinct foreign languages on the air.

Southern California's religious landscape is equally diversified. In the late 19th century, Los Angeles, which had previously been almost entirely Roman Catholic, started to welcome a large number of Protestants and some Jews. The 1920s saw an increase of small sects. While most had a limited audience and were short-lived, at least one had a significant impact. African American preacher William J. Seymour founded the Azusa Street revival in 1906, which served as the catalyst for the Pentecostal religious movement, which for the following century would quickly spread throughout the Western Hemisphere and other parts of the world. Roman Catholics continue to be the largest mainline religious group in Los Angeles, with about 100 parishes, as noted California newspaperman and poet John Steven McGroarty noted in 1921: "Los Angeles is the most celebrated of all incubators of new creeds, codes of ethics, philosophies—no day passes without the birth of something of this nature never heard of before." Evangelicals and other Protestant sects now exceed followers of traditional denominations. Mormons make up a sizable portion of the population. One of the most enduring institutions in the African American society is the African Methodist Episcopal church. Los Angeles is home to some 600,000 Jews, and there are active Eastern Orthodox parishes in the expanding Greek, Russian, and Armenian communities. Immigrants from Indonesia and Africa are among the numerous followers of Islam in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles County, there are tens of thousands of Buddhists and Hindus. There have also been other smaller non-Judeo-Christian religions, like the Baha'i faith. 

Health & Welfare 

Health-conscious people have always been drawn to Southern California by its temperate environment. Innumerable hospitals and clinics began treating thousands of tuberculosis and asthma patients in the 1880s. Although this "health rush" has long since passed, the area still possesses top-notch medical services. Numerous accolades for superior care have been given to Kaiser Permanente, Cedars-Sinai, and City of Hope hospitals as well as the medical schools at USC and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

The county is in charge of preserving the health and welfare of the general public. The largest such organization in the US, the department of health services, has long struggled with insufficient funds to care for an expanding number of low-income customers. The county also manages all issues related to public welfare. Between 1988 and 1992, when 1.3 million people were receiving welfare, its caseload increased by over half, creating what was called a "social emergency of historic proportions." The welfare rolls grew significantly in the middle of the 1980s, partly as a result of foreign immigration, many of whom were here illegally. In comparison to any other part of the country, southern California was home to the greatest number of those immigrants. Welfare-to-work reform measures put in place by national legislation in 1996 dramatically lowered caseloads and linked people to social services. However, the majority of program participants stayed in poverty and held low-paying jobs without benefits. In the early 21st century, Los Angeles County alone still had more cases to manage than did most U.S. states, and the concentration of poverty was growing, primarily due to the influx of low-income immigrant families. 

Education 

The Los Angeles region is well known for its prestigious universities, both public and private, and its faculty, which includes Nobel Prize winners. The largest campus in the University of California system is UCLA, founded in 1919. In the county, there are four campuses of the California State University system located in Dominguez Hills, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Northridge. The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has achieved great distinction in the sciences, the Claremont Colleges, Occidental College, and Loyola Marymount are among the excellent smaller institutions devoted to the liberal arts, and USC, the oldest independent university in the West (1880), has outstanding professional schools. Two-year community colleges were first established in Los Angeles and today send thousands of students to universities in California.

There are numerous autonomous school districts in Southern California. The second-largest public school district in the nation, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), is governed by an independent elected board that is subject to state law rather than local law. In the 1970s, unrest broke out over court-ordered busing to end racial segregation. This legal action led to "white flight" into the suburbs, the establishment of several private schools, and a lack of full governmental support. Early in the twenty-first century, the LAUSD had more than 750,000 students, the majority of whom were Latino. In recent decades, despite rising enrollments and decreasing public support for education, the system has struggled to enhance teaching and learning. 

Cultural Life 

With the reputation of an overgrown village controlled by prudes and philistines, Los Angeles entered the 20th century. Eastern immigrants who arrived in the United States in the 1910s were horrified that no restaurants offered wine with lunch. Woody Allen, a New Yorker, expressed the later perception of Los Angeles as "Tinseltown" in his 1977 film Annie Hall, saying, "I don't want to live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light." Nevertheless, by that time, the city was already home to a large number of creative individuals, including Europeans like Aldous Huxley, Billy Wilder, and Thomas Mann, who fostered all the arts and built impressive When Dorothy Chandler, a civic leader and the mother of Otis Chandler, tapped into private and corporate foundations and obtained a county grant for the Los Angeles Music Center in the 1960s, she kicked off an artistic revival (which included the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion). The city strengthened its own arts program by mandating that builders reserve "one percent [of construction costs] for the arts" at significant building construction sites and by backing an arts council, which among other things helped fund many of the 1,000 murals that are now a prominent feature of the cityscape. 

Theatre 

With the reputation of an overgrown village controlled by prudes and philistines, Los Angeles entered the 20th century. Eastern immigrants who arrived in the United States in the 1910s were horrified that no restaurants offered wine with lunch. Woody Allen, a New Yorker, expressed the later perception of Los Angeles as "Tinseltown" in his 1977 film Annie Hall, saying, "I don't want to live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light." Nevertheless, by that time, the city was already home to a large number of creative individuals, including Europeans like Aldous Huxley, Billy Wilder, and Thomas Mann, who fostered all the arts and built impressive When Dorothy Chandler, a civic leader and the mother of Otis Chandler, tapped into private and corporate foundations and obtained a county grant for the Los Angeles Music Center in the 1960s, she kicked off an artistic revival (which included the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion). The city strengthened its own arts program by mandating that builders reserve "one percent [of construction costs] for the arts" at significant building construction sites and by backing an arts council, which among other things helped fund many of the 1,000 murals that are now a prominent feature of the cityscape. 

Music and Dance 

The Los Angeles Philharmonic, which was established in 1919, is currently regarded as one of the nation's top orchestras. It performs in the Frank O. Gehry–designed Walt Disney Concert Hall from 2003. Alfred Wallenstein, Eduard van Beinum, Zubin Mehta, Carlo Maria Giulini, André Previn, and Esa-Pekka Salonen were a few of the conductors who made it famous around the world. The presence of European musicians escaping Nazism in the 1930s improved the classical music landscape. These included Arnold Schoenberg, Otto Klemperer, Kurt Weill, Igor Stravinsky, and Kurt Weill, who settled in at UCLA, one of the many nearby universities with exceptional music programs. Since the city's first African American recording orchestra, led by Dixieland's Kid Ory, debuted in the early 1920s, jazz has been performed in Los Angeles. It was widely practiced on Central Avenue, the hub of the African American neighborhood where clubs featured performances by Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and other musicians. Singers like Jo Stafford, Lena Horne, Frank Sinatra, and Perry Como performed frequently during the big band era of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, as did bands led by Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington in local nightclubs, on radio programs, and in motion picture musicals. Southern California saw a surfing craze in the 1960s, which gave birth to the surf music genre that was pioneered by Dick Dale and others.

The Beach Boys, a group of young rock and rollers from Hawthorne, expanded on this genre and made a splash; since then, Los Angeles has been home to a vibrant and diverse pop music culture. Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, and the Flying Burrito Brothers' country rock sound coexisted with the different musical styles of other groups like the Doors and Frank Zappa and the mothers of Invention in the middle to late 1960s. 

The Los Angeles Opera debuted in 1985, while Los Angeles Ballet, the city's first resident ballet group, debuted in 2006–07. The Music Center frequently hosts performances by visiting groups, as well as modern, tap, jazz, ethnic, and experimental dance presentations by companies located in Los Angeles. 

Literature 

With Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona (1884), which cultivated an enduring romantic mystique surrounding Native Americans and the missions, the genre of southern Californian fiction was founded. Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust (1939) and F. Scott Fitzgerald's F. One of the most well-known of these books is Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon from 1941. In works like Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One (1948), a scathing social satire about a cemetery, and Aldous Huxley's After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, Los Angeles has been frequently parodied (1939). The hard-boiled detective book was another genre of Los Angeles literature. Los Angeles was portrayed by James Cain, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, and Walter Mosley as having two faces: one that was happy, hopeful, and smiling, and the other that was uglier, corrupt, and violent. The several books set in Los Angeles also include Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion from 1970, Making History by Carolyn See from 1991, and White Oleander by Janet Fitch (1999). Since 1996, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books has attracted tens of thousands of visitors to the USC campus, making it the largest literary festival in the nation. 

Sports 

Numerous well-known sports teams are based in Los Angeles, including professional groups like the Dodgers and the Lakers as well as collegiate groups like the UCLA Bruins and the USC Trojans. Links to sports arenas like the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Staples Center can be found in the list of Venues. 

Population 

California's Los Angeles County is home to the city of Los Angeles. It serves as Los Angeles County's County seat as well. It is the largest city in California and the second-largest city in the United States as of 2020, with a population of 3,919,973. Although Los Angeles' population has declined by -1.34% from the most recent census, which found that there were 3,973,278 residents in the city in 2020, the city is still increasing at a pace of 0.27% annually. Los Angeles has a population density of 8,359 persons per square mile and a total length of 503 miles. 

Los Angeles has a 16.89% poverty rate and a $96,416 average household income. The median monthly cost of rent in recent years has been, and the median value of a home is. Los Angeles has a 35.6-year median age, with 34.7-year men and 36.5-year females.

According to the official 2020 U.S. census, Los Angeles has a population of 3,898,747. 

One of the most ethnically varied counties in the country is where Los Angeles is located. The Los Angeles Combined Statistical Area (CSA), which includes the City of Angels, is the third largest in the world after Greater Tokyo and New York. The metropolitan area is the 18th largest in the world, and its city proper ranks 66th in terms of population. 

The Los Angeles metropolitan area has a population of over 13.2 million people as of the 2020 Census, while the greater metropolitan area had an estimated population of 18.1 million people. This makes it one of the biggest urban agglomerations on the planet and the second-largest metro region in the United States after the New York metro area. 

Both the urbanized region and the Combined Statistical Area are included in the Greater Los Angeles Area, popularly known as the Southland. It includes five counties, including Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange, Riverside, and Venture counties. For the majority of the twentieth century, it was one of the fastest-growing regions in the nation, however growth has moderated in recent years.

Filipinos (3.2%) and Koreans (2.9%) make up the two largest Asian ethnic populations and are mainly concentrated in Koreatown and Historic Filipino town, respectively. Despite having a sizable presence in Chinatown, the 1.8% of the city's population who are Chinese live mostly outside of the city borders. Thais and Cambodians reside in large numbers in both Thai town and Chinatown in Los Angeles, while Japanese citizens, who make up 0.9% of the city's total population, largely reside in Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles and the Sawtelle neighborhood of West Los Angeles. 

Iranians and Armenians, who primarily reside in Tehrangeles and Little Armenia, respectively, respectively, make up the majority of the Middle Eastern community in Los Angeles and the surrounding area.

The Watts and Crenshaw neighborhoods in South Los Angeles are where you'll find the city's concentration of African Americans. Latinos and Hispanics currently exceed black people in the city due to significant immigration from Central America and Mexico, despite the fact that black people still make up the majority in Los Angeles. surpassed the number of Hispanics in 1970. Many areas that were formerly dominated by African Americans, like Compton, are now home to Hispanic populations.

Mexican Growth 

Over the past thirty years, the Hispanic population in the United States has increased significantly. The number of Hispanics in the United States increased from 14.6 million in 1980 to 52 million in 2011, yet they are still primarily concentrated in Florida and the Southwest. Los Angeles County is now home to 9% of all Hispanics in the nation, and it is here that the population has increased the greatest since 1980.

Growth of the Los Angeles Population 

Overall population growth in California is predicted to slow down over the next few decades, which will benefit the state from an annual growth rate of roughly 1%. The steep fall in immigration to the region is to blame for the decline in the state's growth rate. Compared to the city's average growth rate over the past century, this rate is significantly more natural. Los Angeles' growth from 2010 to 2020 was 2.8%, little less than the 8.5% average growth for the United States during that time. The state's most recent census results were 2% lower than anticipated, with Los Angeles County responsible for the majority of the discrepancy. The area of California's Inland Empire is currently experiencing the fastest growth, not Los Angeles. By 2050, Los Angeles County's population is expected to rise by 3.5 million, maintaining its status as the state's largest county and metropolis. The county will be home to 11.5 million people by 2060.

Top 2 News Websites 

#1 Los Angeles Times 

The LA Times is a top source for breaking news around the country, the globe, and California. It also covers entertainment, sports, politics, and more. 

#2 L.A. Weekly 

The go-to resource for news, music, movies, restaurants, reviews, and events in Los Angeles is LA Weekly. 

Current City Mayor 

The 42nd Mayor of Los Angeles is fourth generation Angeleno Eric Garcetti. The life of Mayor Garcetti has been influenced by a strong commitment to the fundamental principles of justice, dignity, and equality for all people. Mayor Garcetti was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley; he is the son of public servants and the grandson and great-grandson of immigrants from Mexico and Eastern Europe. 

These ideals have driven the mayor's tireless efforts to fulfill our shared responsibility: to ensure that all children and families, regardless of race, religion, background, or socioeconomic status, have the opportunity to receive a quality education, live in a secure environment, earn a living wage, breathe clean air and drink clean water, access quality healthcare, and create the future of their choice.

A DEEP COMMITMENT TO THE CORE VALUES OF JUSTICE, DIGNITY, AND EQUALITY FOR ALL PEOPLE HAS SHARPENED MAYOR GARCETTI'S LIFE.

The Mayor ran and won a campaign to approve the most audacious local infrastructure program in American history, supporting a once-in-a-generation expansion of public transportation, and Angelenos are now seeing the astonishing consequences of his vision and leadership. He began the L.A. More than 15,000 students, many of whom are overcoming poverty and are the first in their family to pursue the dream of higher education, are served by College Promise, one of the most ambitious higher education access programs in the nation. In order to end chronic homelessness and address the homelessness epidemic, he is in charge of a hitherto unheard-of regional cooperation. By increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour and cutting company taxes, he contributed to an unprecedented economic recovery that has produced a record number of employment in traditional sectors like aerospace and the entertainment industry. He also established a historic cooperation with the charitable sector in 2018 to renovate roughly 350 athletic courts throughout the city in support of his vision for free, accessible local sports and fitness programs for all children in Los Angeles. 

The Mayor's leadership is having a remarkable influence on both the national and worldwide platforms. After the Trump Administration withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, he mobilized more than 400 mayors in American communities to accept the accord. He was the driving force behind the first National Day of Action on Immigration and has committed previously unheard-of local resources to provide Dreamers and others legal protection from deportation. To safeguard the lives of thousands of people from natural disasters, he signed America's toughest retrofit law for earthquakes. The 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games will be held in the United States for the first time in more than 30 years thanks to the leadership of this individual. He was chosen as Los Angeles' first Deputy Mayor for International Affairs because of his experience living and working in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

His goal is to strengthen L.A.'s international ties and increase the city's access to jobs, business opportunities, culture, education, and tourists. While tackling these significant obstacles, Mayor Garcetti has also rethought how city government provides the most fundamental services. Since July 2013, Los Angeles has significantly increased the number of trees in neighborhoods all over the city, paved 14,750 lane miles of road, cut the average time it takes to fix a pothole in half, and implemented a $1.4 billion plan to repair every sidewalk in every community. Clean Streets LA was founded by him. — an evaluation of 9,100 miles of streets, block by block, to determine which communities have the most needs and to determine the priority for resource distribution. L.A. was steered by him. has been named the top solar energy city in America and the best-run city in the country by the Bloomberg What Works Cities initiative.

The Mayor started working for the government on the L.A. Before being elected mayor in 2013 and gaining reelection in 2017 with the largest margin in Los Angeles history, he served four terms as council president of the City Council. 

In addition to his tenure at City Hall, Mayor Garcetti has taught at Occidental College and the University of Southern California and served his country as an intelligence officer in the US Navy Reserve. The Mayor graduated with a B.A. and M.A. from Columbia University, attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and afterwards attended the London School of Economics. He also plays jazz piano and takes pictures. He and his wife, First Lady Amy Elaine Wakeland, have been foster parents for more than ten years and are the fortunate parents of a daughter named Maya.