Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

and the second most populous city in the United States after

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the

San Fernando Valley The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, California. Located to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it contains a large portion of the City of Los Angeles, as well as unincorporated ar ...

, with the city bordering the

San Gabriel Valley The San Gabriel Valley ( es, Valle de San Gabriel) is one of the principal valleys of Southern California, lying immediately to the east of the eastern city limits of the city of Los Angeles, and occupying the vast majority of the eastern part ...

to it's east. It covers about , and is the

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US ...

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is the ...

, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estimated 9.86 million residents . Home to the Chumash and Tongva indigenous peoples, the area that became Los Angeles was claimed by

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo ( pt, João Rodrigues Cabrilho; c. 1499 – January 3, 1543) was an Iberian maritime explorer best known for investigations of the West Coast of North America, undertaken on behalf of the Spanish Empire. He was the firs ...

for Spain in 1542. The city was founded on September 4, 1781, under Spanish governor Felipe de Neve, on the village of Yaanga. It became a part of

Mexico Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guate ...

in 1821 following the

Mexican War of Independence The Mexican War of Independence ( es, Guerra de Independencia de México, links=no, 16 September 1810 – 27 September 1821) was an armed conflict and political process resulting in Mexico's independence from Spain. It was not a single, co ...

. In 1848, at the end of the

Mexican–American War The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Second Federal Republic of Mexico, Mexico f ...

, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ( es, Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo), officially the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits, and Settlement between the United States of America and the United Mexican States, is the peace treaty that was signed on 2 ...

, and thus became part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4, 1850, five months before California achieved

statehood A state is a centralized political organization that imposes and enforces rules over a population within a territory. There is no undisputed definition of a state. One widely used definition comes from the German sociologist Max Weber: a "sta ...

. The discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The city was further expanded with the completion of the

Los Angeles Aqueduct The Los Angeles Aqueduct system, comprising the Los Angeles Aqueduct (Owens Valley aqueduct) and the Second Los Angeles Aqueduct, is a water conveyance system, built and operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The Owens Valle ...

in 1913, which delivers water from Eastern California. Los Angeles has a diverse economy, and hosts businesses in a broad range of professional and cultural fields. It also has the busiest container port in the Americas. In 2018, the Los Angeles metropolitan area had a

gross metropolitan product Gross metropolitan product (GMP) is a monetary measure of the value of all final goods and services produced within a metropolitan statistical area during a specified period (''e.g.'', a quarter, a year). GMP estimates are commonly used to compare ...

of over $1.0 trillion, making it the city with the third-largest GDP in the world, after

and

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

. Los Angeles hosted the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics and will host the

2028 Summer Olympics The 2028 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad, also known as Los Angeles 2028 or LA28) is an upcoming international multi-sport event scheduled to take place from July 14 to July 30, 2028, in and around Los Angeles, Cali ...

. More recently, statewide

droughts in California The historical and ongoing droughts in California result from various complex meteorological phenomena, some of which are not fully understood by scientists. Drought is generally defined as “a deficiency of precipitation over an extended per ...

have strained both the city’s and Los Angeles County’s

water security Water security is the focused goal of water policy and water management. A society with a high level of water security makes the most of water's benefits for humans and ecosystems and limits the risk of destructive impacts associated with water. T ...

Pronunciation of the name

The local English pronunciation of the name of the city has varied over time. A 1953 article in the

journal A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to: * Bullet journal, a method of personal organization *Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period *Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...

of the American Name Society asserts that the pronunciation was established following the 1850 incorporation of the city and that since the 1880s the pronunciation emerged out of a trend in California to give places Spanish, or Spanish-sounding, names and pronunciations. In 1908, librarian Charles Fletcher Lummis, who argued for the name's pronunciation with a hard ''g'' (), reported that there were at least 12 pronunciation variants. In the early 1900s, the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

'' advocated for pronouncing it ''Loce AHNG-hayl-ais'' (), approximating Spanish , by printing the

respelling A pronunciation respelling is a regular phonetic respelling of a word that has a standard spelling but whose pronunciation according to that spelling may be ambiguous, which is used to indicate the pronunciation of that word. Pronunciation respe ...

under its masthead for several years. This did not find favor. Since the 1930s, has been most common. In 1934, the United States Board on Geographic Names decreed that this pronunciation be used. This was also endorsed in 1952 by a "jury" appointed by Mayor Fletcher Bowron to devise an official pronunciation.

History

Pre-colonial history

The Los Angeles coastal area was settled by the

Tongva The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer Kizh as an endonym that, they argue, is more historica ...

(''Gabrieleño'') and Chumash

tribes The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confl ...

. Los Angeles would eventually be founded on the village of ''iyáanga’'' or Yaanga (written "Yang-na" by the Spanish), meaning "

poison oak Poison oak refers to two plant species in the genus '' Toxicodendron,'' both of which can cause skin irritation: *''Toxicodendron diversilobum'' or Western poison oak, found in western North America *''Toxicodendron pubescens ''Toxicodendron pu ...

place". Maritime explorer

claimed the area of southern California for the

Spanish Empire The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its prede ...

in 1542 while on an official military exploring expedition moving northward along the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

coast from earlier colonizing bases of

New Spain New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( es, Virreinato de Nueva España, ), or Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain during the Spanish colonization of the Am ...

in Central and South America.

Gaspar de Portolà Gaspar is a given name, given and/or surname of French, German, Portuguese language, Portuguese, and Spanish language, Spanish origin, cognate to Casper (given name) or Casper (surname). It is a name of biblical origin, per Saint Gaspar, one of t ...

and

Franciscan , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

missionary Juan Crespí reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2, 1769.

Spanish rule

In 1771, Franciscan

friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the o ...

Junípero Serra Junípero Serra y Ferrer (; ; ca, Juníper Serra i Ferrer; November 24, 1713August 28, 1784) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and missionary of the Franciscan Order. He is credited with establishing the Franciscan Missions in the Sier ...

directed the building of the

Mission San Gabriel Arcángel Mission San Gabriel Arcángel ( es, Misión de San Gabriel Arcángel) is a Californian mission and historic landmark in San Gabriel, California. It was founded by Spaniards of the Franciscan order on "The Feast of the Birth of Mary," Septemb ...

, the first mission in the area. On September 4, 1781, a group of forty-four settlers known as "

Los Pobladores Los pobladores del pueblo de los Ángeles (English language, English: ''The townspeople of Los Angeles'') refers to the 44 original settlers and 4 soldiers from New Spain (Mexico) who founded the Pueblo de Los Ángeles, Pueblo de Nuestra Señora l ...

" founded the (town) they called . The original name of the settlement is disputed; the

Guinness Book of World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

rendered it as "El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula"; other sources have shortened or alternate versions of the longer name. The present-day city has the largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the United States. Two-thirds of the Mexican or (

) settlers were

mestizo (; ; fem. ) is a term used for racial classification to refer to a person of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturally European even though thei ...

mulatto (, ) is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch, whereas in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese ...

, a mixture of African, indigenous and European ancestry. The settlement remained a small ranch town for decades, but by 1820, the population had increased to about 650 residents. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the historic district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street, the oldest part of Los Angeles.

Mexican rule

achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, and the pueblo now existed within the new

Mexican Republic Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Gua ...

. During Mexican rule, Governor

Pío Pico Don Pío de Jesús Pico (May 5, 1801 – September 11, 1894) was a Californio politician, ranchero, and entrepreneur, famous for serving as the last governor of California (present-day U.S. state of California) under Mexican rule. A member of t ...

made Los Angeles,

Alta California Alta California ('Upper California'), also known as ('New California') among other names, was a province of New Spain, formally established in 1804. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of , but ...

's regional capital. By this time, the new republic introduced more

secularization In sociology, secularization (or secularisation) is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward non-religious values and secular institutions. The ''secularization thesis'' expresses t ...

acts within the Los Angeles region. In 1846, during the wider

Mexican-American war Mexican Americans ( es, mexicano-estadounidenses, , or ) are Americans of full or partial Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexic ...

, marines from the United States occupied the pueblo. This resulted in the siege of Los Angeles where 150 Mexican militias fought the occupiers which eventually surrendered.

1847 to present

Mexican rule ended during the Mexican–American War: Americans took control from the

Californios Californio (plural Californios) is a term used to designate a Hispanic Californian, especially those descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries. California's Spanish-speaking community has resided there sinc ...

after a series of battles, culminating with the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga on January 13, 1847. Railroads arrived with the completion of the transcontinental Southern Pacific line from

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Santa Fe Railroad The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and S ...

in 1885. Petroleum was discovered in the city and surrounding area in 1892, and by 1923, the discoveries had helped California become the country's largest oil producer, accounting for about one-quarter of the world's petroleum output. By 1900, the population had grown to more than 102,000, putting pressure on the city's

water supply Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavors or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes. Public water supply systems are crucial to properly functioning societies. T ...

. The completion of the

in 1913, under the supervision of

William Mulholland William Mulholland (September 11, 1855 – July 22, 1935) was an Irish American self-taught civil engineer who was responsible for building the infrastructure to provide a water supply that allowed Los Angeles to grow into the largest city in Cal ...

, ensured the continued growth of the city. Because of clauses in the city's charter that prevented the City of Los Angeles from selling or providing water from the aqueduct to any area outside its borders, many adjacent cities and communities felt compelled to join Los Angeles. Los Angeles created the first municipal

zoning Zoning is a method of urban planning in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into areas called zones, each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones. Zones may be defined for a s ...

ordinance in the United States. On September 14, 1908, the

Los Angeles City Council The Los Angeles City Council is the legislative body of the City of Los Angeles in California. The council is composed of 15 members elected from single-member districts for four-year terms. The president of the council and the president pro tem ...

promulgated residential and industrial land use zones. The new ordinance established three residential zones of a single type, where industrial uses were prohibited. The proscriptions included barns, lumber yards, and any industrial land use employing machine-powered equipment. These laws were enforced against industrial properties after the fact. These prohibitions were in addition to existing activities that were already regulated as nuisances. These included explosives warehousing, gas works, oil drilling, slaughterhouses, and

tanneries Tanning may refer to: * Tanning (leather), treating animal skins to produce leather * Sun tanning, using the sun to darken pale skin ** Indoor tanning, the use of artificial light in place of the sun ** Sunless tanning, application of a stain or d ...

. Los Angeles City Council also designated seven industrial zones within the city. However, between 1908 and 1915, the Los Angeles City Council created various exceptions to the broad proscriptions that applied to these three residential zones, and as a consequence, some industrial uses emerged within them. There are two differences between the 1908 Residence District Ordinance and later zoning laws in the United States. First, the 1908 laws did not establish a comprehensive zoning map as the 1916 New York City Zoning Ordinance did. Second, the residential zones did not distinguish types of housing; they treated apartments, hotels, and detached-single-family housing equally. In 1910, Hollywood merged into Los Angeles, with 10 movie companies already operating in the city at the time. By 1921, more than 80 percent of the world's film industry was concentrated in L.A. The money generated by the industry kept the city insulated from much of the economic loss suffered by the rest of the country during the Great Depression. By 1930, the population surpassed one million. In 1932, the city hosted the

Summer Olympics The Summer Olympic Games (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques d'été), also known as the Games of the Olympiad, and often referred to as the Summer Olympics, is a major international multi-sport event normally held once every four years. The ina ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Los Angeles was a major center of wartime manufacturing, such as shipbuilding and aircraft. Calship built hundreds of

Liberty Ship Liberty ships were a ship class, class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Though British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost constr ...

s and

Victory Ship The Victory ship was a class of cargo ship produced in large numbers by North American shipyards during World War II to replace losses caused by German submarines. They were a more modern design compared to the earlier Liberty ship, were slig ...

s on Terminal Island, and the Los Angeles area was the headquarters of six of the country's major aircraft manufacturers (

Douglas Aircraft Company The Douglas Aircraft Company was an American aerospace manufacturer based in Southern California. It was founded in 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas Sr. and later merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967 to form McDonnell Douglas; it then operated a ...

Hughes Aircraft The Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded on February 14, 1934 by Howard Hughes in Glendale, California, as a division of Hughes Tool Company. The company was known for producing, among other prod ...

, Lockheed,

North American Aviation North American Aviation (NAA) was a major American aerospace manufacturer that designed and built several notable aircraft and spacecraft. Its products included: the T-6 Texan trainer, the P-51 Mustang fighter, the B-25 Mitchell bomber, the ...

Northrop Corporation Northrop Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer from its formation in 1939 until its 1994 merger with Grumman to form Northrop Grumman. The company is known for its development of the flying wing design, most successfully the B-2 Spiri ...

, and Vultee). During the war, more aircraft were produced in one year than in all the pre-war years since the Wright brothers flew the first airplane in 1903, combined. Manufacturing in Los Angeles skyrocketed, and as William S. Knudsen, of the National Defense Advisory Commission put it, "We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible." After the end of

Los Angeles grew more rapidly than ever, sprawling into the

. The expansion of the

Interstate Highway System The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Highway System in the United States. T ...

during the 1950s and 1960s helped propel suburban growth and signaled the demise of the city's electrified rail system, once the world's largest.
As a consequence of World War II, suburban growth, and population density, many amusement parks were built and operated in this area. An example is Beverly Park, which was located at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and La Cienega before being closed and substituted by the

Beverly Center Beverly Center is a shopping mall in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is an eight-story structure located at the edge of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, between La Cienega and San Vicente boulevards. Anchor tenants include Bloom ...

. Racial tensions led to the Watts riots in 1965, resulting in 34 deaths and over 1,000 injuries. In 1969, California became the birthplace of the Internet, as the first

ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical foun ...

transmission was sent from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

(UCLA) to the

Stanford Research Institute SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit organization, nonprofit scientific research, scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as ...

in Menlo Park. In 1973, Tom Bradley was elected as the city's first African American mayor, serving for five terms until retiring in 1993. Other events in the city during the 1970s included the Symbionese Liberation Army's South Central standoff in 1974 and the

Hillside Stranglers The Hillside Strangler, later the Hillside Stranglers, is the media epithet for one, later discovered to be two, American serial killers who terrorized Los Angeles, California, between October 1977 and February 1978, with the nicknames originat ...

murder cases in 1977–1978. In early 1984, the city surpassed Chicago in population, thus becoming the second largest city in the United States. In 1984, the city hosted the Summer Olympic Games for the second time. Despite being boycotted by 14 Communist countries, the 1984 Olympics became more financially successful than any previous, and the second Olympics to turn a profit; the other, according to an analysis of contemporary newspaper reports, was the

1932 Summer Olympics The 1932 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the X Olympiad and also known as Los Angeles 1932) were an international multi-sport event held from July 30 to August 14, 1932 in Los Angeles, California, United States. The Games were held dur ...

, also held in Los Angeles. Racial tensions erupted on April 29, 1992, with the acquittal by a

Simi Valley Simi Valley (; Chumash: ''Shimiyi'') is a city in the valley of the same name in the southeast region of Ventura County, California, United States. Simi Valley is from Downtown Los Angeles, making it part of the Greater Los Angeles Area. T ...

jury of four

Los Angeles Police Department The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal Police, police department of Los Angeles, California. With 9,974 police officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the thir ...

(LAPD) officers captured on videotape beating

Rodney King Rodney Glen King (April 2, 1965June 17, 2012) was an African American man who was a victim of police brutality. On March 3, 1991, he was beaten by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers during his arrest after a pursuit for driving whi ...

, culminating in large-scale riots. In 1994, the magnitude 6.7

Northridge earthquake The 1994 Northridge earthquake was a moment 6.7 (), blind thrust earthquake that occurred on January 17, 1994, at 4:30:55 a.m. PST in the San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles. The quake had a duration of approximatel ...

shook the city, causing $12.5 billion in damage and 72 deaths. The century ended with the Rampart scandal, one of the most extensive documented cases of police misconduct in American history. In 2002, Mayor James Hahn led the campaign against secession, resulting in voters defeating efforts by the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood to secede from the city. In

2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretariat; The global monkeyp ...

Karen Bass Karen Ruth Bass (; born October 3, 1953) is an American politician, social worker and former physician assistant who is serving as the 43rd mayor of Los Angeles since 2022. A member of the Democratic Party, Bass had previously served in the U.S ...

became the city's first female

mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well as ...

, making Los Angeles the largest US city to have ever had a woman as mayor. Los Angeles will host the

and

Paralympic Games The Paralympic Games or Paralympics, also known as the ''Games of the Paralympiad'', is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of physical disabilities, including impaired muscle power and impaire ...

, making Los Angeles the third city to host the Olympics three times.

Geography

Topography

The city of Los Angeles covers a total area of , comprising of land and of water. The city extends for north-south and for east-west. The perimeter of the city is . Los Angeles is both flat and hilly. The highest point in the city proper is Mount Lukens at , located at the northeastern end of the

. The eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains stretches from

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

to the Pacific Ocean and separates the Los Angeles Basin from the San Fernando Valley. Other hilly parts of Los Angeles include the Mt. Washington area north of Downtown, eastern parts such as Boyle Heights, the Crenshaw district around the

Baldwin Hills Baldwin Hills may refer to: Places * Baldwin Hills (mountain range), Los Angeles County, California, U.S. * Baldwin Hills, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in South Los Angeles, California, U.S. * Baldwin Village, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in South Lo ...

, and the San Pedro district. Surrounding the city are much higher mountains. Immediately to the north lie the

San Gabriel Mountains The San Gabriel Mountains ( es, Sierra de San Gabriel) are a mountain range located in northern Los Angeles County and western San Bernardino County, California, United States. The mountain range is part of the Transverse Ranges and lies between ...

, which is a popular recreation area for Angelenos. Its high point is Mount San Antonio, locally known as Mount Baldy, which reaches . Further afield, the highest point in southern California is San Gorgonio Mountain, east of downtown Los Angeles, with a height of . The

Los Angeles River , name_etymology = , image = File:Los Angeles River from Fletcher Drive Bridge 2019.jpg , image_caption = L.A. River from Fletcher Drive Bridge , image_size = 300 , map = LARmap.jpg , map_size ...

, which is largely seasonal, is the primary drainage channel. It was straightened and lined in of concrete by the Army Corps of Engineers to act as a flood control channel. The river begins in the

Canoga Park Canoga Park is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles, California. Before the Mexican–American War, the district was part of a rancho, and after the American victory it was converted into wheat farms and the ...

district of the city, flows east from the San Fernando Valley along the north edge of the Santa Monica Mountains, and turns south through the city center, flowing to its mouth in the Port of

Long Beach Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporated ...

at the Pacific Ocean. The smaller

Ballona Creek Ballona Creek (pronunciation: “Bah-yo-nuh” or “Buy-yo-nah” ) is an channelized stream in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States, that was once a “year-round river lined with sycamores and willows.” Ballona Cree ...

flows into the

Santa Monica Bay Santa Monica Bay is a bight of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, United States. Its boundaries are slightly ambiguous, but it is generally considered to be the part of the Pacific within an imaginary line drawn between Point Dume, in ...

at Playa del Rey.

Vegetation

Los Angeles is rich in native plant species partly because of its diversity of habitats, including beaches,

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The ...

s, and mountains. The most prevalent plant communities are coastal sage scrub,

chaparral Chaparral ( ) is a shrubland plant community and geographical feature found primarily in the U.S. state of California, in southern Oregon, and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterrane ...

shrubland, and

riparian woodland A riparian forest or riparian woodland is a forested or wooded area of land adjacent to a body of water such as a river, stream, pond, lake, marshland, estuary, canal, sink or reservoir. Etymology The term riparian comes from the Lati ...

. Native plants include: the California poppy, matilija poppy, toyon,

Ceanothus ''Ceanothus'' is a genus of about 50–60 species of nitrogen-fixing shrubs and small trees in the buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae). Common names for members of this genus are buckbrush, California lilac, soap bush, or just ceanothus. ''"Ceanothus"' ...

, Chamise, Coast Live Oak,

sycamore Sycamore is a name which has been applied to several types of trees, but with somewhat similar leaf forms. The name derives from the ancient Greek ' (''sūkomoros'') meaning "fig-mulberry". Species of trees known as sycamore: * '' Acer pseudoplat ...

willow Willows, also called sallows and osiers, from the genus ''Salix'', comprise around 400 speciesMabberley, D.J. 1997. The Plant Book, Cambridge University Press #2: Cambridge. of typically deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist ...

and Giant Wildrye. Many of these native species, such as the Los Angeles sunflower, have become so rare as to be considered endangered. Although it is not native to the area, the official tree of Los Angeles is the Coral Tree (''

Erythrina caffra ''Erythrina caffra'', the coast coral tree or African coral tree, is a tree native to southeastern Africa, which is often cultivated and has introduced populations in California and India. All the 17 species of coral tree in the genus ''Eryth ...

'') and the official flower of Los Angeles is the Bird of Paradise ('' Strelitzia reginae''). Mexican Fan Palms, Canary Island Palms, Queen Palms,

Date Palm ''Phoenix dactylifera'', commonly known as date or date palm, is a flowering plant species in the palm family, Arecaceae, cultivated for its edible sweet fruit called dates. The species is widely cultivated across northern Africa, the Middle Ea ...

s, and California Fan Palms are common in the Los Angeles area, although only the last is native to California, though still not native to the City of Los Angeles.

Geology

Los Angeles is subject to earthquakes because of its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire. The geologic instability has produced numerous faults, which cause approximately 10,000 earthquakes annually in Southern California, though most of them are too small to be felt. The

strike-slip In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tecton ...

San Andreas Fault The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizontal) ...

system, which sits at the boundary between the

Pacific Plate The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At , it is the largest tectonic plate. The plate first came into existence 190 million years ago, at the triple junction between the Farallon, Phoenix, and I ...

and the

North American Plate The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of , it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacifi ...

, passes through the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The segment of the fault passing through Southern California experiences a major earthquake roughly every 110 to 140 years, and seismologists have warned about the next "big one", as the last major earthquake was the

1857 Fort Tejon earthquake The 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake occurred at about 8:20 a.m. ( Pacific time) on January 9 in central and Southern California. One of the largest recorded earthquakes in the United States, with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9, it ruptur ...

. The Los Angeles basin and metropolitan area are also at risk from

blind thrust earthquake A blind thrust earthquake occurs along a thrust fault that does not show signs on the Earth's surface, hence the designation "blind". Such faults, being invisible at the surface, have not been mapped by standard surface geological mapping. Someti ...

s. Major earthquakes that have hit the Los Angeles area include the 1933 Long Beach, 1971 San Fernando, 1987 Whittier Narrows, and the 1994 Northridge events. All but a few are of low intensity and are not felt. The USGS has released the UCERF California earthquake forecast, which models earthquake occurrence in California. Parts of the city are also vulnerable to

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater exp ...

s; harbor areas were damaged by waves from Aleutian Islands earthquake in 1946, Valdivia earthquake in 1960, Alaska earthquake in 1964, Chile earthquake in 2010 and Japan earthquake in 2011.

Cityscape

The city is divided into many different districts and neighborhoods, some of which were incorporated cities that have merged with Los Angeles. These neighborhoods were developed piecemeal, and are well-defined enough that the city has signage which marks nearly all of them.

Overview

The city's street patterns generally follow a

grid plan In urban planning, the grid plan, grid street plan, or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid. Two inherent characteristics of the grid plan, frequent intersections and orthogo ...

, with uniform block lengths and occasional roads that cut across blocks. However, this is complicated by rugged terrain, which has necessitated having different grids for each of the valleys that Los Angeles covers. Major streets are designed to move large volumes of traffic through many parts of the city, many of which are extremely long; Sepulveda Boulevard is long, while Foothill Boulevard is over long, reaching as far east as San Bernardino. Drivers in Los Angeles suffer from one of the worst rush hour periods in the world, according to an annual traffic index by navigation system maker, TomTom. LA drivers spend an additional 92 hours in traffic each year. During the peak rush hour, there is 80% congestion, according to the index. Los Angeles is often characterized by the presence of

low-rise A low-rise is a building that is only a few stories tall or any building that is shorter than a high-rise, though others include the classification of mid-rise. Definition Emporis defines a low-rise as "an enclosed structure below 35 metres 15 ...

buildings, in contrast to New York City. Outside of a few centers such as

, Warner Center,

Century City Century City is a 176-acre (71.2 ha) neighborhood and business district in Los Angeles, California. Located on the Westside to the south of Santa Monica Boulevard around 10 miles (16 km) west of Downtown Los Angeles, Century City is one o ...

, Koreatown, Miracle Mile, Hollywood, and Westwood, skyscrapers and high-rise buildings are not common in Los Angeles. The few skyscrapers built outside of those areas often stand out above the rest of the surrounding landscape. Most construction is done in separate units, rather than

wall-to-wall Fitted carpet, also wall-to-wall carpet, is a carpet intended to cover a floor entirely. Carpet over 4 meters in length is usually installed with the use of a power-stretcher (tubed or tubeless). Fitted carpets were originally woven to the dimen ...

. That being said Downtown Los Angeles itself has many buildings over 30 stories, with fourteen over 50 stories, and two over 70 stories, the tallest of which is the Wilshire Grand Center. Also Los Angeles is increasingly becoming a city of apartments rather than single-family dwellings, especially in the dense inner city and Westside neighborhoods.

Climate

Los Angeles has a two-season Mediterranean climate of dry summer and very mild winter ( Köppen ''Csb'' on the coast and most of downtown, ''Csa'' near the metropolitan region to the west), and receives just enough annual precipitation to avoid being classified as a

semi-arid climate A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi- ...

(''BSh)''. Daytime temperatures are generally temperate all year round. In winter, they average around giving it a tropical feel although it is a few degrees too cool to be a true tropical climate on average due to cool night temperatures. Los Angeles has plenty of sunshine throughout the year, with an average of only 35 days with measurable precipitation annually. Temperatures in the coastal basin exceed on a dozen or so days in the year, from one day a month in April, May, June and November to three days a month in July, August, October and to five days in September. Temperatures in the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys are considerably warmer. Temperatures are subject to substantial daily swings; in inland areas the difference between the average daily low and the average daily high is over . The average annual temperature of the sea is , from in January to in August. Hours of sunshine total more than 3,000 per year, from an average of 7 hours of sunshine per day in December to an average of 12 in July. Griffith Observatory entrance lawn with Hollywood sign

Griffith Observatory entrance lawn with Hollywood sign

The Los Angeles area is also subject to phenomena typical of a

microclimate A microclimate (or micro-climate) is a local set of atmospheric conditions that differ from those in the surrounding areas, often with a slight difference but sometimes with a substantial one. The term may refer to areas as small as a few squa ...

, causing extreme variations in temperature in close physical proximity to each other. For example, the average July maximum temperature at the Santa Monica Pier is whereas it is in Canoga Park, away. The city, like much of the Southern Californian coast, is subject to a late spring/early summer weather phenomenon called " June Gloom". This involves overcast or foggy skies in the morning that yield to sun by early afternoon. More recently, statewide

have further strained the city's

. Downtown Los Angeles averages of precipitation annually, mainly occurring between November and March, generally in the form of moderate rain showers, but sometimes as heavy rainfall during winter storms. Rainfall is usually higher in the hills and coastal slopes of the mountains because of

orographic Orography is the study of the topographic relief of mountains, and can more broadly include hills, and any part of a region's elevated terrain. Orography (also known as ''oreography'', ''orology'' or ''oreology'') falls within the broader discip ...

uplift. Summer days are usually rainless. Rarely, an incursion of moist air from the south or east can bring brief thunderstorms in late summer, especially to the mountains. The coast gets slightly less rainfall, while the inland and mountain areas get considerably more. Years of average rainfall are rare. The usual pattern is a year-to-year variability, with a short string of dry years of rainfall, followed by one or two wet years with more than . Wet years are usually associated with warm water

El Niño El Niño (; ; ) is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific (approximately between the International Date ...

conditions in the Pacific, dry years with cooler water

La Niña La Niña (; ) is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern. The name ''La Niña'' originates from Spanish for "the girl", by ...

episodes. A series of rainy days can bring floods to the lowlands and mudslides to the hills, especially after

wildfire A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identi ...

s have denuded the slopes. Both freezing temperatures and snowfall are extremely rare in the city basin and along the coast, with the last occurrence of a reading at the downtown station being January 29, 1979; freezing temperatures occur nearly every year in valley locations while the mountains within city limits typically receive snowfall every winter. The greatest snowfall recorded in downtown Los Angeles was on January 15, 1932. While the most recent snowfall occurred in February 2019, the first snowfall since 1962, with snow falling in areas adjacent to Los Angeles as recently as January 2021. At the official downtown station, the highest recorded temperature is on September 27, 2010, while the lowest is , on January 4, 1949. Within the City of Los Angeles, the highest temperature ever officially recorded is , on September 6, 2020, at the weather station at Pierce College in the

neighborhood of Woodland Hills. During autumn and winter, Santa Ana winds sometimes bring much warmer and drier conditions to Los Angeles, and raise wildfire risk.

Environmental issues

A Gabrielino settlement in the area was called ''iyáangẚ'' (written ''Yang-na'' by the Spanish), which has been translated as "poison oak place". ''Yang-na'' has also been translated as "the valley of smoke". Owing to geography, heavy reliance on automobiles, and the Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex, Los Angeles suffers from air pollution in the form of smog. The

Los Angeles Basin The Los Angeles Basin is a sedimentary basin located in Southern California, in a region known as the Peninsular Ranges. The basin is also connected to an anomalous group of east-west trending chains of mountains collectively known as the T ...

and the

are susceptible to atmospheric inversion, which holds in the exhausts from road vehicles, airplanes, locomotives, shipping, manufacturing, and other sources. The percentage of small particle pollution (the kind that penetrates into the lungs) coming from vehicles in the city can get as high as 55 percent. The smog season lasts from approximately May to October. While other large cities rely on rain to clear smog, Los Angeles gets only of rain each year: pollution accumulates over many consecutive days. Issues of air quality in Los Angeles and other major cities led to the passage of early national environmental legislation, including the Clean Air Act. When the act was passed, California was unable to create a State Implementation Plan that would enable it to meet the new air quality standards, largely because of the level of pollution in Los Angeles generated by older vehicles. More recently, the state of California has led the nation in working to limit pollution by mandating low-emission vehicles. Smog is expected to continue to drop in the coming years because of aggressive steps to reduce it, which include electric and hybrid cars, improvements in mass transit, and other measures. The number of Stage 1 smog alerts in Los Angeles has declined from over 100 per year in the 1970s to almost zero in the new millennium. Despite improvement, the 2006 and 2007 annual reports of the American Lung Association ranked the city as the most polluted in the country with short-term particle pollution and year-round particle pollution. In 2008, the city was ranked the second most polluted and again had the highest year-round particulate pollution. The city met its goal of providing 20 percent of the city's power from renewable sources in 2010. The American Lung Association's 2013 survey ranks the metro area as having the nation's worst smog, and fourth in both short-term and year-round pollution amounts. Los Angeles is also home to the nation's largest urban oil field. There are more than 700 active oil wells within of homes, churches, schools and hospitals in the city, a situation about which the

EPA The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it be ...

has voiced serious concerns. The city has an urban

population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using ...

bobcats The bobcat (''Lynx rufus''), also known as the red lynx, is a medium-sized cat native to North America. It ranges from southern Canada through most of the contiguous United States to Oaxaca in Mexico. It is listed as Least Concern on the IU ...

(''Lynx rufus''). Mange is a common problem in this population. Although Serieys ''et al.'' 2014 find

selection Selection may refer to: Science * Selection (biology), also called natural selection, selection in evolution ** Sex selection, in genetics ** Mate selection, in mating ** Sexual selection in humans, in human sexuality ** Human mating strat ...

immune In biology, immunity is the capability of multicellular organisms to resist harmful microorganisms. Immunity involves both specific and nonspecific components. The nonspecific components act as barriers or eliminators of a wide range of pathogens ...

genetics at several

loci Locus (plural loci) is Latin for "place". It may refer to: Entertainment * Locus (comics), a Marvel Comics mutant villainess, a member of the Mutant Liberation Front * ''Locus'' (magazine), science fiction and fantasy magazine ** '' Locus Award ...

they do not demonstrate that this produces a real difference which helps the bobcats to survive future mange outbreaks.

Demographics

The

2010 U.S. census The United States census of 2010 was the twenty-third United States national census. National Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2010. The census was taken via mail-in citizen self-reporting, with enumerators servin ...

reported Los Angeles had a population of 3,792,621. The population density was 8,092.3 people per square mile (2,913.0/km²). The age distribution was 874,525 people (23.1%) under 18, 434,478 people (11.5%) from 18 to 24, 1,209,367 people (31.9%) from 25 to 44, 877,555 people (23.1%) from 45 to 64, and 396,696 people (10.5%) who were 65 or older. The median age was 34.1 years. For every 100 females, there were 99.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 97.6 males. There were 1,413,995 housing units—up from 1,298,350 during 2005–2009—at an average density of 2,812.8 households per square mile (1,086.0/km²), of which 503,863 (38.2%) were owner-occupied, and 814,305 (61.8%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 2.1%; the rental vacancy rate was 6.1%. 1,535,444 people (40.5% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 2,172,576 people (57.3%) lived in rental housing units. Distribution of high income households across LA County

Distribution of high income households across LA County

According to the 2010 United States Census, Los Angeles had a median household income of $49,497, with 22.0% of the population living below the federal poverty line.

Race and ethnicity

According to the 2010 census, the racial makeup of Los Angeles included: 1,888,158

Whites White is a racialized classification of people and a skin color specifier, generally used for people of European origin, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, and point of view. Description of populations as ...

(49.8%), 365,118 African Americans (9.6%), 28,215 Native Americans (0.7%), 426,959

Asians Asian people (or Asians, sometimes referred to as Asiatic people)United States National Library of Medicine. Medical Subject Headings. 2004. November 17, 200Nlm.nih.gov: ''Asian Continental Ancestry Group'' is also used for categorical purpos ...

(11.3%), 5,577

Pacific Islanders Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/ racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of Oce ...

(0.1%), 902,959 from other races (23.8%), and 175,635 (4.6%) from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race were 1,838,822 persons (48.5%). Los Angeles is home to people from more than 140 countries speaking 224 different identified languages.

Ethnic enclave In sociology, an ethnic enclave is a geographic area with high ethnic concentration, characteristic cultural identity, and economic activity. The term is usually used to refer to either a residential area or a workspace with a high concentration ...

s like Chinatown, Historic Filipinotown, Koreatown, Little Armenia,

Little Ethiopia Little Ethiopia may refer to: * Little Ethiopia, Los Angeles Little Ethiopia is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles. It is known for its collection of Ethiopian restaurants, coffee shops, boutiques and thrift stores. History ...

Tehrangeles Tehrangeles ( fa, تهرانجلس) (or Little Persia) is a portmanteau deriving from the combination of ''Tehran'', the capital of Iran, and ''Los Angeles''. A Persian community developed in Westwood, Los Angeles after the Islamic Revolution o ...

Little Tokyo Little Tokyo ( ja, リトル・トーキョー) also known as Little Tokyo Historic District, is an ethnically Japanese American district in downtown Los Angeles and the heart of the largest Japanese-American population in North America. It is t ...

Little Bangladesh Little Bangladesh may refer to: * Little Bangladesh, Los Angeles * Banglatown, Detroit * Brick Lane, London, also known as Banglatown See also * Curry Row "Curry Row," or "Little India," and sometimes called Curry Lane, is an area of East Sixth ...

, and Thai Town provide examples of the polyglot character of Los Angeles.

Non-Hispanic Whites Non-Hispanic whites or Non-Latino whites are Americans who are classified as "white", and are not of Hispanic (also known as "Latino") heritage. The United States Census Bureau defines ''white'' to include European Americans, Middle Eastern Am ...

were 28.7% of the population in 2010, compared to 86.3% in 1940. The majority of the Non-Hispanic White population is living in areas along the Pacific coast as well as in neighborhoods near and on the Santa Monica Mountains from the Pacific Palisades to Los Feliz. Mexican ancestry make up the largest ethnic group of Hispanics at 31.9% of the city's population, followed by those of

Salvadoran Salvadorans ( Spanish: ''Salvadoreños''), also known as Salvadorians (alternate spelling: Salvadoreans), are citizens of El Salvador, a country in Central America. Most Salvadorans live in El Salvador, although there is also a significant Salvad ...

(6.0%) and Guatemalan (3.6%) heritage. The Hispanic population has a long established Mexican-American and Central American community and is spread well-nigh throughout the entire city of Los Angeles and its metropolitan area. It is most heavily concentrated in regions around Downtown as

East Los Angeles East Los Angeles ( es, Este de Los Ángeles), or East L.A., is an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2020 census it had a population of 118,786, a drop of 6.1% from 2010, when it was 126,496. For statistical purpo ...

, Northeast Los Angeles and

Westlake Westlake may refer to: Places Australia * Westlake, Canberra, a ghost town suburb of Canberra * Westlake, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane New Zealand * Westlake, New Zealand, a suburb of Auckland ** Westlake Girls High School ** Westlake Boys ...

. Furthermore, a vast majority of residents in neighborhoods in eastern

South Los Angeles South Los Angeles, also known as South Central Los Angeles or simply South Central, is a region in southwestern Los Angeles County, lying mostly within the city limits of Los Angeles, south of downtown. It is "defined on Los Angeles city maps as ...

towards Downey are of Hispanic origin. The largest Asian ethnic groups are

Filipinos Filipinos ( tl, Mga Pilipino) are the people who are citizens of or native to the Philippines. The majority of Filipinos today come from various Austronesian ethnolinguistic groups, all typically speaking either Filipino, English and/or oth ...

(3.2%) and

Koreans Koreans ( South Korean: , , North Korean: , ; see names of Korea) are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Korean Peninsula. Koreans mainly live in the two Korean nation states: North Korea and South Korea (collectively and simply re ...

(2.9%), which have their own established ethnic enclaves— Koreatown in the Wilshire Center and Historic Filipinotown. Chinese people, which make up 1.8% of Los Angeles's population, reside mostly outside of Los Angeles city limits and rather in the

of eastern Los Angeles County, but make a sizable presence in the city, notably in Chinatown. Chinatown and

Thaitown Thai Town could refer to: * Thai Town, Los Angeles * Thai Town, Sydney Thai Town ( th, ไทยทาวน์ซิดนีย์) is a neighbourhood in Sydney with a high concentration of Thailand, Thai retail outlets. It is located in Hay ...

are also home to many Thais and Cambodians, which make up 0.3% and 0.1% of Los Angeles's population, respectively. The Japanese comprise 0.9% of LA's population and have an established

in the city's downtown, and another significant community of Japanese Americans is in the Sawtelle district of West Los Angeles. Vietnamese make up 0.5% of Los Angeles's population.

Indians Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

make up 0.9% of the city's population. The city is also home to

Armenians Armenians ( hy, հայեր, '' hayer'' ) are an ethnic group native to the Armenian highlands of Western Asia. Armenians constitute the main population of Armenia and the ''de facto'' independent Artsakh. There is a wide-ranging diaspora ...

Assyrians Assyrian may refer to: * Assyrian people, the indigenous ethnic group of Mesopotamia. * Assyria, a major Mesopotamian kingdom and empire. ** Early Assyrian Period ** Old Assyrian Period ** Middle Assyrian Empire ** Neo-Assyrian Empire * Assyrian ...

, and Iranians, many of whom live in enclaves like Little Armenia and

. African Americans have been the predominant ethnic group in

, which has emerged as the largest African American community in the western United States since the 1960s. The neighborhoods of South Los Angeles with highest concentration of African Americans include Crenshaw,

, Leimert Park, Hyde Park,

Gramercy Park Gramercy ParkSometimes misspelled as Grammercy () is the name of both a small, fenced-in private park and the surrounding neighborhood that is referred to also as Gramercy, in the New York City borough of Manhattan in New York, United States. ...

, Manchester Square and Watts. Apart from South Los Angeles, neighborhoods in the Central region of Los Angeles, as Mid-City and

Mid-Wilshire Mid-Wilshire is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. It is known for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Petersen Automotive Museum, and the Miracle Mile shopping district. Geography City of Los Angeles boun ...

have a moderate concentration of African Americans as well. Los Angeles has the second largest Mexican, Armenian, Salvadoran, Filipino and Guatemalan population by city in the world, the third largest Canadian population in the world, and has the largest Japanese, Iranian/Persian, Cambodian and Romani (Gypsy) population in the country. There is an Italian community in Los Angeles. Italians are concentrated in San Pedro.

Religion

According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, Christianity is the most prevalently practiced religion in Los Angeles (65%).Major U.S. metropolitan areas differ in their religious profiles
Pew Research Center The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles is the largest

archdiocese In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associate ...

in the country. Cardinal Roger Mahony, as the archbishop, oversaw construction of the

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels ( es, Catedral de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles), informally known as COLA or the Los Angeles Cathedral, is a cathedral of the Roman Catholic Church in Los Angeles, California, United States. It opened in 2 ...

, which opened in September 2002 in Downtown Los Angeles. In 2011, the once common, but ultimately lapsed, custom of conducting a procession and

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different element ...

in honor of Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles, in commemoration of the founding of the City of Los Angeles in 1781, was revived by the Queen of Angels Foundation and its founder Mark Albert, with the support of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles as well as several civic leaders. The recently revived custom is a continuation of the original processions and Masses that commenced on the first anniversary of the founding of Los Angeles in 1782 and continued for nearly a century thereafter. With 621,000

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

in the metropolitan area, the region has the second-largest population of Jews in the United States, after

. Many of Los Angeles's Jews now live on the Westside and in the

, though Boyle Heights once had a large Jewish population prior to World War II due to restrictive housing covenants. Major Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods include Hancock Park,

Pico-Robertson Pico-Robertson is a relatively densely-populated neighborhood in the Westside of Los Angeles, California, flanked on the north, northeast, and west by Beverly Hills, on the east by Carthay and Mid-City, on the south by Mid-City, Beverlywood and ...

, and Valley Village, while Jewish Israelis are well represented in the Encino and Tarzana neighborhoods, and

Persian Jews Persian Jews or Iranian Jews ( fa, یهودیان ایرانی, ''yahudiān-e-Irāni''; he, יהודים פרסים ''Yəhūdīm Parsīm'') are the descendants of Jews who were historically associated with the Persian Empire, whose successor s ...

Beverly Hills Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California. A notable and historic suburb of Greater Los Angeles, it is in a wealthy area immediately southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. ...

. Many varieties of Judaism are represented in the greater Los Angeles area, including

Reform Reform ( lat, reformo) means the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The use of the word in this way emerges in the late 18th century and is believed to originate from Christopher Wyvill's Association movement ...

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...

, Orthodox, and Reconstructionist. The Breed Street Shul in

, built in 1923, was the largest synagogue west of Chicago in its early decades; it is no longer in daily use as a synagogue and is being converted to a museum and community center. The Kabbalah Centre also has a presence in the city. The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel was founded in Los Angeles by

Aimee Semple McPherson Aimee Elizabeth Semple McPherson (née Kennedy; October 9, 1890 – September 27, 1944), also known as Sister Aimee or Sister, was a Canadian Pentecostal evangelist and media celebrity in the 1920s and 1930s,Obituary '' Variety'', Octobe ...

in 1923 and remains headquartered there to this day. For many years, the church convened at Angelus Temple, which, at its construction, was one of the largest churches in the country. Los Angeles has had a rich and influential Protestant tradition. The first Protestant service in Los Angeles was a Methodist meeting held in a private home in 1850 and the oldest Protestant church still operating, First Congregational Church, was founded in 1867. In the early 1900s the Bible Institute Of Los Angeles published the founding documents of the Christian Fundamentalist movement and the

Azusa Street Revival The Azusa Street Revival was a historic series of revival meetings that took place in Los Angeles, California. It was led by William J. Seymour, an African-American preacher. The revival began on April 9, 1906, and continued until roughly 1915. ...

launched

Pentecostalism Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a Protestantism, Protestant Charismatic Christianity, Charismatic Christian movement The Metropolitan Community Church also had its origins in the Los Angeles area. Important churches in the city include First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood,

Bel Air Presbyterian Church Bel Air Church (also known as Bel Air Presbyterian Church) is a Presbyterian Church (USA), Presbyterian church located in Los Angeles, California. Its campus is located on Mulholland Drive in the Encino, Los Angeles, California, Encino neighborho ...

First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles The First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles (First A.M.E. or FAME) is a megachurch in Los Angeles, California, United States, part of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. It is the oldest church founded by African America ...

, West Angeles Church of God in Christ, Second Baptist Church, Crenshaw Christian Center, McCarty Memorial Christian Church, and First Congregational Church. The Los Angeles California Temple, the second-largest

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called church (building), churches), Hindui ...

operated by

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The ...

, is on

Santa Monica Boulevard Santa Monica Boulevard is a major west–east thoroughfare in Los Angeles County. It runs from Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica near the Pacific Ocean to Sunset Boulevard at Sunset Junction in Los Angeles. It passes through Beverly Hills and Wes ...

in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Dedicated in 1956, it was the first

built in California and it was the largest in the world when completed. The Hollywood region of Los Angeles also has several significant headquarters, churches, and the Celebrity Center of

Scientology Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious movement. The most recent published census data i ...

. Because of Los Angeles's large multi-ethnic population, a wide variety of faiths are practiced, including

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

Hinduism Hinduism () is an Indian religion or ''dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global po ...

, Islam,

Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheistic ont ...

Sikhism Sikhism (), also known as Sikhi ( pa, ਸਿੱਖੀ ', , from pa, ਸਿੱਖ, lit=disciple', 'seeker', or 'learner, translit= Sikh, label=none),''Sikhism'' (commonly known as ''Sikhī'') originated from the word ''Sikh'', which comes fr ...

, Baháʼí, various

Eastern Orthodox Church The Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptized members. It operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops vi ...

es,

Sufism Sufism ( ar, ''aṣ-ṣūfiyya''), also known as Tasawwuf ( ''at-taṣawwuf''), is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, ...

Shinto Shinto () is a religion from Japan. Classified as an East Asian religion by scholars of religion, its practitioners often regard it as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Scholars sometimes call its practitioners ''Shintoist ...

ism,

Taoism Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Ta ...

Confucianism Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or ...

Chinese folk religion Chinese folk religion, also known as Chinese popular religion comprehends a range of traditional religious practices of Han Chinese, including the Chinese diaspora. Vivienne Wee described it as "an empty bowl, which can variously be fill ...

and countless others. Immigrants from Asia for example, have formed a number of significant

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

congregations making the city home to the greatest variety of Buddhists in the world. The first Buddhist joss house was founded in the city in 1875.

Atheism Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

and other secular beliefs are also common, as the city is the largest in the Western U.S. Unchurched Belt.

Homelessness

Homeless people, Los Angeles, California

As of January 2020, there are 41,290 homeless people in the City of Los Angeles, comprising roughly 62% of the homeless population of LA County. This is an increase of 14.2% over the previous year (with a 12.7% increase in the overall homeless population of LA County). The epicenter of homelessness in Los Angeles is the

Skid Row A skid row or skid road is an impoverished area, typically urban, in English-speaking North America whose inhabitants are mostly poor people "on the skids". This specifically refers to poor or homeless, considered disreputable, downtrodden or fo ...

neighborhood, which contains 8,000 homeless people, one of the largest stable populations of homeless people in the United States. The increased homeless population in Los Angeles has been attributed to lack of housing affordability and to substance abuse. Almost 60 percent of the 82,955 people who became newly homeless in 2019 said their homelessness was because of economic hardship. In Los Angeles, black people are roughly four times more likely to experience homelessness.

Crime

In 1992, the city of Los Angeles recorded 1,092 murders. Los Angeles experienced a significant decline in crime in the 1990s and late 2000s and reached a 50-year low in 2009 with 314 homicides. This is a rate of 7.85 per 100,000 population—a major decrease from 1980 when a homicide rate of 34.2 per 100,000 was reported. This included 15 officer-involved shootings. One shooting led to the death of a

SWAT In the United States, a SWAT team (special weapons and tactics, originally special weapons assault team) is a police tactical unit that uses specialized or military equipment and tactics. Although they were first created in the 1960s to ...

team member, Randal Simmons, the first in LAPD's history. Los Angeles in the year of 2013 totaled 251 murders, a decrease of 16 percent from the previous year. Police speculate the drop resulted from a number of factors, including young people spending more time online. In 2021, murders rose to the highest level since 2008 and there were 348. In 2015, it was revealed that the LAPD had been under-reporting crime for eight years, making the crime rate in the city appear much lower than it really is. The

Dragna crime family The Los Angeles crime family, also known as the L.A. Mafia or the Southern California crime family, is an Italian-American organized crime, organized crime syndicate based in Los Angeles as part of the larger Italian-American Mafia. Since its ince ...

and the Cohen crime family dominated organized crime in the city during the

Prohibition era Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic be ...

and reached its peak during the 1940s and 1950s with the battle of Sunset Strip as part of the American Mafia, but has gradually declined since then with the rise of various black and

Hispanic The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to viceroyalties for ...

gangs in the late 1960s and early 1970s. According to the

, the city is home to 45,000 gang members, organized into 450 gangs. Among them are the

Crips The Crips is an alliance of street gangs that is based in the Coastal California, coastal regions of Southern California. Founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1969, mainly by Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams, the Crips were initially ...

and

Bloods The Bloods are a primarily African-American street gang founded in Los Angeles, California. The gang is widely known for its rivalry with the Crips. It is identified by the red color worn by its members and by particular gang symbols, inclu ...

, which are both African American street gangs that originated in the

region. Latino street gangs such as the Sureños, a Mexican American street gang, and

Mara Salvatrucha Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. Originally, the gang was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Ange ...

, which has mainly members of

descent, all originated in Los Angeles. This has led to the city being referred to as the "Gang Capital of America".

Economy

The economy of Los Angeles is driven by international trade, entertainment (television, motion pictures, video games, music recording, and production), aerospace, technology, petroleum, fashion, apparel, and tourism. Other significant industries include finance, telecommunications, law, healthcare, and transportation. In the 2017

Global Financial Centres Index The Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) is a ranking of the competitiveness of financial centres based on over 29,000 financial centre assessments from an online questionnaire together with over 100 indices from organisations such as the World ...

, Los Angeles was ranked as having the 19th most competitive financial center in the world, and sixth most competitive in the United States (after

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

, and Washington, D.C.). One of the five

major film studio Major film studios are production and distribution companies that release a substantial number of films annually and consistently command a significant share of box office revenue in a given market. In the American and international markets, t ...

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...

, is within the city limits, its location being part of the so-called " Thirty-Mile Zone" of entertainment headquarters in Southern California. Los Angeles is the largest manufacturing center in the United States. The contiguous ports of Los Angeles and

together comprise the busiest port in the United States by some measures and the fifth-busiest port in the world, vital to trade within the

Pacific Rim The Pacific Rim comprises the lands around the rim of the Pacific Ocean. The '' Pacific Basin'' includes the Pacific Rim and the islands in the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Rim roughly overlaps with the geologic Pacific Ring of Fire. List of ...

. The

Los Angeles metropolitan area Greater Los Angeles is the second-largest urban area, metropolitan region in the United States with a population of 18.5 million in 2021, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Ber ...

has a

of over $1.0 trillion (), making it the third-largest economic metropolitan area in the world after

and

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. Los Angeles has been classified an " alpha world city" according to a 2012 study by a group at

Loughborough University Loughborough University (abbreviated as ''Lough'' or ''Lboro'' for post-nominals) is a public research university in the market town of Loughborough, Leicestershire, England. It has been a university since 1966, but it dates back to 1909, whe ...

. The Department of Cannabis Regulation enforces cannabis legislation after the legalization of the sale and distribution of

cannabis ''Cannabis'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cannabaceae. The number of species within the genus is disputed. Three species may be recognized: '' Cannabis sativa'', '' C. indica'', and '' C. ruderalis''. Alternativel ...

in 2016. , more than 300 existing cannabis businesses (both retailers and their suppliers) have been granted approval to operate in what is considered the nation's largest market. , Los Angeles is home to three

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by '' Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...

companies:

AECOM AECOM (, ; formerly AECOM Technology Corporation) is an American multinational infrastructure consulting firm. AECOM has approximately 51,000 employees, and is number 157 on the 2019 Fortune 500 list. The company's official name from 1990 ...

, CBRE Group, and Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. Other companies headquartered in Los Angeles and the surrounding metropolitan area include

The Aerospace Corporation The Aerospace Corporation is an American nonprofit corporation that operates a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in El Segundo, California. The corporation provides technical guidance and advice on all aspects of space mi ...

, California Pizza Kitchen, Capital Group Companies, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, Dine Brands Global, DreamWorks Animation,

Dollar Shave Club Dollar Shave Club is an American company based in Venice, California, that delivers razors and other personal grooming products to customers by mail. It delivers razor blades on a monthly basis and offers additional grooming products for home ...

Fandango Media Fandango Media, LLC is an American ticketing company that sells movie tickets via their website as well as through their mobile app, as well as a provider of television and streaming media information through its subsidiary Rotten Tomatoes. ...

Farmers Insurance Group Farmers Insurance Group (informally Farmers) is an American insurer group of vehicles, homes and small businesses and also provides other insurance and financial services products. Farmers Insurance has more than 48,000 exclusive and independen ...

Forever 21 Forever 21 is a multinational fast fashion retailer headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. Originally founded as the store Fashion 21 in Highland Park, Los Angeles in 1984,Forever 21History & Facts, n.d. Retrieved 27 April 2014 ...

Hulu Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television seri ...

, Panda Express,

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

Ubisoft Film & Television Ubisoft Film & Television (formerly known as Ubisoft Motion Pictures) is a French-American film and television production company and a subsidiary of video game publisher Ubisoft based in Montreuil and Los Angeles. The company was founded on 27 ...

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Disney Stud ...

Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Americ ...

, Warner Bros.,

Warner Music Group Warner Music Group Corp. (trade name, d.b.a. Warner Music Group, commonly abbreviated as WMG) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational entertainment and record label Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in New York C ...

, and

Trader Joe's Trader Joe's is an American chain of grocery stores headquartered in Monrovia, California. The chain has over 569 stores across the United States. The first Trader Joe's store was opened in 1967 by founder Joe Coulombe in Pasadena, Californi ...

Arts and culture

Los Angeles is often billed as the "Creative Capital of the World" because one in every six of its residents works in a creative industry and there are more artists, writers, filmmakers, actors, dancers and musicians living and working in Los Angeles than any other city at any other time.

Movies and the performing arts

The city's Hollywood neighborhood has been recognized as the center of the motion picture industry, having held this distinction since the early 20th century, and the Los Angeles area is also associated with being the center of the television industry. The city is home to major film studios as well as major record labels. Los Angeles plays host to the annual

Academy Awards The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

, the

Primetime Emmy Awards The Primetime Emmy Awards, or Primetime Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), the Primetime ...

, the

Grammy Awards The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pres ...

as well as many other entertainment industry awards shows. Los Angeles is the site of the

USC School of Cinematic Arts The University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) houses seven academic divisions: Film & Television Production; Cinema & Media Studies; John C. Hench Division of Animation + Digital Arts; John Wells Division of Writing for Sc ...

which is the oldest film school in the United States.

The performing arts play a major role in Los Angeles's cultural identity. According to the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation, "there are more than 1,100 annual theatrical productions and 21 openings every week." The

Los Angeles Music Center The Music Center (officially named the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County) is one of the largest performing arts centers in the United States. Located in downtown Los Angeles, The Music Center is composed of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion ...

is "one of the three largest performing arts centers in the nation", with more than 1.3 million visitors per year. The

Walt Disney Concert Hall The Walt Disney Concert Hall at 111 South Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, California, is the fourth hall of the Los Angeles Music Center and was designed by Frank Gehry. It was opened on October 24, 2003. Bounded by Hope Street, Grand A ...

, centerpiece of the Music Center, is home to the prestigious

Los Angeles Philharmonic The Los Angeles Philharmonic, commonly referred to as the LA Phil, is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at th ...

. Notable organizations such as Center Theatre Group, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and the

Los Angeles Opera The Los Angeles Opera is an American opera company in Los Angeles, California. It is the fourth-largest opera company in the United States. The company's home base is the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, part of the Los Angeles Music Center. Leadersh ...

are also resident companies of the Music Center. Talent is locally cultivated at premier institutions such as the

Colburn School The Colburn School is a private music school in Los Angeles with a focus on music and dance. It consists of four divisions: the Conservatory of Music, Music Academy, Community School of Performing Arts and the Dance Academy. It is located adjac ...

and the USC Thornton School of Music.

Museums and galleries

There are 841 museums and art galleries in

, more museums per capita than any other city in the U.S. Some of the notable museums are the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 196 ...

(the largest art museum in the Western United States), the

Getty Center The Getty Center, in Los Angeles, California, is a campus of the Getty Museum and other programs of the Getty Trust. The $1.3 billion center opened to the public on December 16, 1997 and is well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overl ...

(part of the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world's wealthiest art institution), the Petersen Automotive Museum, the Huntington Library, the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more ...

, the Battleship Iowa, and the

Museum of Contemporary Art Museum of Contemporary Art (often abbreviated to MCA, MoCA or MOCA) may refer to: Africa * Museum of Contemporary Art (Tangier), Morocco, officially le Galerie d'Art Contemporain Mohamed Drissi Asia East Asia * Museum of Contemporary Art Shangha ...

. A significant number of art galleries are on Gallery Row, and tens of thousands attend the monthly Downtown Art Walk there.

Libraries

The

Los Angeles Public Library The Los Angeles Public Library system (LAPL) is a public library system in Los Angeles, California. The system holds more than six million volumes, and with around 19 million residents in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, it serves the larg ...

system operates 72 public libraries in the city. Enclaves of unincorporated areas are served by branches of the County of Los Angeles Public Library, many of which are within walking distance to residents.

Landmarks

Important landmarks in Los Angeles include the

Hollywood Sign The Hollywood Sign is an American landmark and cultural icon overlooking Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Originally the Hollywoodland Sign, it is situated on Mount Lee, in the Beachwood Canyon area of the Santa Monica Mountains. Spellin ...

, Capitol Records Building, the

, Angels Flight, Grauman's Chinese Theatre,

Dolby Theatre The Dolby Theatre (formerly known as the Kodak Theatre) is a live-performance auditorium in the Ovation Hollywood shopping mall and entertainment complex, on Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. ...

Griffith Observatory Griffith Observatory is an observatory in Los Angeles, California on the south-facing slope of Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park. It commands a view of the Los Angeles Basin including Downtown Los Angeles to the southeast, Hollywood to the s ...

Getty Villa The Getty Villa is at the easterly end of the Malibu coast in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. One of two campuses of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Villa is an educational center and museum de ...

, Stahl House, the

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (also known as the L.A. Coliseum) is a multi-purpose stadium in the Exposition Park, Los Angeles, Exposition Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Conceived as a hallmark of civic pride, the Coliseum was ...

, L.A. Live, the

, the

Venice Canal Historic District The Venice Canal Historic District is embedded in the residential Venice suburb of Los Angeles, California. The historic district is noteworthy for possessing man-made wetland canals, built in 1905 by developer Abbot Kinney as part of his Veni ...

and boardwalk,

Theme Building The Theme Building is a structure at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), considered an architectural example of the Space Age design style. Influenced by " Populuxe" architecture, it is an example of the Mid-century modern design movement ...

Bradbury Building The Bradbury Building is an architectural landmark in downtown Los Angeles, California, United States. Built in 1893, the five-story office building is best known for its extraordinary skylit atrium of access walkways, stairs and elevators, and t ...

, U.S. Bank Tower, Wilshire Grand Center,

Hollywood Boulevard Hollywood Boulevard is a major east–west street in Los Angeles, California. It begins in the east at Sunset Boulevard in the Los Feliz district and proceeds to the west as a major thoroughfare through Little Armenia and Thai Town, Hollywo ...

Los Angeles City Hall Los Angeles City Hall, completed in 1928, is the center of the government of the city of Los Angeles, California, and houses the mayor's office and the meeting chambers and offices of the Los Angeles City Council. It is located in the Civic Cen ...

Hollywood Bowl The Hollywood Bowl is an amphitheatre in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It was named one of the 10 best live music venues in America by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine in 2018. The Hollywood Bowl is known for its disti ...

, battleship , Watts Towers,

Staples Center Crypto.com Arena is a multi-purpose indoor arena in Downtown Los Angeles. Adjacent to the L.A. Live development, it is located next to the Los Angeles Convention Center complex along Figueroa Street. The arena opened on October 17, 1999; it ...

Dodger Stadium Dodger Stadium is a baseball stadium in the Elysian Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It is the home stadium of Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers. Opened in 1962, it was constructed in less than three years at a cost of ...

, and Olvera Street.

Cuisine

Los Angeles's food culture is a fusion of global cuisine brought on by the city's rich immigrant history and population. Latin American immigrants, particularly Mexican immigrants, brought

taco A taco (, , ) is a traditional Mexican food consisting of a small hand-sized corn- or wheat-based tortilla topped with a filling. The tortilla is then folded around the filling and eaten by hand. A taco can be made with a variety of filli ...

s, burritos, quesadillas,

torta Torta is a culinary term that can, depending on the cuisine, refer to cakes, pies, flatbreads, sandwiches, or omelettes. Usually, it refers to: * cake or pie in South America, much of Europe, and southern Philippines * flatbread in Spain * ...

tamale A tamale, in Spanish tamal, is a traditional Mesoamerican dish made of masa, a dough made from nixtamalized corn, which is steamed in a corn husk or banana leaf. The wrapping can either be discarded prior to eating or used as a plate. Tam ...

s, and enchiladas served from food trucks and stands, taquerias, and

café A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café is an establishment that primarily serves coffee of various types, notably espresso, latte, and cappuccino. Some coffeehouses may serve cold drinks, such as iced coffee and iced tea, as well as other non-ca ...

s. Asian restaurants, many immigrant-owned, exist throughout the city with hotspots in Chinatown, Koreatown, and

. Los Angeles also carries an outsized offering of vegan, vegetarian, and plant-based options. As of 2022, the

Michelin Michelin (; ; full name: ) is a French multinational tyre manufacturing company based in Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes '' région'' of France. It is the second largest tyre manufacturer in the world behind Bridgestone and ...

Guide recognized 10 restaurants granting 2 restaurants two stars and eight restaurants one star.

Sports

USC vs University of Oregon November 2019

The city of Los Angeles and its metropolitan area are the home of eleven top-level professional sports teams, several of which play in neighboring communities but use Los Angeles in their name. These teams include the

Los Angeles Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Established in 1883 in the city of Brookly ...

and

Los Angeles Angels The Los Angeles Angels are an American professional baseball team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Angels compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) West division. Since 1966, the team ha ...

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL) ...

(MLB), the

Los Angeles Rams The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC Wes ...

and

Los Angeles Chargers The Los Angeles Chargers are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Chargers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) West division, and ...

of the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ma ...

(NFL), the Los Angeles Lakers and

Los Angeles Clippers The Los Angeles Clippers are an American professional basketball team based in Los Angeles. The Clippers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Pacific Division in the league's Western Conference. The Clipper ...

of the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball sports league, league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues i ...

(NBA), the

Los Angeles Kings The Los Angeles Kings are a professional ice hockey team based in Los Angeles. The team competes in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division in the Western Conference and was founded on June 5, 1967, after Jack Kent ...

and Anaheim Ducks of the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey sports league, league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranke ...

(NHL), the

Los Angeles Galaxy LA Galaxy, also known as the Los Angeles Galaxy, are an American professional soccer club based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Galaxy competes in Major League Soccer (MLS), as a member of the Western Conference. The club began pla ...

and Los Angeles FC of

Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Cana ...

(MLS), and the

Los Angeles Sparks The Los Angeles Sparks (LA Sparks) are an American professional basketball team based in Los Angeles. The Sparks compete in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) as a member club of the league's Western Conference. The team was foun ...

of the

Women's National Basketball Association The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is an American professional basketball league. It is composed of twelve teams, all based in the United States. The league was founded on April 22, 1996, as the women's counterpart to the Natio ...

(WNBA). Other notable sports teams include the

UCLA Bruins The UCLA Bruins are the athletic teams that represent the University of California, Los Angeles. The Bruin men's and women's teams participate in NCAA Division I as part of the Pac-12 Conference and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) ...

and the

USC Trojans The USC Trojans are the College athletics in the United States, intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Southern California (USC), located in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California. While the men's teams are nicknamed the ' ...

in the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athlete, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic sports, ...

(NCAA), both of which are Division I teams in the

Pac-12 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...

, but will soon be moved to the

Big Ten Conference The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conferen ...

Dodger Stadium field from upper deck 2015-10-04

Los Angeles is the second-largest city in the United States but hosted no NFL team between 1995 and 2015. At one time, the Los Angeles area hosted two NFL teams: the

Rams In engineering, RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability and safety)Raiders Raider(s) may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Paul Revere & the Raiders, an American rock band * "Raider", a track from the 1969 album ''Farewell Aldebaran'', by Judy Henske and Jerry Yester * "Raiders", a track from the 1987 album ''Young an ...

. Both left the city in 1995, with the Rams moving to St. Louis, and the Raiders moving back to their original home of

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

. After 21 seasons in St. Louis, on January 12, 2016, the NFL announced the Rams would be moving back to Los Angeles for the 2016 NFL season with its home games played at the

for four seasons. Prior to 1995, the Rams played their home games in the Coliseum from 1946 to 1979 which made them the first professional sports team to play in Los Angeles, and then moved to

Anaheim Stadium Angel Stadium of Anaheim is a baseball stadium located in Anaheim, California. Since its opening in 1966, it has served as the home ballpark of the Los Angeles Angels of Major League Baseball (MLB), and was also the home stadium to the Los Ange ...

from 1980 until 1994. The

San Diego Chargers The San Diego Chargers were a professional American football team that played in San Diego from 1961 until the end of the 2016 season, before relocating to Los Angeles, where the franchise had played its inaugural 1960 season. The team is now ...

announced on January 12, 2017, that they would also relocate back to Los Angeles (the first since its inaugural season in 1960) and become the

beginning in the 2017 NFL season and played at

Dignity Health Sports Park Dignity Health Sports Park is a multi-use sports complex located on the campus of California State University, Dominguez Hills in Carson, California. The complex consists of the 27,000-seat Dignity Health Sports Park soccer stadium, the Dign ...

Carson, California Carson is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, in the South Bay region of Los Angeles, located south of downtown Los Angeles and approximately away from Los Angeles International Airport. Incorporated on February 20, 1968, ...

for three seasons. The Rams and the Chargers would soon move to the newly built

SoFi Stadium SoFi Stadium () is a 70,240-seat sports and entertainment indoor stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, California, United States. SoFi occupies the former site of the Hollywood Park Racetrack, from Los Angeles International Airport ...

, located in nearby

Inglewood Inglewood may refer to: Places Australia *Inglewood, Queensland * Shire of Inglewood, Queensland, a former local government area *Inglewood, South Australia *Inglewood, Victoria * Inglewood, Western Australia Canada * Inglewood, Ontario *Inglewo ...

during the 2020 season. Crypto

Los Angeles boasts a number of sports venues, including

, the

, Banc of California Stadium and the Crypto.com Arena. The Forum,

, the Rose Bowl, Angel Stadium, and the

Honda Center The Honda Center (formerly known as the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim) is an indoor arena located in Anaheim, California. The arena is home to the Anaheim Ducks of the National Hockey League. Originally named the Anaheim Arena during construction, ...

are also in adjacent cities and cities in Los Angeles's metropolitan area. Los Angeles has twice hosted the Summer Olympic Games: in 1932 and in

1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast As ...

, and will host the games for a third time in

2028 Predicted and scheduled events * January 1 – Books, films, and other works published in 1932 will enter the public domain in the United States. * January 12 – Partial lunar eclipse. * January 26 – Small annular solar eclip ...

. Los Angeles will be the third city after London (

1908 Events January * January 1 – The British ''Nimrod'' Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton sets sail from New Zealand on the ''Nimrod'' for Antarctica. * January 3 – A total solar eclipse is visible in the Pacific Ocean, and is the 46 ...

1948 Events January * January 1 ** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated. ** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect. ** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British ...

and

2012 File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...

) and Paris (

1900 As of March 1 ( O.S. February 17), when the Julian calendar acknowledged a leap day and the Gregorian calendar did not, the Julian calendar fell one day further behind, bringing the difference to 13 days until February 28 ( O.S. February 15), ...

, 1924 and

2024 Predicted and scheduled events * January 1 ** In the United States, books, films, and other works published in 1928 will enter the public domain, assuming there are no changes made to copyright law. ***'' Steamboat Willie'', Walt Disney ...

) to host the Olympic Games three times. When the tenth Olympic Games were hosted in 1932, the former 10th Street was renamed Olympic Blvd. Los Angeles also hosted the

Deaflympics The Deaflympics also known as Deaflympiad (previously called World Games for the Deaf, and International Games for the Deaf) are a periodic series of multi-sport events sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) at which Deaf athl ...

1985 The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** The Internet's Domain Name System is created. ** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a ...

and Special Olympics World Summer Games in

2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...

. 8

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...

Super Bowls were also held in the city and its surrounding areas- 2 at the Memorial Coliseum ( the first Super Bowl, I and VII), 5 at the Rose Bowl in suburban

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. Its ...

( XI, XIV, XVII,

XXI 21 (twenty-one) is the natural number following 20 and preceding 22. The current century is the 21st century AD, under the Gregorian calendar. In mathematics 21 is: * a composite number, its proper divisors being 1, 3 and 7, and a de ...

, and

XXVII 27 (twenty-seven; Roman numeral XXVII) is the natural number following 26 and preceding 28. In mathematics * Twenty-seven is a cube of 3: 3^3=3\times 3\times 3. 27 is also 23 (see tetration). There are exactly 27 straight lines on a smooth c ...

), and 1 at the suburban

( LVI) . The Rose Bowl also hosts an annual and highly prestigious

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and ...

college football game called the Rose Bowl, which happens every New Year's Day. Los Angeles also hosted 8

FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior List of men's national association football teams, men's national teams of the members of the ' (FIFA), the ...

soccer games at the Rose Bowl in

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson Ma ...

, including the

final Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: * Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event ** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of con ...

, where

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

won. The Rose Bowl also hosted 4 matches in the

1999 FIFA Women's World Cup The 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup was the third edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup, the world championship for women's national soccer teams. It was hosted as well as won by the United States and took place from June 19 to July 10, 1999, at ...

, including the

, where the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

won against China on penalty kicks. This was the game where

Brandi Chastain Brandi Denise Chastain (born July 21, 1968) is an American retired soccer player, two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion, two-time Olympic gold-medalist, coach, and sports broadcaster. She played for the United States national team from 1988 t ...

took her shirt off after she scored the tournament-winning penalty kick, creating an iconic image. Los Angeles will be one of eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup with matches set to be held at

. Los Angeles is one of six North American cities to have won championships in all five of its major leagues (MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA and MLS), having completed the feat with the Kings' 2012 Stanley Cup title.

Government

Los Angeles is a

charter city In the United States, a charter city is a city in which the governing system is defined by the city's own charter document rather than solely by general law. In states where city charters are allowed by law, a city can adopt or modify its organ ...

as opposed to a general law city. The current charter was adopted on June 8, 1999, and has been amended many times. The

elected government An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operate ...

consists of the

and the mayor of Los Angeles, which operate under a

mayor–council government The mayor–council government system is a system of local government that has a mayor who is directly elected by the voters serve as chief executive, and a separately elected legislative city council. It is one of the two most common forms of loc ...

, as well as the

city attorney A city attorney is a position in city and municipal government in the United States. The city attorney is the attorney representing the municipality. Unlike a district attorney or public defender, who usually handles criminal cases, a city at ...

(not to be confused with the district attorney, a county office) and controller. The mayor is

. There are 15 city council districts. The city has many departments and appointed officers, including the

(LAPD), the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, the

Los Angeles Fire Department The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD or LA City Fire) provides emergency medical services, fire cause determination, fire prevention, fire suppression, hazardous materials mitigation, and technical rescue services to the city of Los Angel ...

(LAFD), the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), the

Los Angeles Department of Transportation The Los Angeles Department of Transportation, commonly referred to as LADOT, is a municipal agency that oversees transportation planning, design, construction, maintenance and operations within the city of Los Angeles. LADOT was created by city or ...

(LADOT), and the

(LAPL). The charter of the City of Los Angeles ratified by voters in 1999 created a system of advisory neighborhood councils that would represent the diversity of stakeholders, defined as those who live, work or own property in the neighborhood. The neighborhood councils are relatively autonomous and spontaneous in that they identify their own boundaries, establish their own bylaws, and elect their own officers. There are about 90 neighborhood councils. Residents of Los Angeles elect supervisors for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th supervisorial districts.

Federal and state representation

In the California State Assembly, Los Angeles is split between fourteen districts. In the

California State Senate The California State Senate is the upper house of the California State Legislature, the lower house being the California State Assembly. The State Senate convenes, along with the State Assembly, at the California State Capitol in Sacramento. ...

, the city is split between eight districts. In the

United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together the ...

, it is split among ten congressional districts.

Education

Colleges and universities

There are three public universities within the city limits:

California State University, Los Angeles California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA) is a public university in Los Angeles, California. It is part of the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system. Cal State LA offers 142 bachelor's degrees, 122 master's degrees, ...

(CSULA),

California State University, Northridge California State University, Northridge (CSUN or Cal State Northridge) is a public university in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. With a total enrollment of 38,551 students (as of Fall 2021), it has the second largest un ...

(CSUN) and

(UCLA). Private colleges in the city include: * American Film Institute Conservatory *

Alliant International University Alliant International University, often called Alliant, is a private for-profit university with its main campus in San Diego and other campuses in California. It offers programs in six California campuses – in San Francisco, San Diego, Los An ...

American Academy of Dramatic Arts The American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) is a private performing arts conservatory with two locations, one in Manhattan and one in Los Angeles. The academy offers an associate degree in occupational studies and teaches drama and related ar ...

(Los Angeles Campus) * American Jewish University * Abraham Lincoln University * The American Musical and Dramatic Academy – Los Angeles campus *

Antioch University Antioch University is a private university with multiple campuses in the United States and online programs. Founded in 1852 as Antioch College, its first president was politician, abolitionist, and education reformer Horace Mann. It changed its ...

's Los Angeles campus *

Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science is a private historically black graduate school in Willowbrook, California. It was founded in 1966 in response to inadequate medical access within the Watts region of Los Angeles, California. ...

* Columbia College Hollywood *

Emerson College Emerson College is a private college with its main campus in Boston, Massachusetts. It also maintains campuses in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California and Well, Limburg, Netherlands (Kasteel Well). Founded in 1880 by Charles Wesley Emerson as a ...

(Los Angeles Campus) * Emperor's College * Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising's Los Angeles campus (FIDM) * Los Angeles Film School *

Loyola Marymount University Loyola Marymount University (LMU) is a Private university, private Society of Jesus, Jesuit and Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, Marymount research university in Los Angeles, California. It is located on the west side of the city near P ...

(LMU is also the parent university of

Loyola Law School Loyola Law School is the law school of Loyola Marymount University, a private Catholic university in Los Angeles, California. Loyola was established in 1920. Academics Degrees offered include the Juris Doctor (JD); Master of Science in Legal ...

in Los Angeles) * Mount St. Mary's College * National University of California *

Occidental College Occidental College (informally Oxy) is a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1887 as a coeducational college by clergy and members of the Presbyterian Church, it became non-sectarian in 1910. It is one of the oldes ...

("Oxy") *

Otis College of Art and Design Otis College of Art and Design is a private art and design school in Los Angeles, California. Established in 1918, it was the city's first independent professional school of art. The main campus is located in the former IBM Aerospace headquarte ...

(Otis) * Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) *

Southwestern Law School Southwestern Law School is a private law school in Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles. It is accredited by the American Bar Association and enrolls nearly 1,000 students. Its campus includes the Bullocks Wilshire building, an art deco National Register ...

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8. ...

(USC) * Woodbury University The community college system consists of nine campuses governed by the trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District: * East Los Angeles College (ELAC) *

Los Angeles City College Los Angeles City College (LACC) is a public community college in East Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. A part of the Los Angeles Community College District, it is located on Vermont Avenue south of Santa Monica Boulevard on the former campus ...

(LACC) * Los Angeles Harbor College * Los Angeles Mission College * Los Angeles Pierce College *

Los Angeles Valley College Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) is a public community college in Los Angeles, California. It is part of the Los Angeles Community College District. The college is adjacent to Grant High School in the neighborhood of Valley Glen. Often cal ...

(LAVC) * Los Angeles Southwest College *

Los Angeles Trade-Technical College LOS, or Los, or LoS may refer to: Science and technology * Length of stay, the duration of a single episode of hospitalisation * Level of service, a measure used by traffic engineers * Level of significance, a measure of statistical significance ...

* West Los Angeles College There are numerous additional colleges and universities outside the city limits in the Greater Los Angeles area, including the

Claremont Colleges The Claremont Colleges (known colloquially as the 7Cs) are a consortium of seven private institutions of higher education located in Claremont, California, United States. They comprise five undergraduate colleges (the 5Cs)—Pomona College, S ...

consortium, which includes the most selective liberal arts colleges in the U.S., and the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

(Caltech), one of the top STEM-focused research institutions in the world. Los-angeles-central-library

Schools

Los Angeles Unified School District Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is a public school district in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is the largest public school system in California in terms of number of students and the 2nd largest public school district in ...

serves almost all of the city of Los Angeles, as well as several surrounding communities, with a student population around 800,000. After Proposition 13 was approved in 1978, urban school districts had considerable trouble with funding. LAUSD has become known for its underfunded, overcrowded and poorly maintained campuses, although its 162 Magnet schools help compete with local private schools. Several small sections of Los Angeles are in the Inglewood Unified School District, and the Las Virgenes Unified School District. The Los Angeles County Office of Education operates the

Los Angeles County High School for the Arts Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA, ) is a visual and performing arts high school located on the campus of California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA) in Los Angeles, California, United States. History The school was ...

Media

The Los Angeles metro area is the second-largest broadcast

designated market area A media market, broadcast market, media region, designated market area (DMA), television market area, or simply market is a region where the population can receive the same (or similar) television and radio station offerings, and may also incl ...

in the U.S. (after

) with 5,431,140 homes (4.956% of the U.S.), which is served by a wide variety of local AM and FM radio and

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication Media (communication), medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of Transmission (telecommunications), television tra ...

stations. Los Angeles and New York City are the only two media markets to have seven

VHF Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter. Frequencies immediately below VHF ...

allocations assigned to them. Foxplaza la

As part of the region's aforementioned creative industry, the Big Four major broadcast television networks, ABC, CBS,

FOX Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelv ...

, and NBC, all have production facilities and offices throughout various areas of Los Angeles. All four major broadcast television networks, plus major Spanish-language networks

Telemundo Telemundo (; formerly NetSpan) is an American Spanish-language terrestrial television network owned by NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a division of NBCUniversal, which in turn is owned by Comcast. It provides content nationally with prog ...

and

Univision Univision () is an American Spanish-language free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It is the United States' largest provider of Spanish-language content. The network's programming is aimed at the Latino public and inclu ...

, also own and operate stations that both serve the Los Angeles market and serve as each network's West Coast

flagship station In broadcasting, a flagship (also known as a flagship station or key station) is the broadcast station which originates a television network, or a particular radio or television program that plays a key role in the branding of and consumer loyalt ...

: ABC's KABC-TV (Channel 7), CBS's

KCBS-TV KCBS-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the CBS network. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside independent ...

(Channel 2), Fox's

KTTV KTTV (channel 11) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV ou ...

-TV (Channel 11), NBC's

KNBC KNBC (channel 4) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Corona-li ...

-TV (Channel 4), MyNetworkTV's KCOP-TV (Channel 13), Telemundo's KVEA-TV (Channel 52), and Univision's KMEX-TV (Channel 34). The region also has four PBS stations, with

KCET KCET (channel 28) is a secondary PBS member television station in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is owned by the Public Media Group of Southern California alongside the market's primary PBS member, Huntington Beach–licensed KOC ...

, re-joining the network as secondary affiliate in August 2019, after spending the previous eight years as the nation's largest independent public television station. KTBN (Channel 40) is the

of the religious

Trinity Broadcasting Network The Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) is an international Christian-based broadcast television network and the world's largest religious television network. TBN was headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, until March 3, 2017, when it sold its ...

, based out of Santa Ana. A variety of independent television stations, such as KCAL-TV (Channel 9) and

KTLA KTLA (channel 5) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of The CW. It is the largest directly owned property of the network's majority owner, Nexstar Media Group, and is the seco ...

-TV (Channel 5), also operate in the area. The major daily English-language newspaper in the area is the ''

''. '' La Opinión'' is the city's major daily Spanish-language paper. ''

The Korea Times ''The Korea Times'' is the oldest of three English-language newspapers published daily in South Korea. It is a sister paper of the '' Hankook Ilbo'', a major Korean language daily; both are owned by Dongwha Enterprise, a wood-based manufacture ...

'' is the city's major daily Korean-language paper while ''

The World Journal ''World Journal'' () is a Pan-Blue Taiwanese broadsheet newspaper published in North America. It is the largest Chinese language newspaper in the United States and one of the largest Chinese language newspapers outside of Greater China, wit ...

'' is the city and county's major Chinese newspaper. The '' Los Angeles Sentinel'' is the city's major African-American weekly paper, boasting the largest African-American readership in the Western United States. ''

Investor's Business Daily ''Investor's Business Daily'' (''IBD'') is an American newspaper and website covering the stock market, international business, finance and economics. Founded in 1984 by William O'Neil as a print news publication, it is owned by News Corp and i ...

'' is distributed from its LA corporate offices, which are headquartered in Playa del Rey. There are also a number of smaller regional newspapers, alternative weeklies and magazines, including the '' Los Angeles Register'', Los Angeles Community News, (which focuses on coverage of the greater Los Angeles area), ''

Los Angeles Daily News The ''Los Angeles Daily News'' is the second-largest-circulating paid daily newspaper of Los Angeles, California. It is the flagship of the Southern California News Group, a branch of Colorado-based Digital First Media. The offices of the ''D ...

'' (which focuses coverage on the

), ''

LA Weekly ''LA Weekly'' is a free weekly alternative newspaper in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Jay Levin, who served as president and editor until 1991. Voice Media Group sold the paper in late 2017 to Semanal Media LLC, whose pare ...

'', '' L.A. Record'' (which focuses coverage on the music scene in the

Greater Los Angeles Area Greater Los Angeles is the second-largest metropolitan region in the United States with a population of 18.5 million in 2021, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino ...

), ''Los Angeles Magazine'', the ''

Los Angeles Business Journal The ''Los Angeles Business Journal'', established in 1979, is a weekly newspaper and online news source in Los Angeles, California, which provides coverage of local business news. According to the ''Journals website, it has a weekly print circul ...

'', the ''Los Angeles Daily Journal'' (legal industry paper), ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly large ...

'', '' Variety'' (both entertainment industry papers), and ''

Los Angeles Downtown News The ''Los Angeles Downtown News'' is a free weekly newspaper in Los Angeles, California, serving the Downtown Los Angeles area. The newspaper focuses on general news with an emphasis on real estate and business along with coverage of the arts s ...

''. In addition to the major papers, numerous local periodicals serve immigrant communities in their native languages, including Armenian, English, Korean, Persian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, and Arabic. Many cities adjacent to Los Angeles also have their own daily newspapers whose coverage and availability overlaps with certain Los Angeles neighborhoods. Examples include ''The

Daily Breeze The ''Daily Breeze'' is a 57,000-circulation daily newspaper published in Hermosa Beach, California, United States. It serves the South Bay cities of Los Angeles County. Its slogan is "LAX to LA Harbor". Early history The paper was founded ...

'' (serving the South Bay), and ''The Long Beach Press-Telegram''. Los Angeles arts, culture and nightlife news is also covered by a number of local and national online guides, including ''Time Out Los Angeles'', ''

Thrillist Thrillist is an online media website covering food, drink, travel and entertainment. The company was founded in 2004 and is based in New York City, United States. In October 2016, Thrillist merged with internet brands '' The Dodo'', NowThis Ne ...

'', ''Kristin's List'', ''DailyCandy'', ''Diversity News Magazine'', ''LAist'', and ''Flavorpill''.

Infrastructure

Transportation

Freeways

Los Angeles - Echangeur autoroute 110 105

The city and the rest of the

are served by an extensive network of freeways and highways. Texas Transportation Institute's annual Urban Mobility Report ranked Los Angeles area roads the most congested in the United States in 2019 as measured by annual delay per traveler, area residents experiencing a cumulative average of 119 hours waiting in traffic that year. Los Angeles was followed by San Francisco/

, Washington, D.C., and

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at th ...

. Despite the congestion in the city, the mean daily travel time for commuters in Los Angeles is shorter than other major cities, including New York City,

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

and Chicago. Los Angeles's mean travel time for work commutes in 2006 was 29.2 minutes, similar to those of San Francisco and Washington, D.C.https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/ The major highways that connect LA to the rest of the nation include

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Calif ...

, which runs south through

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

Tijuana Tijuana ( ,"Tijuana"
(US) and < ...

in Mexico and north through

Sacramento ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

, and

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

to the Canada–US border;

Interstate 10 Interstate 10 (I-10) is the southernmost cross-country highway in the American Interstate Highway System. I-10 is the fourth-longest Interstate in the United States at , following I-90, I-80, and I-40. This freeway is part of the originally ...

, the southernmost east–west, coast-to-coast

Interstate Highway The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Highway System in the United States. T ...

in the United States, going to

Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...

; and U.S. Route 101, which heads to the California Central Coast, San Francisco, the

Redwood Empire The North Coast of California (also called the Redwood Empire or the Redwood Coast in reference to the dense redwood forests throughout the region) is a region in Northern California that lies on the Pacific coast between San Francisco Bay and t ...

, and the

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idah ...

and Washington coasts.

Transit systems

The LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA County Metro) and other agencies operate an extensive system of bus lines, as well as

subway Subway, Subways, The Subway, or The Subways may refer to: Transportation * Subway, a term for underground rapid transit rail systems * Subway (underpass), a type of walkway that passes underneath an obstacle * Subway (George Bush Interconti ...

and light rail lines across Los Angeles County, with a combined monthly ridership (measured in individual boardings) of 38.8 million . The majority of this (30.5 million) is taken up by the city's bus system, the second busiest in the country. The subway and light rail combined average the remaining roughly 8.2 million boardings per month. LA County Metro recorded over 397 million boardings for the 2017 calendar year, including about 285 million bus riders and about 113 million riding on rail transit. For the first quarter of 2018, there were just under 95 million system-wide boardings, down from about 98 million in 2017, and about 105 million in 2016. In 2005, 10.2% of Los Angeles commuters rode some form of public transportation. According to the 2016 American Community Survey, 9.2% of working Los Angeles (city) residents made the journey to work via public transportation. The city's subway system is the ninth busiest in the United States and its light rail system is the country's busiest. The rail system includes the B and D subway lines, as well as the A, C, E, and L light rail lines. In 2016, the E Line was extended to the Pacific Ocean at

Santa Monica Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to ...

. The Metro G and J lines are

bus rapid transit Bus rapid transit (BRT), also called a busway or transitway, is a bus-based public transport system designed to have much more capacity, reliability and other quality features than a conventional bus system. Typically, a BRT system includes ...

lines with stops and frequency similar to those of light rail. , the total number of light rail stations is 99. The city is also central to the

commuter rail Commuter rail, or suburban rail, is a passenger rail transport service that primarily operates within a metropolitan area, connecting commuters to a central city from adjacent suburbs or commuter towns. Generally commuter rail systems are co ...

system Metrolink, which links Los Angeles to all neighboring counties as well as many suburbs. Besides the rail service provided by Metrolink and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Los Angeles is served by inter-city passenger trains from

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...

. The main rail station in the city is

Union Station A union station (also known as a union terminal, a joint station in Europe, and a joint-use station in Japan) is a railway station at which the tracks and facilities are shared by two or more separate railway companies, allowing passengers to ...

just north of Downtown. In addition, the city directly contracts for local and commuter bus service through the

, or LADOT.

Airports

The main international and domestic airport serving Los Angeles is

Los Angeles International Airport Los Angeles International Airport , commonly referred to as LAX (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary international airport serving Los Angeles, California and its surrounding metropolitan area. LAX is located in the W ...

, commonly referred to by its airport code, LAX. Other major nearby commercial airports include: *

Ontario International Airport Ontario International Airport is an international airport two miles east of downtown Ontario, in San Bernardino County, California, United States, about east of downtown Los Angeles and west of downtown San Bernardino. It is owned and oper ...

, owned by the city of Ontario, CA; serves the Inland Empire. * Hollywood Burbank Airport, jointly owned by the cities of Burbank, Glendale, and Pasadena. Formerly known as Bob Hope Airport and Burbank Airport, the closest airport to Downtown Los Angeles serves the San Fernando, San Gabriel, and Antelope Valleys. * Long Beach Airport, serves the Long Beach/Harbor area. *

John Wayne Airport John Wayne Airport is a commercial and general aviation airport that serves Orange County, California, and the Greater Los Angeles area. The airport is located in an unincorporated area of Orange County, and it is owned and operated by the cou ...

of Orange County. One of the world's busiest general-aviation airports is also in Los Angeles:

Van Nuys Airport : ''For the United States Air Force use of the airport (1942–1990), see Van Nuys Air National Guard Base'' Van Nuys Airport is a public airport in the Van Nuys neighborhood of the City of Los Angeles. The airport is operated by Los Angele ...

Seaports

The Port of Los Angeles is in San Pedro Bay in the San Pedro neighborhood, approximately south of Downtown. Also called Los Angeles Harbor and WORLDPORT LA, the port complex occupies of land and water along of waterfront. It adjoins the separate Port of Long Beach. The sea ports of the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach together make up the ''Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor''. Together, both ports are the fifth busiest container port in the world, with a trade volume of over 14.2 million TEU's in 2008. Singly, the Port of Los Angeles is the busiest container port in the United States and the largest cruise ship center on the

West Coast of the United States The West Coast of the United States, also known as the Pacific Coast, Pacific states, and the western seaboard, is the coastline along which the Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. The term typically refers to the contiguous ...

– The Port of Los Angeles's World Cruise Center served about 590,000 passengers in 2014. There are also smaller, non-industrial harbors along Los Angeles's coastline. The port includes four bridges: the Vincent Thomas Bridge, Henry Ford Bridge, Gerald Desmond Bridge, and Commodore Schuyler F. Heim Bridge. Passenger ferry service from San Pedro to the city of

Avalon Avalon (; la, Insula Avallonis; cy, Ynys Afallon, Ynys Afallach; kw, Enys Avalow; literally meaning "the isle of fruit r appletrees"; also written ''Avallon'' or ''Avilion'' among various other spellings) is a mythical island featured in th ...

on Santa Catalina Island is provided by Catalina Express.

Notable people

Sister cities

Los Angeles has 25

sister cities A sister city or a twin town relationship is a form of legal or social agreement between two geographically and politically distinct localities for the purpose of promoting cultural and commercial ties. While there are early examples of inter ...

, listed chronologically by year joined: *

Eilat Eilat ( , ; he, אֵילַת ; ar, إِيلَات, Īlāt) is Israel's southernmost city, with a population of , a busy port and popular resort at the northern tip of the Red Sea, on what is known in Israel as the Gulf of Eilat and in Jorda ...

, Israel (1959) *

Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region, the fourth-most populous city and third most populous urban area in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020. Located on the Pacific coast in central Honshu, it is the capital and the most p ...

, Japan (1959) * Salvador, Brazil (1962) *

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture ...

, France (1964) *

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

, Germany (1967) *

Lusaka Lusaka (; ) is the capital and largest city of Zambia. It is one of the fastest-developing cities in southern Africa. Lusaka is in the southern part of the central plateau at an elevation of about . , the city's population was about 3.3 milli ...

, Zambia (1968) *

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley of ...

, Mexico (1969) *

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about I ...

, New Zealand (1971) *

Busan Busan (), officially known as is South Korea's most populous city after Seoul, with a population of over 3.4 million inhabitants. Formerly romanized as Pusan, it is the economic, cultural and educational center of southeastern South Korea ...

, South Korea (1971) *

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the secon ...

, India (1972) *

Tehran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the Capital city, capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is th ...

, Iran (1972) *

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the ...

, Taiwan (1979) *

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong ...

, China (1981) *

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh List ...

, Greece (1984) *

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, Russia (1984) *

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. Th ...

, Canada (1986) *

Giza Giza (; sometimes spelled ''Gizah'' arz, الجيزة ' ) is the second-largest city in Egypt after Cairo and fourth-largest city in Africa after Kinshasa, Lagos and Cairo. It is the capital of Giza Governorate with a total population of 9. ...

, Egypt (1989) * Jakarta, Indonesia (1990) *

Kaunas Kaunas (; ; also see other names) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the largest city and the centre of a county in the Duchy of Tra ...

, Lithuania (1991) *

Makati Makati ( ), officially the City of Makati ( fil, Lungsod ng Makati), is a 1st class highly urbanized city in the National Capital Region of the Philippines. Makati is the financial center of the Philippines; it has the highest concentratio ...

, Philippines (1992) *

Split, Croatia )'' , settlement_type = City , anthem = '' Marjane, Marjane'' , image_skyline = , imagesize = 267px , image_caption = Top: Nighttime view of Split from Mosor; 2nd row: Cathedr ...

(1993) * San Salvador, El Salvador (2005) *

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

, Lebanon (2006) * Ischia, Campania, Italy (2006) *

Yerevan Yerevan ( , , hy, Երևան , sometimes spelled Erevan) is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and ...

, Armenia (2007) In addition, Los Angeles has the following "friendship cities": *

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of cant ...

, Poland * City of

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/ Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a me ...

, Australia *

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...

, United Kingdom *

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...

, Israel

Notes

References

External links

* {{authority control Cities in Los Angeles County, California County seats in California Incorporated cities and towns in California Populated coastal places in California Port cities in California Railway towns in California Populated places established in 1781 1781 establishments in New Spain 1850 establishments in California

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