Greater Los Angeles

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 County and Riverside County in the east, with Los Angeles County in the center and Orange County to the southeast. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Los Angeles–Anaheim–Riverside combined statistical area covers , making it the largest metropolitan region in the United States by land area. Of this, the contiguous urban area is , the remainder mostly consisting of mountain and desert areas. In addition to being the nexus of the global entertainment industry (films, television, and recorded music), Greater Los Angeles is also an important center of international trade, education, media, business, tourism, technology, and sports. It is the 3rd largest metropolitan area by nominal GDP in the world with an economy exceeding $1 trillion in output (behind Tokyo and New York City).

There are three contiguous component metropolitan areas in Greater Los Angeles: the Inland Empire, which can be broadly defined as Riverside and San Bernardino counties; the Ventura/Oxnard metropolitan area (or Ventura County); and the Los Angeles metropolitan area (also known as Metropolitan Los Angeles or Metro LA) consisting of Los Angeles and Orange counties only. The Census Bureau designates the latter as the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim metropolitan statistical area, the fifth largest metropolitan area in the western hemisphere and the second-largest metropolitan area in the United States, by population. It has a total area of . San Diego–Tijuana, though contiguous with Greater Los Angeles at San Clemente and Temecula, is not part of it, but together both form part of the Southern California Megalopolis.

Throughout the 20th century, Greater Los Angeles was one of the fastest-growing regions in the United States, but growth has slowed since 2000. At the 2010 U.S. census, the smaller Los Angeles metro area had a population of nearly 13 million residents. In 2015, the Greater Los Angeles population was estimated to be about 18.7 million, making it the second largest metropolitan region in the country, behind New York, as well as one of the largest megacities in the world. Over time, droughts and wildfires have increased in frequency and become less seasonal and more year-round, further straining the region's water security.

Definitions

Los Angeles metropolitan area

The Los Angeles metropolitan area is defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget as the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), with a 2021 population of 12,997,353. The MSA is in turn made up of two "metropolitan divisions":
* Los Angeles–Long Beach-Glendale, CA Metropolitan Division, coterminous with Los Angeles County (2021 population 9,829,544)
* Anaheim–Santa Ana–Irvine, CA Metropolitan Division, coterminous with Orange County (2021 population 3,167,809)

The MSA is the most populous metropolitan area in the Western United States. It has at its core the Los Angeles– Long Beach– Anaheim corridor, an urbanized area defined by the Census Bureau with a population 12,150,996 at the 2010 census.

Greater Los Angeles

The U.S. Census Bureau also defines a wider commercial region based on commuting patterns or megalopolis, the Los Angeles–Long Beach, CA Combined Statistical Area (CSA), more commonly known as the Greater Los Angeles Area, with an estimated population of 18,490,242 in 2021. The total land area of the CSA is 33,955 sq. mi (87,945 km²).

The CSA consists of three component metropolitan areas:
* The Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim, CA MSA (2021 pop. 12,997,353)
* The Oxnard–Thousand Oaks–Ventura, CA MSA, coterminous with Ventura County (2021 pop. 839,784)
* The Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario, CA MSA (2021 pop. 4,653,105), consisting of:
** Riverside County, California (2021 pop. 2,458,395)
** San Bernardino County, California (2021 pop. 2,194,710)

History

Geography

Urban form

Los Angeles has long been famous for its sprawl, but this has to do more with its status in history as the "poster child" of large cities that grew up with suburban-style patterns of development, rather than how it ranks in sprawl among American metro areas today, now that suburban and exurban-style development is present across the country. In fact, the Los Angeles–Orange County metro area was the ''most'' densely populated "urbanized area" (as defined by the United States Census Bureau) in the United States in 2000, with . For comparison, the "New York–Newark" Urbanized Area had a population density of .

Los Angeles' reputation for sprawl is due to the fact that the city grew from relative obscurity to one of the country's ten largest cities (i.e. 10th largest city in 1920), at a time when suburban patterns of growth first became possible due to electric streetcars and automobiles. The city was also the first large American city where, in the 1920s, major clusters of regional employment, shopping, and culture were already being built outside the traditional downtown areas – in edge cities such as Mid-Wilshire, Miracle Mile and Hollywood. This pattern of growth continued ever outward, more so when the freeway system was built starting in the 1950s; thus Greater Los Angeles was the earliest large American metropolitan area with a decentralized structure. Its major commercial, financial, and cultural institutions are geographically dispersed rather than being concentrated in a single downtown or central area. Also, the population density of Los Angeles proper is low (approximately 8,300 people per square mile) when compared to some other large American cities such as New York City (27,500), San Francisco (17,000), Boston (13,300), and Chicago (11,800). Densities are particularly high within a 5-mile radius of downtown, where some neighborhoods exceed 20,000 people per square mile. What gives the entire Los Angeles metro region a high density is the fact that many of the city's suburbs and satellite cities have high density rates. Within its urbanized areas, Los Angeles is noted for having small lot sizes and low-rise buildings. Buildings in the area are low when compared to other large cities, mainly due to zoning regulations. Los Angeles became a major city just as the Pacific Electric Railway spread population to smaller cities much as interurbans did in East Coast cities. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the area was marked by a network of fairly dense but separate cities linked by rail. The ascendance of the automobile