The South Bay is a region of the

Los Angeles metropolitan area Greater Los Angeles is the most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. state of California, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino County and Riverside County in the east, ...

, located in the southwest corner of Los Angeles County. The name stems from its geographic location stretching along the southern shore of Santa Monica Bay. The South Bay contains sixteen cities plus portions of the City of Los Angeles and unincorporated portions of the county. The area is bounded by the Pacific Ocean on the south and west and generally by the City of Los Angeles on the north and east.

Neighborhoods

The South Bay includes:Choose LA County
/ref> *The Beach Cities ** El Segundo **

Hermosa Beach Hermosa Beach (, Spanish language, Spanish for "Beautiful") is a beachfront city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Its population was 19,728 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. Census. The city is located in the South Ba ...

** Manhattan Beach ** Redondo Beach ** Torrance *The Palos Verdes Peninsula ** Palos Verdes Estates ** Rancho Palos Verdes ** Rolling Hills ** Rolling Hills Estates *Neighborhoods of the City of Los Angeles ** Harbor City ** Harbor Gateway ** San Pedro ** Westchester ** Wilmington *Inland cities of the South Bay ** Carson ** Gardena ** Hawthorne ** Inglewood ** Lawndale ** Lomita *And unincorporated areas of L.A. County including: ** Alondra Park/El Camino Village ** Del Aire/Wiseburn ** West Rancho Dominguez ** Lennox ** Westfield/Academy Hills ** West Carson The region is bordered on the north by the Westside region of Los Angeles, on the northeast by the

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, California, lying mostly within the city limits of Los Angeles, south of Downtown Los Angeles, downtown. It is de ...

region and on the east and southeast by the Gateway Cities.

South Bay Cities Council of Governments

The South Bay Cities Council of Governments (SBCCOG) is a joint powers authority government agency made of politicians from the sixteen South Bay cities and unincorporated Los Angeles County that share the goal of maximizing the quality of life and productivity of the South Bay region of Los Angeles. The SBCCOG members are Carson, El Segundo, Gardena, Hawthorne, Hermosa Beach, Inglewood, Lawndale, Lomita, Manhattan Beach, Palos Verdes Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes, Redondo Beach, Rolling Hills, Rolling Hills Estates, Torrance, the Harbor City/San Pedro/Wilmington communities of the City of Los Angeles and the unincorporated areas of the County of Los Angeles District 2 and 4.

Major employers

Port of Los Angeles

The

Port of Los Angeles The Port of Los Angeles is a seaport managed by the Los Angeles Harbor Department, a unit of the Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles. It occupies of land and water with of waterfront and adjoins the separate Port of Long Beach. Promoted as "Amer ...

, sprawling across the shorelines of San Pedro and Wilmington, is the busiest in the United States. When combined with the

Port of Long Beach The Port of Long Beach, administered as the Harbor Department of the City of Long Beach, is a container port in the United States, which adjoins Port of Los Angeles. Acting as a major gateway for US–Asian trade, the port occupies of land wi ...

, it is the fifth-busiest in the world. Traditionally, most of the populations of Wilmington and San Pedro have worked for the port in some capacity. It is increasingly the primary driver of the Southern California economy. Industrial growth in the Inland Empire is almost entirely attributable to increased port traffic since the 1980s. The massive increase in cargo volume has created significant air pollution (especially of particulate matter in neighboring communities, resulting from the combustion of low-grade marine

diesel fuel Diesel fuel, also called diesel oil, heavy oil (historically) or simply diesel, is any liquid fuel specifically designed for use in a diesel engine, a type of internal combustion engine in which fuel ignition takes place without a spark as a re ...

Aerospace

The South Bay is the traditional home of Southern California's

aerospace Aerospace is a term used to collectively refer to the atmosphere and outer space. Aerospace activity is very diverse, with a multitude of commercial, industrial, and military applications. Aerospace engineering consists of aeronautics and astron ...

industry. While considerably shrunken from its

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

peak, it still represents a major economic force, employing thousands in high-skill, high-wage engineering positions and generating enormous amounts of tax revenue.

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace and Arms industry, defense company. With 97,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $40 billion, it is one of the world's largest Arms industry ...

has a major facility in El Segundo where the F/A-18 Hornet fuselage is manufactured, as well as the headquarters of the Space Technology division in Redondo Beach and a facility at the Hawthorne Municipal Airport. Howmet Fastening Systems, a subsidiary of Howmet Aerospace, has their corporate headquarters located in Torrance with manufacturing facilities in both Torrance and Carson.

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

and

Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American Arms industry, defense and aerospace manufacturer with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta on March 15, 1995. It is headquartered in North ...

also maintain extensive production facilities throughout the South Bay and

Raytheon Raytheon is a business unit of RTX Corporation and is a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. Founded in 1922, it merged in 2020 with Unite ...

maintains a facility in El Segundo. The Los Angeles Air Force Base and neighboring Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo are a main focus of aerospace research activity and serve as the primary development facilities for military

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

s and other space programs.

DirecTV DirecTV, LLC is an American Multichannel television in the United States, multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital Satellite television, s ...

, a former subsidiary of

Hughes Aircraft The Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace company, aerospace and defense contractor founded on February 14, 1934 by Howard Hughes in Glendale, California, as a division of the Hughes Tool Company. The company produced the Hughes ...

, is also headquartered in El Segundo for the same reason.

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

is also headquartered in the South Bay in Hawthorne.

Oil refining

Petroleum refining is another important component of the South Bay's economy. Major South Bay refiners include Tesoro ( ARCO facility in Carson), Chevron (El Segundo), Phillips 66 (Wilmington), PBF Energy (Torrance), Tesoro (Wilmington), and Valero (Wilmington). These refiners supply a large share of petroleum products for Southern California as well as for

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

and

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

Automotive

Japanese automobile manufacturer

Honda commonly known as just Honda, is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate automotive manufacturer headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in October 1946 by Soichiro Honda, Honda has bee ...

maintains its North American headquarters in the South Bay, in the city of Torrance. (

Nissan is a Japanese multinational Automotive industry, automobile manufacturer headquartered in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan. The company sells its vehicles under the ''Nissan'' and ''Infiniti'' brands, and formerly the ''Datsun'' brand, with in-house ...

was also headquartered in the South Bay until late 2005, but relocated to Tennessee, citing the high cost of running a business in California.

Toyota is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on August 28, 1937. Toyota is the List of manuf ...

relocated to

Plano, Texas Plano ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "flat surface" /'plano/) is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, where it is the largest city in Collin County, Texas, Collin County. A small portion of Plano is located in Denton County, Texas, Denton Count ...

in 2017 for many of the same reasons.) While these locations are largely the legacy of the region's historical importance as a Japanese-American population center, it has proven fortunate for two reasons; first, it enables closer oversight of vehicle import operations at the nearby ports; and second, it gives them proximity to the automobile customization culture that is prominent in nearby

. Tesla is stationed near the headquarters of

in Hawthorne.

Higher education

* Loyola Marymount University * California State University, Dominguez Hills * El Camino College * Los Angeles Harbor College *

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

South Bay * Southern California Regional Occupational Center * University of West Los Angeles * Otis College of Art and Design

Transportation

The Harbor ( I-110),

San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

( I-405), Gardena ( SR 91), and

Century A century is a period of 100 years or 10 decades. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word ''century'' comes from the Latin ''centum'', meaning ''one hundred''. ''Century'' is sometimes abbreviated as c. ...

( I-105) Freeways provide the region with its principal transportation links. The Los Angeles MTA's A Line (opened in 1990 as the Blue Line) is a

light rail Light rail (or light rail transit, abbreviated to LRT) is a form of passenger urban rail transit that uses rolling stock derived from tram technology National Conference of the Transportation Research Board while also having some features from ...

line running between

Downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) is the central business district of the city of Los Angeles. It is part of the Central Los Angeles region and covers a area. As of 2020, it contains over 500,000 jobs and has a population of roughly 85,000 residents ...

and Downtown Long Beach. It was the first of the MTA's modern rail lines since the 1961 demise of the Pacific Electric Railway's Red Car system. The C Line (opened in 1995 as the Green Line, together with the Glenn Anderson Freeway), a freeway-median light rail line, also serves the South Bay. It runs between Redondo Beach and Norwalk in the median of the

Century Freeway A century is a period of 100 years or 10 decades. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word ''century'' comes from the Latin ''centum'', meaning ''one hundred''. ''Century'' is sometimes abbreviated as c. A ...

( Interstate 105), providing indirect access to LAX via a shuttle bus and future automated people mover. The K Line opened from Expo/Crenshaw station to Westchester/Veterans station, but is expected to be fully operational to Aviation/Imperial station in 2024. Several ports and harbors in the South Bay provide access to Santa Catalina Island, a popular resort. In addition, LAX borders El Segundo to the north in the neighborhood of Westchester, Los Angeles. The area is also home to two public airports; Zamperini Field in Torrance and Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Hawthorne.

Media

In addition to the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'', the South Bay cities are served by daily papers, the '' Daily Breeze'', the weeklies '' The Beach Reporter,'' '' The Easy Reader an
South Bay Community News
', a bi-monthly real estate magazine, ''South Bay DIGS'' and lifestyle publication 'Southbay Magazine'. The

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...

has its West Coast headquarters and production facility for NFL Network, NFL RedZone and the NFL.com app in Inglewood.

Music

The South Bay has a rich history in music, and has produced a number of significant rock bands, like Hawthorne natives

The Beach Boys The Beach Boys are an American Rock music, rock band formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian Wilson, Brian, Dennis Wilson, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and their f ...

in the early 1960s, and continuing particularly in punk music. Other notable South Bay-based artists include: * 98 Mute (Hermosa Beach) * Ab-Soul (Carson) (Ambrosia) Torrance * Ash Riser (Redondo Beach) * Big Syke (Inglewood) * Bishop Lamont (Carson) * Black Flag (Hermosa Beach) * Blu (San Pedro) * Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (Carson) *

Brandy Brandy is a liquor produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35–60% alcohol by volume (70–120 US proof) and is typically consumed as an after-dinner digestif. Some brandies are aged in wooden casks. Others are coloured ...

(Carson) * By All Means (Torrance) *

Cali Swag District Cali Swag District was an American Hip hop music, hip hop group from Inglewood, California, founded by former Death Row Records artist Young Soldierz, Big Wy and Dairold Potts. They are best known for their 2010 commercial debut single "Teach Me ...

(Inglewood) *

Circle Jerks Circle Jerks (stylized as Ciʀcle JƎʀᴋs) are an American hardcore punk band, formed in 1979 in Los Angeles, California. The group was founded by former Black Flag (band), Black Flag vocalist Keith Morris and Redd Kross guitarist Greg Hetso ...

(Hermosa Beach) * Cuco (Hawthorne) * Custom Made (Hawthorne, Inglewood, Redondo Beach) * Darlene Love (Hawthorne) * Descendents (Manhattan Beach) * James Newton Howard (Torrance) *

Omarion Omari Ishmael Grandberry (born November 12, 1984), better known by his stage name Omarion, is an American R&B singer, dancer and actor. He rose to prominence as lead vocalist of the boy band B2K, which was formed in 1998 and managed by record e ...

(Inglewood) * Ras Kass (Carson) * KeyKool (Torrance) * Kurupt (Hawthorne) * Left Alone (Wilmington) * Joyce Manor (Torrance) * Mack 10 (Inglewood) * Miguel (San Pedro) * Minutemen (San Pedro) * Pennywise (Hermosa Beach) *

Pigeon John John Kenneth Dust (born John Kenneth Dunkin: November 30, 1972), better known by the stage name Pigeon John, is an American rapper based in Los Angeles, California. He is a former member of L.A. Symphony. Early life Pigeon John claims that his ...

(Hawthorne) * Ray-J (Carson) * Redd Kross (Hawthorne) * Rotting Out (San Pedro) * Seahaven (Torrance) * Shannon Lay (Redondo Beach) * Slip Capone (Hawthorne) * Smut Peddlers (Redondo Beach) * The Thirsty Crows (Redondo Beach) * Tokimonsta (Torrance) *

Tom Smothers Thomas Bolyn Smothers III (February 2, 1937 – December 26, 2023) was an American comedian, actor, composer, and musician, widely known as half of the musical comedy duo the Smothers Brothers, alongside his younger brother Dick Smothers, Dick. I ...

(Redondo Beach) *

Tyga Micheal Ray StevensonMicheal Ray Stevenson

(Gardena) * Tyler The Creator (Hawthorne) * The Last (Hermosa Beach) Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn's SST record label, a seminal

alternative rock Alternative rock (also known as alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s w ...

label of the 1980s, maintained its headquarters in Lawndale.

Sports and entertainment

The South Bay is host to many professional sports teams and entertainment venues. The

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

and

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

of the

play at

SoFi Stadium SoFi Stadium ( ) is a domed multi-purpose stadium in Inglewood, California, U.S., a suburb of Los Angeles. SoFi occupies the former site of the Hollywood Park Racetrack and neighbors the Kia Forum and Intuit Dome. Opened in September 2020, the ...

in Inglewood. The

LA Galaxy The Los Angeles Galaxy are an American professional Association football, soccer club based in the Greater Los Angeles area. The club competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the Western Conference (MLS), Western Conference. The Gal ...

Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a professional Association football, soccer league in North America and the highest level of the United States soccer league system. It comprises 30 teams, with 27 in the United States and 3 in Canada, and is sanc ...

play their home games 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 Dignit ...

in Carson. The

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

of the

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

will play in their new stadium, Intuit Dome, in Inglewood beginning 2024. Various entertainment venues are located in the South Bay, including

Kia Forum The Kia Forum, also known as Los Angeles Forum and formerly Great Western Forum, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in Inglewood, California, United States, adjacent to Los Angeles. Located on West Manchester Boulevard, with Pincay Drive to th ...

, and YouTube Theater in Inglewood,

in Carson, and Toyota Sports Center in El Segundo. Three casinos also operate in the South Bay; the Hollywood Park Casino in Inglewood and the Normandie Casino and Hustler Casino in Gardena.