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Visit Los Angeles, California; “The City of Angels” or Commonly Known as L.A.
Los Angeles, (Spanish for The Angels), officially the City of Los Angeles, often known by its initials L.A. It is the most populous city in the U.S. state of California. Make sure you visit Los Angeles if you come to Southern California.
It’s the second most populous city in the United States after New York City. The estimated population in 2018 was 3,990,456.
Los Angeles has an area of 469 square miles, and is located in Southern California. It’s the second largest city in the United States. L.A. is also the third-most populous city in North America, after Mexico City and New York City.
LA Area is a Big Populous Metropolitan Areas
The city is the focal point of the larger Los Angeles–Long Beach–Santa Ana metropolitan statistical area and Greater Los Angeles Area region. Those areas contained 12,828,837 and nearly 18 million people respectively as of 2010. That makes it the third most populous metropolitan area in the world.
That huge metropolitan area spreads across Los Angeles County, Orange County, Ventura County, and the Inland Empire region of San Bernardino County and Riverside County.
L.A. is also the seat of Los Angeles County. It’s the most populated and one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the United States. The entire L.A. area itself has been recognized as the most diverse of the nation’s largest cities. It’s inhabitants are sometimes referred to as Angelenos.
The city was founded on September 4, 1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence.
In 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
That made it part of the United States. About two years later Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4, 1850. Five months later California became a state.
Los Angeles is a Leading World Center in many Fields
Los Angeles is often called the City of Angels, its Nickname. The city is a leading world center of business, international trade, entertainment and culture. It is also a leader in media, fashion, science, sports, technology, and education. These excellent ratings make it a must visit Los Angeles if you are in Southern California.
The city came in No. 7 in the latest index, down from No. 6 in 2018 but up from eighth-place in 2017. L.A. was No. 6 from 2012 through 2016.
L.A. is home to renowned institutions covering a broad range of professional and cultural fields. It is one of the most substantial economic areas in the United States.
The Los Angeles combined statistical area has a gross metropolitan product of $1 trillion as of 2017, making it the third largest in the world. Greater Tokyo and New York metropolitan areas were first and second. As the home base of Hollywood, it leads the world in the creation of television productions, video games, and recorded music. Los Angeles is also one of the leaders in motion picture production.
Back in 1984 Los Angeles hosted the Summer Olympic Games for the second time. The state issued special car license plates (they were optional at a price) for those Olympics which still adorn the wall of my sister’s home.
20 BEST THINGS TO DO IN LOS ANGELES
by GRRRLTRAVELER | Christine Kaaloa
Published on Youtube on Sep 3, 2014
On my trip to los angeles, I thought I’d do a countdown of my best things to do in los angeles and list of top los angeles hightlights. 20 Things to Do in Los Angeles : Enjoy!
1. Hollywood Blvd 2. El Capitan 3. Kodak Building 4. Walk of Fame/ Star Walk 5. Mann’s Chinese Theater 6. Rock of Fame 7. Hollywood Forever Cemetery (Watch video: 4 Weirdly Cool Museums in L.A.| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfyQK…) 8. Runyon Canyon 9. Hike the Hollywood Sign 10. Canter’s Deli
11. La Brea Tarpits 12. Los Angeles County Museum of Art 8. Free Museum Days 14. Free Live Tapings 15. Eating in L.A. 16. Griffith Observatory 17. The Comedy Store 18. Nightlife L.A. 19 Eating out L.A. 20. Venice Beach
Los Angeles is Large and Hilly
Los Angeles doesn’t have a regular shape. It has a huge area which covers a total area of 502.7 square miles. There are 468.7 square miles of land and 34 square miles of water. It is flat and hilly like many of the surrounding cities. The highest point in the city is 5,074 ft (1,547 m) Mount Lukens. It is located at the northeastern end of the San Fernando Valley.
The eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains stretches from Downtown to the Pacific Ocean. It separates the Los Angeles Basin from the San Fernando Valley. Other hilly parts of L.A. include the Mt. Washington area north of Downtown and eastern parts such as Boyle Heights. Also the Crenshaw district around the Baldwin Hills and the San Pedro district.
Earthquakes are Common in California
Los Angeles city is subject to earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire. The geologic instability has produced numerous faults. Those faults cause approximately 10,000 earthquakes annually. One of the major faults is the San Andreas Fault.
It is located at the boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. As a result that area is predicted to be the source of Southern California’s next big earthquake.
Major earthquakes have hit the Los Angeles area. That included the 1994 Northridge earthquake and the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake. Also there was the 1971 San Fernando earthquake near Sylmar.
Regardless of all the earthquakes, all but a very few quakes are of very low intensity and are not felt. The Los Angeles basin and metropolitan area are also at risk from certain types of earthquakes.
It is not unusual to have an earthquake in any of the surrounding areas of Los Angles. You can feel maybe two or three times every few years. Parts of L.A. are also vulnerable to tsunamis although damage from them is very rare.
People from other states make a big deal of earthquakes when they visit LA and surrounding areas. However, it is something anyone living in Southern California is used to. I have been living in the greater Los Angeles area and never think about earthquakes until I hear about one on TV.
I’m about about seventy miles from Los Angeles city. I recall maybe about ten earthquakes in the last thirty or so years that you could actually feel. The rest were essentially undetectable, except for registering on earthquake instruments.
You normally don’t feel them unless it occurs right under you or very close to where you live. In spite of all the earthquakes, damage is rare except for the three big ones mentioned above.
Higher Education Abounds around Los Angeles
Within the city limits there are three public universities; California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA), California State University, Northridge (CSUN) and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Private colleges in the city include the American Film Institute Conservatory, Alliant International University, Syracuse University (Los Angeles Campus), American InterContinental University, American Jewish University, The American Musical and Dramatic Academy – Los Angeles campus, Antioch University’s Los Angeles campus, Biola University, and the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.
Also Los Angeles Film School, Loyola Marymount University (LMU is also the parent university of Loyola Law School located in Los Angeles), Marymount College and Mount St. Mary’s College.
All told there are at least 23 such colleges and universities in Los Angeles. There is also National University of California, Occidental College (“Oxy”), Otis College of Art and Design (Otis) and Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Southwestern Law School, and University of Southern California (USC) are also in LA.
As you can see, there are a lot of colleges in the city. There is no shortage of excellent education here. As a result you don’t have to leave the area for a first class education.
The community college system ([2 year] Junior college) consists of nine campuses governed by the trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District: East Los Angeles College (ELAC) and Los Angeles City College (LACC).
Additionally there is Los Angeles Harbor College, Los Angeles Mission College, Los Angeles Pierce College, Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC), Los Angeles Southwest College, Los Angeles Trade-Technical College and West Los Angeles College.
Freeways; Love them or Leave them
It would be remiss to talk of Los Angeles without mentioning the freeways. Without them it would be worse, most impracticable for most of the millions of people who need them. Many live in the surrounding areas but work in L.A. Freeways are a lifesaver, but on the other hand cause some of the worst frustration known to man.
Case in point, I live about seventy miles from downtown L.A. and if I had to work in the city it could easily take me about three hours to get to work.
In fact, I did work in the city and quit my job there because the company I worked for moved me from a small auxiliary building to their main office on Wilshire Blvd. They forced me to keep their regular working hours. It was different from my flexible hours I had had for the previous year and all other jobs.
When I found out I could no longer have flexible hours and had to start work at regular hours I promptly quit that job. Otherwise I’d have to fight traffic over two hours each way on the freeways. Those were at least 4 hours of frustration in stop and go traffic, mostly stop.
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If you visit Los Angeles make sure you experience the Freeways. Depending on the days and times you’re on them will determine your like or dislike of them. The city and the rest of the Los Angeles metropolitan area are served by an extensive network of freeways and a few highways.
The Texas Transportation Institute, which publishes an annual Urban Mobility Report, ranked Los Angeles road traffic as the most congested in the United States as measured by annual delay per traveler. Here are their most recent results.
The urban area of Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim took home the dubious honor of worst overall congestion in the United States.
Drivers in our city spend on average 119 hours each year in traffic delays, the highest amount in the country. L.A. also ranks no. 4 in excess fuel per commuter, due to congestion, and first in congestion cost per driver.
Driving Time on Freeways to/from Work is Ridiculous!
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA: Annual Delay — 119 hours per year according to the study.
This is a big underestimation as far as I am concerned. I used to spend about 1 hour in the morning driving the 55 miles to Irvine Ca. from Lake Elsinore. But I left at 4:20 am to avoid the heavy traffic. That was back in 1987.
However, coming home I could not miss the heaviest traffic unless I waited at least 2 hours before I got on the Freeway. Usually it would take me 3 – 4 hours to drive back home if I left directly from work at 4:15 pm!
Here’s how wasted time on freeways tallied up in 2019:
- Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA: Annual Delay — 119 hours.
- San Francisco-Oakland, CA: Annual Delay — 103 hours.
- Washington DC: Annual Delay — 102 hours.
- New York-Newark, NY: Annual Delay — 92 hours.
- Boston, MA: Annual Delay — 80 hours.
Among the major highways that connect LA to the rest of the country and Northern California include Interstate 5.
It runs south through San Diego to Tijuana Mexico and north through Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle to the Canadian border. Interstate 10 is the southernmost east–west, coast-to-coast Interstate Highway in the United States.
It goes to Jacksonville, Florida. U.S. Route 101 heads north to the California Central Coast, San Francisco, the Redwood Empire, and the Oregon and Washington coasts.
Airports in the Los Angeles Area
The main Los Angeles airport is Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). It is one of the busiest commercial airport in the world.
Other major nearby commercial airports include:
- (ONT) LA/Ontario International Airport owned by the city of Los Angeles; serves the Inland Empire.
- (BUR) Bob Hope Airport, formerly known as Burbank Airport; serves the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys
- (LGB) Long Beach Airport, serves the Long Beach/Harbor area
- (SNA) John Wayne Airport of Orange County
One of the world’s busiest general-aviation airports is also located in Los Angeles, Van Nuys Airport (VNY).
Seaports or Port of Entry
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 one of the busiest container ports in the world. The Port of Los Angeles is the busiest container port in the United States. It’s the largest cruise ship center on the West Coast of the United States.
The port includes four bridges: the Vincent Thomas Bridge, Henry Ford Bridge, Gerald Desmond Bridge, and Commodore Schuyler F. Heim Bridge. There are also smaller, non-industrial harbors along Los Angeles’ coastline. There is also passenger ferry service from San Pedro to the city of Avalon on Santa Catalina Island.
Population Makeup in L.A.
Note that probably all the population results are likely to change after the official 2020 census. That’s less than two months away until 2020.
Los Angeles is home to people from more than 140 countries speaking 224 different languages. There are ethnic enclaves or areas like Chinatown, Historic Filipinotown, Koreatown, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Tehrangeles, Little Tokyo, and Thai Town all of which help makeup the character of L.A.
According to the 2010 Census, the racial makeup of Los Angeles included: 1,888,158 Whites (49.8%), 365,118 African Americans (9.6%), 28,215 Native Americans (0.7%), 426,959 Asians (11.3%), 5,577 Pacific Islanders (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%).
Non-Hispanic whites were 28.7% of the population in 2010. Mexicans make up the largest ethnic group of Latinos at 31.9% of Los Angeles’ population, followed by Salvadorans (6.0%) and Guatemalans (3.6%).
The Latino population is spread throughout the city of Los Angeles and its metropolitan area. However, it is most heavily concentrated in the East L.A. region. That area has a long established Mexican American and Central American community.
Asian Ethnic Groups are also Represented
The largest Asian ethnic groups are Filipinos (3.2%) and Koreans (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’ population and reside mostly outside of Los Angeles city limits. A lot of Chinese are in the San Gabriel Valley of eastern Los Angeles County. 
Chinatown and Thaitown are also home to many Thais and Cambodians. They make up 0.3% and 0.1% of Los Angeles’ population, respectively.
Japanese comprise 0.9% of L.A.’s population, and have an established Little Tokyo in the city’s downtown. Another significant community of Japanese Americans is located in the Sawtelle district of West L.A.
Vietnamese make up 0.5% of Los Angeles’ population. L.A. has a rather small South Asian population. Indians make up 0.9% of the city’s population.
Los Angeles and its large metropolitan area are home to a large Middle Eastern population, including Armenians and Iranians. African Americans have the largest number of people in South Los Angeles. However, since the 1980s, there has been a large influx of immigration from Mexico and Central America.
That has now outnumbered the Blacks in South Los Angeles. South L.A., as well as neighboring communities such as the city of Compton that were home to predominant African American populations are now transforming into Hispanic communities.
Have you been here? If so, add your insights below about this interesting travel destination.
Los Angeles Travel Guide
by Attaché
Published on Youtube on Aug 22, 2017
Our Los Angeles travel guide! A big guide for a big city, Los Angeles is truly inspiring. As a native of California, I’m delighted to share Los Angeles with you. P.S. Be sure to watch to the very end for a little surprise…
We went full Hollywood for our guide to Los Angeles. The food, the stories, the culture, we dip into all of it. Los Angeles has so many angles, ideas, layers that it’s hard to do it justice but we want to show you at least some of what makes Los Angeles such a compelling city.
Environment in the Los Angeles Area
“The valley of smoke” was the name given by the Chumash tribe of Native Americans for the area now known as Los Angeles. Due to its to geography, very 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 and the San Fernando Valley are susceptible to atmospheric inversion. That holds in the exhausts from road vehicles, airplanes, locomotives, shipping, manufacturing, and other sources.
The smog season lasts from May to October. Unlike other large cities that rely on rain to clear smog, L.A. gets only 15 inches of rain each year.
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. The state of California has led the nation in working to limit pollution by mandating low-emission vehicles.
Despite this improvement, annual reports of the American Lung Association have ranked the city as the most polluted in the country.
Depending on which suburb one lives in outside of LA, the smog can be worse than in LA. For example I live in the Inland Empire region of Southern California. During the 40+ years I’ve lived here the air pollution has gotten far worse over the years.
As a personal estimate I would say the air pollution at least where I live, is now possibly 85% of the days there is noticeable air pollution. That’s compared to when I first moved here 31 years ago when it was the opposite.
Crime in Los Angeles
Los Angeles has been experiencing significant decline in crime since the mid-1990s like most American cities. It reached a 50-year low in 2009 with 314 homicides.
According to the L.A. Police Department, the city is home to 45,000 gang members, organized into 450 gangs.
Among them are the Crips and Bloods, which are both African American street gangs that originated in South L.A.
Latino street gangs such as the Sureños, a Mexican American street gang. Also Mara Salvatrucha, which has mainly members of Salvadoran descent, all originated in L.A. The 18th Street has a predominately Latino membership but is multiethnic.
This heavy gang population has led to the city being referred to as the “Gang Capital of America”.
However, crime overall at the end of 2018 was down. According to the Los Angeles Police Department preliminary results in early December 2018 as reported by the Los Angeles Times:
Overall, crime was down in all categories in 2018, except personal theft, which rose 3%. Property crime decreased by 2%, after increasing each year since 2015.
The latest LAPD report of April 2019 shows most of the gang crime was down.
Living in Downtown Los Angeles or elsewhere in LA
If a person were working in or near downtown Los Angeles (LA) they might consider living there. It would have great benefits aside from being close to work. Unfortunately for most people that would be out of the question. Why? Well unless one was making near the six-figure salary range or higher, the cost would probably be prohibitive. That eliminates many people.
Nevertheless, here is a short video of young millennial lady living in a loft in downtown LA. My daughter used to also live in a loft in downtown Los Angeles. They can be pretty nice, but are usually rather expensive.
First of all, it’s how you might look at the whole picture of living in downtown LA. If you can save hours a day from heavy traffic and the toll it takes on you, maybe living in downtown LA may not be so bad.
It can have great benefits if you work there. If that’s you and you can afford the rent, then there are a lot of great places to live in downtown LA.
Apartment Tour | My Downtown Los Angeles Loft
by AMY LEE
Published on Youtube on Jan 14, 2019
24 and living in my dream loft in my dream bed 😭 (though sob emoji’s primary intention is to carry comedic effect, I’ve actually genuinely cried about this lulz)
Conclusion
Actually the high cost of almost all homes in Los Angeles or close by are way higher than many other places in the USA. That’s why myself and millions of other people live in the suburbs and other outlying areas. Some move from apartments in or close to Los Angeles to homes they can afford in outlying areas.
Cost of homes are lower outside of Los Angeles County. Depending on the area, sometimes much lower than equivalent homes closer to LA.
Could you afford well over $500,000 to buy a home in Los Angeles? If not, you could always visit Los Angeles and experience the Southern California lifestyle.
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About the Author
Charles searches for quotes to add to his Wanderlust Quotes site. He is also adding his expertise to his new Cyber Security site for small businesses. If you’ve been bitten by the love bug or are involved in the dating scene, be sure to visit his newly revamped WeddingFervor site.
