Los Angeles

Article Outline

Introduction; Los Angeles and Its Metropolitan Area; People of Los Angeles; Education and Culture; Recreation; Economy; Government; History

Greater Los Angeles

Greater Los Angeles, or the Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA, a standard U.S. Census Bureau designation), includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties. In 2000 the Los Angeles CMSA was the second-largest CMSA in the United States (after the greater New York CMSA) in terms of population, with 16,373,645 people. Since the 1980s, when most of the livable space of central Los Angeles and Orange counties was occupied, the fastest-growing areas have been on the eastern extent of the metropolis, in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Besides those already listed, the principal cities of the Los Angeles CMSA are Santa Ana (340,024) and Anaheim (334,425), in Orange County (southeast of Los Angeles County); San Bernardino (198,985) and Riverside (293,761), in San Bernardino and Riverside counties (to the east) and Oxnard (184,463) and Ventura (officially San Buenaventura, 104,017), in Ventura County, which marks the western extent of the Los Angeles CMSA.

III

People of Los Angeles

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The residents of Los Angeles are called Angelenos. In the year 2000, the population of the City of Los Angeles was 3,694,820, that of Los Angeles County was 9,519,338, and that of the Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County CMSA was 16,373,645. In 2006, the population of the City of Los Angeles was estimated at 3,849,378.

Growth of Los Angeles

The population of the Los Angeles metropolitan region has grown spectacularly since the 1880s, when the city was barely more than a minor cow town. By 1920 the population of Los Angeles County (the most consistent area of comparison) had reached nearly 1 million. Another 1 million arrived during the 1920s alone, a period in which Los Angeles’s basic dispersed urban and residential patterns were established.

Cultural Diversity

Beside its massive growth, the most distinctive change in Los Angeles’s population in the second half of the 20th century was its rapid transformation into one of the most diverse and multicultural cities in the United States. In 1990 Los Angeles became the first of the largest U.S. cities in which no ethnic or racial group formed a majority. According to the 2000 census, non-Hispanic whites made up 30.1 percent of the population of the City of Los Angeles, blacks 11.2 percent, Asians 10 percent, Native Americans 0.8 percent, and Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders 0.2 percent. Hispanics, who may be of any race, made up 46.5 percent of the city’s people. Los Angeles County also transformed into a diverse and multicultural area.

The transformation of the city’s ethnic character is attributable primarily to 1965 reforms in U.S. immigration policy, officially ending bias in favor of Northern European immigrants and opening the doors to massive immigration from Latin America and Asia. Los Angeles, with its historic connections to and proximity with Mexico, as well as its prominent position on the Pacific Rim, became a leading port of entry for immigrants. In the early 21st century, more than 20 languages were spoken in the public schools, the principal languages being English and Spanish. Hundreds of religions and religious denominations are represented in Los Angeles.

After 1965, the Hispanic (often called Latino in California) population grew rapidly. The Mexican community is particularly significant, making up 79 percent of the region’s Hispanic population. More Mexicans live in Los Angeles than in any city except Mexico City. The region has also attracted large numbers of immigrants from Central America. People from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua form the largest Hispanic communities after those of Mexican origin. In 2005 Los Angeles elected its first Hispanic mayor since 1872, Antonio Villaraigosa, a Mexican American.

Asian peoples began migrating to the region in large numbers during the Gold Rush of 1849. Chinese were the most numerous Asian group until the early 20th century, when large numbers of Japanese immigrants temporarily supplanted them. A community of Korean political exiles settled in Los Angeles during the years of the Japanese occupation of Korea (1905-1945) and became the nucleus of a much larger Korean American community after 1965. By 1990 Los Angeles was home to the largest Korean community outside of Korea itself. Filipinos have immigrated to Los Angeles primarily in search of economic opportunity. Vietnamese have come to the region principally as refugees since the end of the Vietnam War (1959-1975) and the start of new conflicts in Southeast Asia in the 1970s.

Los Angeles is home to the second largest Jewish community in the United States after greater New York. Jews from Eastern and Northern Europe first settled in the area in the 19th century, and Jewish immigration increased dramatically during Germany’s Nazi dictatorship from 1933 to 1945. After World War II large groups of Jews from the Middle East also made their home in Los Angeles. Prominent among these later Jewish immigrants are refugees from the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran, who usually call themselves Persians.

Other large southwest Asian and Middle Eastern communities include Armenians, Arabs, and Iranians. These groups have grown dramatically since 1970 primarily because of conflict in their home regions, but also because of the search for educational and economic opportunities.

Education and Culture