Portal:Greater Los Angeles


The Greater Los Angeles Portal

Greater Los Angeles, or Southland, 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, with the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County at its center, and Orange County to the southeast. The Los Angeles–Long Beach combined statistical area (CSA) covers 33,954 square miles (87,940 km2), making it the largest metropolitan region in the United States by land area. The contiguous urban area is 2,281 square miles (5,910 km2), whereas the remainder mostly consists of mountain and desert areas. With an estimated population of almost 18.6 million (California Department of Finance, 2025), it is the second-largest metropolitan area in the country, behind New York, as well as one of the largest megacities in the world.

In addition to being the nexus of the global entertainment industry, including 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 third-largest metropolitan area by nominal GDP in the world with an economy exceeding $1 trillion in output, behind New York City and Tokyo.

There are three contiguous component urban areas in Greater Los Angeles: the Inland Empire, which can be broadly defined as Riverside and San Bernardino counties; the Ventura/Oxnard metropolitan area (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 (MSA), the fourth largest metropolitan area in the western hemisphere and the second-largest metropolitan area in the United States, by population of 13 million as of the 2020 U.S. census. It has a total area of 4,850 square miles (12,561 km2). Although San Diego–Tijuana borders the Greater Los Angeles area at San Clemente and Temecula, it is not part of it as the two urban areas are not geographically contiguous due to the presence of Camp Pendleton. However, both form part of the Southern California megalopolis which extends into Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. (Full article...)

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Manzanar is most widely known as the site of one of ten camps where over 110,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II. Located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California's Owens Valley between the towns of Lone Pine to the south and Independence to the north, it is approximately 230 miles (370 km) northeast of Los Angeles. Manzanar (which means "apple orchard" in Spanish) was identified by the United States National Park Service as the best-preserved of the former camp sites, and is now the Manzanar National Historic Site, which preserves and interprets the legacy of Japanese American incarceration in the United States.

Long before the first incarcerees arrived in March 1942, Manzanar was home to Native Americans, who mostly lived in villages near several creeks in the area. Ranchers and miners formally established the town of Manzanar in 1910, but abandoned the town by 1929 after the City of Los Angeles purchased the water rights to virtually the entire area. As different as these groups were, their histories displayed a common thread of forced relocation.

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November/December 2013

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Villaraigosa in 2013

Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa (/ˌvərˈɡsə/; Villar Jr. on January 23, 1953) is an American politician who served as the 41st Mayor of Los Angeles from 2005 to 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Villaraigosa was a national co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, a member of President Barack Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, and chair of the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

Before becoming mayor, he was a member of the California State Assembly (1994–2000), where he served as the Democratic Majority Leader (1996–98), and the Speaker of the California State Assembly (1998–2000). As speaker, Villaraigosa was an advocate for working families and helped to write legislation protecting the environment, expanding healthcare access, and increasing funding for public schools. (Full article...)

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