Westside (Los Angeles County)

West Los Angeles (also known as West L.A. or the Westside) comprises the Los Angeles city communities of Bel Air, Beverly Crest, Beverlywood, Century City, Brentwood, Cheviot Hills, Pacific Palisades, Palms, Rancho Park, Sawtelle, West Los Angeles, Westwood [http://www.laalmanac.com/cities/ci93.htm"(Los Angeles Almanac)"] , Venice, Mar Vista, Playa del Rey, and Westchester, as well as the incorporated cities of Beverly Hills, Culver City, Santa Monica, West Hollywood,and the unincorporated county territory of Marina del Rey. [http://www.tierraproperties.com/westside_topics/community_profiles/overview.htm]

The "Westside" of Los Angeles usually refers to the area north of Slauson Avenue, south of the Sunset Boulevard, west of La Brea Avenue or La Cienega Boulevard to the Pacific Ocean. Western Avenue was once considered the starting point of the westside of the city. Today, the area between La Brea Avenue and Western Avenue is part of Mid-City Los Angeles. [http://travel.yahoo.com/p-map-191501884-map_of_los_angeles_ca-i]

Note that the homes north of Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Holmby Hills and the Pacific Palisades are also considered part of the "Westside" of Los Angeles.

West Los Angeles is in a temperate Csa Mediterranean-type climate zone according to Köppen climate classification.

Business and transportation

Many of the major educational, retail, cultural, and recreational attractions of Greater Los Angeles are located in this area, as is a large portion of the entertainment industry. Century City is a major business hub of the Westside, containing many major production corporations, talent agencies, and entertainment law firms.

Culver City houses several film studios and commercial effects houses. Santa Monica, Venice, Beverly Hills, and new developments near LAX are also important entertainment industry centers.

The Westside rivals downtown Los Angeles for the number of people commuting to it from other areas, particularly the San Fernando Valley to the north and the South Bay to the south.

The proposed Pacific Coast, Beverly Hills, and Laurel Canyon freeways went unbuilt in the face of massive community opposition. A great deal of development took place in anticipation of these roadways' construction, resulting in significant congestion on the area's surface streets. Getting to Hollywood from the West Side is particularly difficult. Major east-west streets between the regions are jammed during much of the day. Proposals to widen the existing freeways or extend the Purple Line to the ocean have been stalled by their great expense; more recently, an old proposal to turn Pico and Olympic into one-way streets has been revived. [Guccione, Jean, "One-way streets may get Westside on the fast track," "Los Angeles Times" 29 March 2007: A1.]

Demographics and culture

For years, the Westside was overwhelmingly white but recently the region's cultural diversity is increasing. West L.A. is home to many Caucasian and Asian professionals, but it also contains a number of African Americans and Hispanics.

The majority of the Westside is affluent, while a small percent has working, middle class families living in the region.Fact|date=July 2008 Certain parts of the Westside — in Venice, Culver City, Santa Monica and South Robertson — have a gang problem, although it has been reported that many gang members have moved east and south due to gentrification and increased police vigilance [ [http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=362&IssueNum=22 Los Angeles CityBeat - Gangster's Paradise Lost ] ] .

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