Los Angeles

While the city’s innumerable individual neighbourhoods are easily approachable on their own terms, Los Angeles as a megalopolis explains itself only gradually, and certainly isn’t easily grasped, say, over a long weekend. But this dazzling inexplicability is precisely its appeal, particularly for the visitor. Avoid the peak morning and afternoon periods on the road, and the city is easier to navigate than you might expect. The sun continues to shine and the entertainment industry continues to make entertainment; between them, they still define Los Angeles above all its other characteristics. There are also other, perhaps more interesting, things happening elsewhere. A visual arts scene has sprung up almost out of nowhere and galleries are setting up shop everywhere, from clean-cut Culver City to shady Chinatown. Independent shops across the city are facing down homogenous mall culture and winning some battles, if not quite yet the war. The Downtown renaissance, heralded by the arrival several years of Disney Hall, has moved up a couple of gears, with two huge new developments set to change the face of the area. Excellent new restaurants are appearing all over town, further improving a dining scene that was already on the rise. And then there are the changes in the social and political landscape, reflected in the 2005 election of LA’s first Latino mayor for more than a century.

Local history

Human settlement in LA began with a series of Native American single-family suburbs scattered haphazardly across the landscape. These disparate neighbourhoods remain, but were joined up in the 1950s, 60s and 70s by the rapid construction of the freeway system. The movie industry came to LA in the 1910s and, since then, Hollywood has become the city’s economic and social centre.

Local politics

Over one-third of LA County residents were born overseas and, just as crucially, one-sixth of the population lives in poverty. LA’s wealthier residents feel unease at these demographic shifts. The election in 1973 of the city’s first African American mayor heralded an optimistic era of coalition-building between the black and white communities, but LA’s Latinos were largely absent from positions of political power until 2005, when the city elected its first Latino mayor in more than a century.