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Los Angeles Overview
Los Angeles, located on the Pacific coast of southern California, is the largest city in the state. Originally Spanish territory, the area beacame US property in 1848, with Los Angeles incorporated as a city in 1850. An attractive climate, the discovery of oil and the growth of the citrus fruit industry brought people to the city in droves during its first 100 years. Lockheed and Douglas aerospace plants in the area during World War I and the development of the motion picture industry in the 1920s both helped create a population explosion.
Today, metro Los Angeles is the nation's largest manufacturing area, home to one of its busiest ports, the distribution hub of the west coast and a gateway to Asia. LA is the entertainment capital of the world, with most of the country's major motion picture, television and recorded music operations based there. The city's humongous metropolitan area is the second-largest in the country, with over 14,000,000 people spread over a land area the size of Maine. Thirty of LA's suburbs have populations of 80,000 or more. Los Angeles is very diverse, with people from over 140 countries and the largest Latin-American and Asian-American populations of any US city.
Los Angeles has a population of nearly 4 million people in the city limits; 10.2 million in Los Angeles county, and 18 million in “Greater L.A.” (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties).
Los Angeles Culture and People
In a city of 4 million Los Angeles is:
- 44% Latino
- 31% White
- 12% Asian
- 9% African American
- 0.4% Native American
As
of the 2000 census more than 30% of the population of Los Angeles was
foreign born. This does not include the thousands of the immigrants
that stream through, using Los Angeles as a point of entry before
moving to another city. The native lands of Los Angeles residents
represent more than 140 different countries throughout the world.
For
the 4 million residents of Los Angeles there are less than 10,000
police officers. Los Angeles also has over 63,000 gang members and gang
members outnumber police 7 to 1. The LAPD handles over 3.3 million
phone calls each year. 1.9 million of those calls are 9-1-1 emergency
calls.
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