WEST LOS ANGELES
On the Westside of the City of Los Angeles there is a population of approximately 1,000,000 people and that includes both the incorporated areas and those that are incorporatated independant cities.
Bel Air, Beverly Crest, Beverlywood, Century City, Brentwood, Cheviot Hills, Pacific Palisades, Palms, Rancho Park, Sawtelle, West Los Angeles, Westwood Venice, Mar Vista, Playa del Rey, South Robertson, Playa Vista, and Westchester, as well as the incorporated cities of Beverly Hills, Culver City, Santa Monica, and the unincorporated county territory of Playa Visa and Marina del Rey.
People outside of Los Angeles visualize Los Angeles, but picture The Westside. In reality the Westside is a mall portion of the city.The misconception is due to Television and films that often show the westside. Why..Because there is such diverse housing. You will find oceanfront homes in Santa Monica, Play del rey Multimillion dollar homes overlooking the Pacific in Pacific Palisades and Beverly Hills, Brentwood areas. These along with small 1920s bungalows in the Culver City area to mention a few.
Century City is the main business hub of the Westside, containing many major production corporations, talent agencies, and entertainment law firms. New developments such as Playa Vista near LAX are important entertainment industry centers along with Venice, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills.
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.
Because the area lacks an effective mass transit system and due to the inadequate freeway system, the commute from these areas during high traffic times is horrible. A great deal of development took place in anticipation of new freeway construction, which never occurred resulting in significant congestion on the area’s surface streets. Because the proposals to widen the existing freeways or extend the Purple Line to the ocean have been stalled by their great expense, and with no relief in site, more recently, an old proposal to turn Pico and Olympic into one-way streets has been revived.
