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The Los Angeles metro area include additional major league teams. The Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer is based in Carson. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of Major League Baseball and the Anaheim Ducks of the National Hockey League are in the Los Angeles media market and are based in Anaheim in Orange County. The Angels began as an expansion franchise team in Los Angeles in 1961 before moving to Anaheim in 1966.[121] The Ducks, who have played in Anaheim since their inception as an expansion team in 1993, were originally owned by Disney. The team adopted its current name in 2006, a year after Disney sold the franchise.[122]
Other notable sports teams include the Los Angeles Sparks of the Women's National Basketball Association. Los Angeles is also home to the USC Trojans and the UCLA Bruins in the NCAA, both of which are Division I teams in the Pacific-12 Conference.
Los Angeles is the second-largest television market in the United States but has no NFL team. At one time Los Angeles area had two NFL teams, the Rams and the Raiders. Both left the city in 1995, with the Rams moving to St. Louis, and the Raiders heading back to their original home of Oakland. Prior to 1995, the Rams called Memorial Coliseum home (1946–1979) and the Raiders played their home games at Memorial Coliseum from 1982 to 1994.
Since the franchises' departures, the NFL and individual NFL owners have attempted to relocate a team to the city. Following the 1995 NFL season, the Seattle Seahawks planned to play in the Rose Bowl under a new team name and logo for the 1996 season, but the State of Washington filed a lawsuit to prevent the move.[123] Despite the failure to build a new stadium for an NFL team, Los Angeles is still expected to return to the league through expansion or relocation.[124] On August 9, 2011, the LA City Council approved plans to build Farmers Field, which may become home to an NFL team in the future.[125]
Los Angeles has twice played host to the Summer Olympic Games, in 1932 and in 1984. When the tenth Olympic Games were hosted in 1932, the former 10th Street was renamed Olympic Blvd. Super Bowls I and VII were also held in the city as well as multiple FIFA World Cup games in 1994 including the final. Los Angeles will host the Special Olympics World Summer Games in 2015.[126]
Los Angeles boasts a number of sports venues, including Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles Coliseum, The Forum, the StubHub Center, and the Staples Center. Staples Center also serves as the home arena for the Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA, the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA, and the Los Angeles Kings of the NHL. It was also home to the Los Angeles Avengers of the original AFL, a team that did not participate in that league's ongoing revival.
Los Angeles is a charter city as opposed to a general law city. The elected government consists of the Los Angeles City Council and the Mayor of Los Angeles which operate under a mayor-council government, as well as the city attorney (not to be confused with the district attorney, a county office) and controller. The current mayor is Eric Garcetti. There are 15 city council districts.
The city has many departments and appointed officers, including the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT), and the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL).
The Charter of the City of Los Angeles ratified by voters in 1999 created a system of advisory neighborhood councils that would represent the diversity of stakeholders, defined as those who live, work or own property in the neighborhood. The neighborhood councils are relatively autonomous and spontaneous in that they identify their own boundaries, establish their own bylaws, and elect their own officers. There are currently about 90 neighborhood councils.
Residents of Los Angeles elect supervisors for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th supervisorial districts.
In the California State Assembly, Los Angeles is split between fourteen districts:[127] the 38th, 39th, 43rd, 45th, 46th, 50th, 51st, 53rd, 54th, 59th, 62nd, 64th, 66th, and 70th districts.
In the California State Senate, Los Angeles is split between eight districts:[128] the 18th, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 30th, 33rd, and 35th districts.
In the United States House of Representatives, Los Angeles is split between ten congressional districts:[129]
Like most American cities, Los Angeles has been experiencing significant decline in crime since the mid-1990s, and reached a 50-year low in 2009 with 314 homicides.[140][141] This is a rate of 7.85 per 100,000 population—a major decrease from 1993, when the all-time high homicide rate of over 21.1 per 100,000 was reported for the year.[142] This included 15 officer-involved shootings. One shooting led to the death of a SWAT team member, Randal Simmons, the first in LAPD's history.[143] Los Angeles in the year of 2013 totaled 251 murders, a decrease of 16 percent from the previous year. Police speculate that the drop resulted from a number of factors, including young people spending more time online.[144]
The Prohibition era[145] and reached its peak during the 1940s and 1950s as part of the American Mafia but has gradually declined since then with the rise of various black and Hispanic gangs.[146]
According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the city is home to 45,000 gang members, organized into 450 gangs.[147] Among them are the Crips and Bloods, which are both African American street gangs that originated in South Los Angeles. Latino street gangs such as the Sureños, a Mexican American street gang, and Mara Salvatrucha, which has mainly members of Salvadoran descent, all originated in Los Angeles. The 18th Street has a predominately Latino membership but is multiethnic. This has led to the city being referred to as the "Gang Capital of America".[148]
There are three public universities located within the city limits: California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA), California State University, Northridge (CSUN) and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Private colleges in the city include the American Film Institute Conservatory, Alliant International University, Syracuse University (Los Angeles Campus), American Jewish University, The American Musical and Dramatic Academy – Los Angeles campus, Antioch University's Los Angeles campus, Biola University, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, Emperor's College, Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising's Los Angeles campus (FIDM), Los Angeles Film School, Loyola Marymount University (LMU is also the parent university of Loyola Law School located in Los Angeles), Marymount College, Mount St. Mary's College, National University of California, Occidental College ("Oxy"), Otis College of Art and Design (Otis), Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Southwestern Law School, and University of Southern California (USC).
The community college system consists of nine campuses governed by the trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District: East Los Angeles College (ELAC), Los Angeles City College (LACC), Los Angeles Harbor College, Los Angeles Mission College, Los Angeles Pierce College, Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC), Los Angeles Southwest College, Los Angeles Trade-Technical College and West Los Angeles College.
There are numerous additional colleges and universities in the Greater Los Angeles area. The Claremont Colleges consortium, which includes some of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in the United States, is located 35 miles (56 km) east of downtown Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Unified School District serves almost all of the city of Los Angeles, as well as several surrounding communities, with a student population around 800,000.[149] After Proposition 13 was approved in 1978, urban school districts had considerable trouble with funding. LAUSD has become known for its underfunded, overcrowded and poorly maintained campuses, although its 162 Magnet schools help compete with local private schools. Several small sections of Los Angeles are in the Las Virgenes Unified School District. The Los Angeles County Office of Education operates the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. The Los Angeles Public Library system operates 72 public libraries in the city.[150] Enclaves of unincorporated areas are served by branches of the County of Los Angeles Public Library, many of which are within walking distance to residents.
The major daily English-language newspaper in the area is the Los Angeles Times. La Opinión is the city's major daily Spanish-language paper, The Korea Times is the city's major daily Korean language paper, and The Los Angeles Sentinel is the city's major African-American weekly paper, boasting the largest Black readership in the Western United States. Investor's Business Daily is distributed from its L.A. corporate offices, which are headquartered in Playa Del Rey.
There are also a number of smaller regional newspapers, alternative weeklies and magazines, including the Los Angeles Register, Daily News (which focuses coverage on the San Fernando Valley), LA Weekly, L.A. Record (which focuses coverage on the music scene in the Greater Los Angeles Area), Los Angeles magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Los Angeles Daily Journal (legal industry paper), The Hollywood Reporter and Variety (entertainment industry papers), and Los Angeles Downtown News. In addition to the major papers, numerous local periodicals serve immigrant communities in their native languages, including Armenian, English, Korean, Persian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, and Arabic. Many cities adjacent to Los Angeles also have their own daily newspapers whose coverage and availability overlaps into certain Los Angeles neighborhoods. Examples include The Daily Breeze (serving the South Bay), and The Long Beach Press-Telegram.
Los Angeles and New York City are the only two media markets to have seven VHF allocations assigned to them.[151]
The city has major broadcast channels as well as three PBS stations. World TV operates on two channels and the area has several Spanish-language television networks. KTBN 40 is the flagship station of the religious Trinity Broadcasting Network, based out of Santa Ana. A variety of independent television stations also operate in the area.
The city and the rest of the Los Angeles metropolitan area are served by an extensive network of freeways and highways. The Texas Transportation Institute, which publishes an annual Urban Mobility Report, ranked Los Angeles road traffic as the most congested in the United States in 2005 as measured by annual delay per traveler.[152] The average traveler in Los Angeles experienced 72 hours of traffic delay per year according to the study. Los Angeles was followed by San Francisco/Oakland, Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, (each with 60 hours of delay).[153] Despite the congestion in the city, the mean travel time for commuters in Los Angeles is shorter than other major cities, including New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago. Los Angeles' mean travel time for work commutes in 2006 was 29.2 minutes, similar to those of San Francisco and Washington, D.C.[154]
Among the major highways that connect LA to the rest of the nation include Interstate 5, which runs south through San Diego to Tijuana in Mexico and north through Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle to the Canadian border; Interstate 10, the southernmost east–west, coast-to-coast Interstate Highway in the United States, going to Jacksonville, Florida; and U.S. Route 101, which heads to the California Central Coast, San Francisco, the Redwood Empire, and the Oregon and Washington coasts.
The LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and other agencies operate an extensive system of bus lines, as well as subway and light rail lines across Los Angeles County, with a combined monthly ridership (measured in individual boardings) of 38.8 million as of September 2011. The majority of this (30.5 million) is taken up by the city's bus system,[155] the second busiest in the country. The subway and light rail combined average the remaining roughly 8.2 million boardings per month.[155] In 2005, 10.2% of Los Angeles commuters rode some form of public transportation.[156]
The city's subway system is the ninth busiest in the United States and its light rail system is the country's second busiest.[157] The rail system includes the Red and Purple subway lines, as well as the Gold, Blue, Expo, and Green light rail lines. The Metro Orange and Silver lines are bus rapid transit lines with stops and frequency similar to those of light rail. The city is also central to the commuter rail system Metrolink, which links Los Angeles to all neighboring counties as well as many suburbs.
Besides the rail service provided by Metrolink and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Los Angeles is served by inter-city passenger trains from Amtrak. The main rail station in the city is Union Station just north of Downtown.
The main international and domestic airport serving Los Angeles is ICAO: KLAX), commonly referred to by its airport code, LAX. The sixth busiest commercial airport in the world and the third busiest in the United States, LAX handled over 66 million passengers and close to 2 million tons of cargo in 2013.
Other major nearby commercial airports include:
One of the world's busiest general-aviation airports is also located in Los Angeles, ICAO: KVNY).[158]
The Port of Los Angeles is located in San Pedro Bay in the San Pedro neighborhood, approximately 20 miles (32 km) south of Downtown. Also called Los Angeles Harbor and WORLDPORT LA, the port complex occupies 7,500 acres (30 km2) of land and water along 43 miles (69 km) of waterfront. It adjoins the separate Port of Long Beach.
The sea ports of the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach together make up the Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor.[159][160][161] Together, both ports are the fifth busiest container port in the world, with a trade volume of over 14.2 million TEU's in 2008.[162] Singly, the Port of Los Angeles is the busiest container port in the United States and the largest cruise ship center on the West Coast of the United States – The Port of Los Angeles' World Cruise Center served about 800,000 passengers in 2009.[163]
There are also smaller, non-industrial harbors along Los Angeles' coastline. The port includes four bridges: the Vincent Thomas Bridge, Henry Ford Bridge, Gerald Desmond Bridge, and Commodore Schuyler F. Heim Bridge. Passenger ferry service from San Pedro to the city of Avalon on Santa Catalina Island is provided by Catalina Express.
As home to Hollywood and its entertainment industry, numerous singers, actors and other entertainers live in various districts of Los Angeles.
Los Angeles has 25 sister cities,[164] listed chronologically by year joined:
In addition, Los Angeles has the following "friendship cities":[172][173]
Los Angeles itself was built over a Gabrielino village called Yangna or iyaanga', 'poison oak place.'
The Native American name for Los Angeles was Yang na, which translates into “the valley of smoke.”
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