Beverly Hills, CA

Beverly Hills is a small, self-governing city surrounded on nearly every side by Los Angeles, sitting on the Westside of Los Angeles County between West Hollywood, Century City and the Santa Monica Mountains. Down low, the Golden Triangle packs the shops, hotels and offices around Rodeo Drive. The Flats run north from there to Sunset on a grid of wide, straight streets, and South of Wilshire holds the smaller lots, duplexes and apartment buildings. Homes change with the ground. The Flats mix 1920s Spanish and Tudor houses with big new builds that replace older ones year after year. The canyons hold estate houses on irregular parcels behind their own gates, and Trousdale keeps a long run of single-story midcentury moderns with open views over the basin. Beverly Gardens Park stretches along Santa Monica Boulevard with a jogging path, a lily pond and the famous sign, and Roxbury Park has lawn bowling alongside its tennis courts. Greystone Mansion opens its terraced grounds to walkers, and real hiking means a short drive up Beverly Drive to Franklin Canyon. Eating out centers on the blocks of Beverly and Canon drives. Alfred Coffee on Beverly Drive is the easy morning stop, with the grocery anchors close by. Daily life on the flat half is walkable, and a new D Line subway station now sits at the eastern edge of town. The tradeoff is traffic. Most people who live in Beverly Hills end up running errands on foot and treating the car as a way out of town.