Safest Neighborhoods in Los Angeles, CA

Mandeville Canyon runs north from Sunset Boulevard for about three miles and never comes out the other side. No other dead-end road in Los Angeles runs longer. It feels rural in a way the flats below do not, with horse properties, a private riding ring and houses set well back from the road along the canyon floor. ... See Full Page

Pacific Palisades is where Los Angeles runs out of city and into the Santa Monica Mountains and the ocean, and since the January 2025 Palisades Fire it has been a place in the middle of rebuilding. ... See Full Page

Century City in Los Angeles was built on the old 20th Century Fox backlot in the 1960s, and it still reads as a planned district of office towers where people also happen to live. Beverly Hills starts at its eastern edge, and Cheviot Hills and Rancho Park sit across Pico Boulevard to the south. ... See Full Page

Beverly Crest sits on the spine of the Santa Monica Mountains, a hillside part of Los Angeles that runs along Mulholland Drive between the Beverly Hills flats and the Valley. The canyons do the organizing here, with Coldwater and Beverly Glen carrying most of the traffic up and over the ridge. ... See Full Page

Shadow Hills is horse country inside Los Angeles, one of the last neighborhoods in the city zoned mostly for keeping horses, and residents have fought for decades to keep it that way. It sits in the northwest Verdugo Mountains between Sunland and Sun Valley, with Hansen Dam just to the northwest and La Tuna Canyon to the southeast. ... See Full Page

Porter Ranch sits at the San Fernando Valley's northern tip in Los Angeles, where streets climb into the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains above the 118 freeway. Next to older Northridge and Granada Hills, it reads newer and more planned, with wide boulevards, landscaped slopes and gated enclaves stepping up the hillsides. ... See Full Page

Brentwood runs from the flats along San Vicente Boulevard up into the canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains on the Westside of Los Angeles, and Sunset Boulevard splits it into two different places. South of Sunset are walkable streets and the restaurant stretch of San Vicente. North of it the roads narrow into hillside enclaves. ... See Full Page

Bel Air climbs from Sunset Boulevard into the Santa Monica Mountains across from UCLA, and in Los Angeles it is shorthand for estates tucked behind hedges on winding hillside roads. Alphonzo Bell laid it out in 1923 with large lots and Italian street names, and the white East and West Gates on Sunset still mark the way in. ... See Full Page

Playa Vista sits on the land where Hughes Aircraft built the Spruce Goose, and the giant hangar still stands in this Los Angeles neighborhood, now filled with tech offices. Construction on the planned community began in 2001 on the flats below the Westchester bluffs, next to Del Rey, Marina del Rey and the Ballona Wetlands. ... See Full Page

Westwood Village, the Mediterranean Revival shopping district the Janss family opened in 1929, gives this Los Angeles neighborhood something unusual on the Westside, an old walkable downtown. The neighborhood stretches from the UCLA campus south along Westwood Boulevard to Santa Monica Boulevard, with Beverly Hills on its eastern flank and the 405 on its western one. ... See Full Page

Tujunga started in 1907 as Little Landers, a utopian farm colony at the northern edge of what is now Los Angeles, and its stone community hall from 1913 still stands on Commerce Avenue as Bolton Hall Museum. ... See Full Page

West Hills takes up the San Fernando Valley's far western corner, where the flat Los Angeles grid runs out against the Simi Hills and the open ridges behind El Escorpion Park. ... See Full Page

Beverlywood is a Los Angeles neighborhood where a homes association still has a say in how each house looks, a rule developer Walter Leimert wrote into the tract when it opened in 1940. It sits just south of Pico Boulevard, with Cheviot Hills and the Hillcrest Country Club along its western side. ... See Full Page

Cheviot Hills is one of the few Los Angeles neighborhoods where the streets actually roll, curving over low hills between Rancho Park Golf Course and the Hillcrest Country Club. It sits between Rancho Park and Beverlywood, with Century City a short drive north, and film crews have used its winding blocks since the Laurel and Hardy days. ... See Full Page

Sunland sits in a foothill valley at the northeast edge of Los Angeles, with the Verdugo Mountains on one side and the San Gabriels on the other. Tujunga shares the valley to the east and Shadow Hills lies to the west. ... See Full Page

Woodland Hills fills the San Fernando Valley's far southwest corner, where Los Angeles meets the Santa Monica Mountains and the Calabasas line. It started in 1922 as the town of Girard, whose founder planted thousands of trees to draw buyers, and the pepper trees he set along Canoga Avenue are now a city landmark. ... See Full Page

Chatsworth is the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, where sandstone boulders pile up along the Santa Susana Pass and horse trails run behind ordinary suburban blocks. ... See Full Page

Arleta is a compact, mostly single-family neighborhood in the northeast San Fernando Valley, and it became its own place in 1968 after the new Golden State Freeway cut it off from the rest of Pacoima. This part of Los Angeles is quieter than the corridors around it, with Panorama City, Sun Valley and Mission Hills on its borders. ... See Full Page

Eagle Rock takes its name from the huge boulder at the north end of Figueroa Street, whose shadow looks like a bird with spread wings, and that rock still watches over this corner of Los Angeles between Glendale and Pasadena. ... See Full Page

Glassell Park climbs the Repetto Hills between Atwater Village and Eagle Rock in Northeast Los Angeles, and daily life here runs along two short commercial streets, Eagle Rock Boulevard and Verdugo Road. Street names like Toland Way, Drew Street and Andrita come from the Glassell family, who settled the land after the 1870s partition of the old rancho. ... See Full Page

Atwater Village sits on the east bank of the Los Angeles River, across the water from Griffith Park, and its main street still reads like a small town set down inside the city. Glendale Boulevard is the spine, and its wide median once carried Red Car streetcar tracks until the line shut down in 1955. ... See Full Page

Palms, founded in 1886, is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles and joined the city in 1915, and today it is one of the city's densest, a grid of apartment buildings between Culver City, Mar Vista and Cheviot Hills. ... See Full Page

Sylmar is the top of Los Angeles, the northernmost neighborhood in the city, tucked against the San Gabriel Mountains where the 5 and 210 freeways meet. Its name blends the Latin for forest and sea, a nod to the olive orchards that by the early 1900s made up one of the largest olive groves in the world. ... See Full Page

Granada Hills runs from the flat San Fernando Valley floor in Los Angeles up to the Santa Susana foothills, and its name comes from the Spanish word for pomegranate, a nod to the orchards that once covered it. ... See Full Page

Winnetka began in 1922 as the Weeks Poultry Colony, a settlement of one-acre egg farms laid out by Charles Weeks, who named it after his earlier farm in Illinois. ... See Full Page

Pacoima is known across Los Angeles for its Mural Mile, a stretch of Van Nuys Boulevard where wall after wall carries portraits, local history and pieces like a large Frida Kahlo mural made by local and visiting artists. ... See Full Page

Mar Vista in Los Angeles runs uphill from Venice Boulevard toward Grand View Boulevard, and on Sundays the corner where those two streets meet turns into the neighborhood's farmers market. It sits between Venice, Palms and Santa Monica, with the 405 along its eastern edge and Culver City to the south. ... See Full Page

Valley Village is a pocket of Los Angeles that broke away from North Hollywood in 1991 and put up its own street signs, and it still reads as the quieter residential stretch between NoHo and Studio City. It sits north of the 101 and west of the 170, with Magnolia, Laurel Canyon and Burbank boulevards carrying the shops. ... See Full Page

El Sereno sits on the eastern edge of Los Angeles, bordered by Alhambra, Monterey Park and South Pasadena, and its rolling hills give many streets long views back toward downtown. It was called Bairdstown when the city annexed it in 1915, and the El Sereno name arrived a year later. ... See Full Page

Valley Glen is home to muralist Judy Baca's Great Wall of Los Angeles, painted for half a mile along the concrete Tujunga Wash that retells California history from the viewpoint of women and people of color. ... See Full Page

Highland Park grew up along York Boulevard and North Figueroa Street in Northeast Los Angeles, and those two commercial strips still set the pace of the place. Longtime taquerias, panaderias and discount markets share blocks with newer wine bars and coffee counters, while the Arroyo Seco marks the southeastern edge. ... See Full Page

West Los Angeles is anchored by Sawtelle Boulevard, the Japanese-American corridor that has become one of the city's best-known food streets. The neighborhood sits west of the 405 between Santa Monica, Brentwood and Mar Vista, with Olympic and Santa Monica boulevards cutting through it. ... See Full Page

Mt. Washington rises between Highland Park and Glassell Park in Northeast Los Angeles, where living here mostly means living on the hill, with narrow roads switching back through the San Rafael Hills far above the traffic on Figueroa. ... See Full Page

Del Rey is a compact Los Angeles neighborhood almost surrounded by Culver City, with Marina del Rey, Venice and Playa Vista at its other edges. It grew up around a 1902 streetcar line and market gardens that were still growing celery into the 1950s, and the old rail route now carries a bike path. ... See Full Page

Carthay is the Los Angeles neighborhood where a 1920s subdivision plan still sets the tone, with three historic districts, Carthay Circle, Carthay Square and South Carthay, keeping the original streetscape intact. ... See Full Page

Elysian Valley, the Los Angeles neighborhood almost everyone calls Frogtown, is a narrow strip of homes pressed between the Los Angeles River and the 5 freeway. The nickname goes back to the frogs that used to come up off the riverbank, and the river is still what defines the place. ... See Full Page

Toluca Lake is built around a lake most people never see. The six-acre water in this Los Angeles enclave is private, ringed by homes and the Lakeside Golf Club, and hidden from the street, so the public face of the place is Riverside Drive, a short village strip between Burbank and Studio City. ... See Full Page

Lakeview Terrace wraps around Hansen Dam, the flood control basin that gives this corner of Los Angeles its biggest open space. The neighborhood has two faces, with denser blocks on the west side near Foothill Boulevard and a rural east side zoned for horses, where riding trails lead straight into the basin. ... See Full Page

Harbor City has a lake in the middle of it, which is not something many Los Angeles neighborhoods can say. Machado Lake anchors Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park on the east side, and on a quiet morning the birds on the water outnumber the joggers. ... See Full Page

Northridge is the San Fernando Valley's college town, a Los Angeles neighborhood built around Cal State Northridge and the Reseda Boulevard strip that feeds it. The campus, opened in 1956, gives the neighborhood a busier daytime rhythm than Porter Ranch or Granada Hills to the north, and the name reached the world after the 1994 earthquake. ... See Full Page

Reseda grew up around the corner of Sherman Way and Reseda Boulevard, and that crossroads is still the center of this Valley neighborhood of Los Angeles. ... See Full Page

Tarzana owes its name to Edgar Rice Burroughs, who bought a ranch here in 1919 and named it after his jungle hero before subdividing it into lots. Today this Los Angeles neighborhood runs from the San Fernando Valley flats north of Ventura Boulevard up into canyons that end at Topanga State Park. ... See Full Page

North Hills, a Los Angeles neighborhood at the San Fernando Valley's center, straddles the 405 between Bull Creek and the Pacoima Wash. It was called Sepulveda until 1991, when residents voted to take a new name, and the Sepulveda VA medical campus keeps the old name alive. ... See Full Page

Sun Valley spreads across the flats below the Verdugo Mountains in the northeast Valley, a hardworking part of Los Angeles where former gravel pits, truck yards and industrial lots share space with quiet residential streets. It took its current name in 1950, and it borders Burbank, North Hollywood, Pacoima and the horse country of Shadow Hills. ... See Full Page

Lake Balboa is named for the lake at the heart of the Sepulveda Basin, and that open water sets this San Fernando Valley pocket of Los Angeles apart from the denser blocks of Van Nuys next door. The area was part of Van Nuys until the City Council approved the new name in 2007. ... See Full Page

Ventura Boulevard is the spine of Sherman Oaks, and along this stretch of Los Angeles it is lined block after block with sit-down restaurants, coffee counters and bakeries. The neighborhood sits where the 405 meets the 101, with Studio City to the east, Encino to the west and the Santa Monica Mountains rising to the south. ... See Full Page

Mission Hills takes its name from Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana, and the mission's adobe buildings still anchor this northeast San Fernando Valley neighborhood in Los Angeles. ... See Full Page

Hancock Park is the Los Angeles neighborhood people picture when they think of the city's old estate district, with big period houses set far back from the street around the Wilshire Country Club. G. ... See Full Page

San Pedro sits at the bottom of Los Angeles where the city finally runs out of land, a working port town with cliffs, tide pools and a harbor full of cranes on one side and open Pacific on the other. ... See Full Page

Westchester began as Fritz Burns' affordable housing tract on old hog-farm land near where Manchester meets Sepulveda in the late 1930s, and this slice of Los Angeles still reads as a postwar suburb on the bluff above the coast. ... See Full Page

Encino takes its name from the oaks that once covered this stretch of the San Fernando Valley, and this Los Angeles neighborhood still has a monument at Ventura Boulevard and Louise Avenue for the ancient Encino Oak that fell in a 1998 storm. ... See Full Page

Harbor Gateway is the long, skinny strip of Los Angeles that the city annexed in 1906 to reach the port, and locals still call it the Shoestring. In places it's barely a half mile wide, squeezed between Gardena and Torrance on the west and Carson on the east. ... See Full Page

Jefferson Park is a South Los Angeles neighborhood of Craftsman bungalows built mostly between 1905 and 1920, and the collection here is unusually intact for a city this size. Its historic preservation district, adopted in 2011, covers the blocks between Adams and Exposition boulevards, and fourteen city historic monuments dot the area. ... See Full Page

Miracle Mile in Los Angeles is where the city first built a shopping street for drivers, and today that same stretch of Wilshire Boulevard is Museum Row, lined with LACMA, the Petersen Automotive Museum, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, plus the La Brea Tar Pits. Developer A.W. ... See Full Page

Playa Del Rey is the Los Angeles beach neighborhood between Ballona Creek and LAX, where sand dunes, a lagoon and a short village strip on Culver Boulevard set it apart from the busier coast to the north. Marina del Rey sits across the creek, and Westchester rises on the bluffs to the east. ... See Full Page

Longwood is a small Los Angeles pocket between Washington and Adams boulevards, just west of Crenshaw, where a pair of commercial strips carries more culinary weight than its size suggests. The residential blocks are quiet and low, and the neighborhood is often lumped in with West Adams and Mid-City even though it has its own feel. ... See Full Page

Canoga Park started life in 1912 as Owensmouth, and its old downtown along Sherman Way, once nicknamed Antique Alley, is still the core of this west San Fernando Valley neighborhood in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles River also begins here, where Bell Creek and Calabasas Creek meet behind Canoga Park High School. ... See Full Page

Studio City got its name from the film lot Mack Sennett opened here in 1927, and that lot, now Radford Studio Center, still sits beside the Los Angeles River in the middle of this Los Angeles neighborhood. The studio gives Ventura Boulevard a working edge, with crews at lunch counters and sound stages a block from houses. ... See Full Page

Mid-city in Los Angeles covers a broad grid between Pico Boulevard and the Santa Monica Freeway, and what sets it apart is range. Within a few miles you get Little Ethiopia on Fairfax, 1920s Craftsman and Spanish homes in Victoria Park and Wellington Square, and the stately older blocks of Country Club Park near Crenshaw. ... See Full Page

Wilmington is where the Port of Los Angeles meets a real neighborhood, with Mexican fan palms lining Avalon Boulevard and cranes and refinery stacks never far from view. ... See Full Page

North Hollywood is where the Metro B Line ends, and the subway terminal sits at the center of this Los Angeles neighborhood, which took its current name from the old town of Lankershim in 1927. ... See Full Page

Van Nuys is the civic and working center for the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, home to the 1932 Art Deco tower of the Valley Municipal Building and to a busy general aviation airport on its western side. ... See Full Page

The Hollywood Sign looks down on the Hollywood Hills, the band of canyons and ridges that separates the Los Angeles basin from the Valley. ... See Full Page

Panorama City began in 1948 as a master-planned Los Angeles suburb, the first of its kind in the Valley, built by developer Fritz Burns and industrialist Henry J. Kaiser beside the General Motors plant in Van Nuys. ... See Full Page

Silverlake is named for the reservoir at its center, and the loop around the water is where this Los Angeles neighborhood comes together every morning. Walkers, runners and dog owners circle the water, and the grassy Silver Lake Meadow next to the loop works as a big shared lawn. ... See Full Page

Los Feliz runs straight up into Griffith Park, and that shared edge shapes daily life on this side of Los Angeles more than anything else. The Griffith Observatory, the Fern Dell nature trail and the old zoo grounds all sit inside the neighborhood's northern half. ... See Full Page

Lincoln Heights sits just across the river from downtown Los Angeles and ranks among the city's oldest neighborhoods, laid out in 1873 as its first suburb. For more than four decades it even went by the name East Los Angeles, until residents voted to change it in 1917. ... See Full Page

Rancho Park took its name after World War II, when boosters in this pocket of Los Angeles wanted an identity apart from Westwood across Olympic Boulevard. The neighborhood today covers the flat grid between Olympic and National, from the 405 east toward Cheviot Hills, and its best-known landmark is a burger counter on Pico. ... See Full Page

Elysian Park is both a neighborhood and the second largest park in Los Angeles, a 575-acre spread of ridges and canyons with Dodger Stadium tucked into Chavez Ravine at its center. Living here means having the city's oldest public park as your immediate backyard. ... See Full Page

The old Dunbar Hotel still stands on Central Avenue, once a hub of the Central Avenue jazz scene, and today it holds Delicious at the Dunbar, which serves soul food and Mexican plates at sit-down tables. ... See Full Page

Venice was built in 1905 by developer Abbot Kinney as a canal-lined resort, and this Los Angeles neighborhood still mixes beach town, art colony and residential streets that change character every few blocks. It sits between Santa Monica and Marina del Rey, with Mar Vista inland to the east. ... See Full Page

Echo Park is built around its lake, and on most days the path around the water in this Los Angeles neighborhood is full of walkers, joggers and people pedaling paddle boats. The lake was drained and rebuilt, reopening in 2013, and its lotus beds bloom in time for the Lotus Festival each July. ... See Full Page

West Adams in Los Angeles has more surviving Victorian and early 1900s houses than almost any district in the western United States, and its eastern blocks around Washington Boulevard and Arlington Avenue are where much of that turn-of-the-century architecture sits. ... See Full Page

Leimert Park grew into a center of Black art, music and culture in Los Angeles, and most of that life gathers around a small plaza and a few blocks of Degnan Boulevard and 43rd Street. ... See Full Page

East Hollywood is where several of Los Angeles' most distinct communities overlap, with Thai Town running along Hollywood Boulevard and Little Armenia stretching across the blocks around it. ... See Full Page

The Crenshaw District is the stretch of Los Angeles around Crenshaw Boulevard nicknamed The Shaw, and it has long been a hub of Black business and culture in the city. Its Houseberry boundary also reaches Jefferson Boulevard, where a cluster of newer restaurants has turned the area into a dining destination. ... See Full Page

Temple-Beaudry is the hilly stretch of Los Angeles just west of downtown, where the skyline feels close enough to touch from the top of the neighborhood's streets. It sits between Echo Park and Westlake, with the 101 freeway along its northern edge. ... See Full Page

Simon Rodia spent more than three decades building the Watts Towers by hand, and the seventeen spires of steel, mortar and broken tile still rise above the one-story houses around East 107th Street. ... See Full Page

Boyle Heights sits across the river from downtown Los Angeles, and its history shows up on nearly every main street, from the Breed Street Shul to the musicians who still gather at Mariachi Plaza on First Street. Over the last century the neighborhood has been home to several immigrant communities, and for generations it has been one of the centers of Mexican American life in the city. ... See Full Page

Harvard Heights is a Los Angeles neighborhood of large Craftsman houses built in a burst between about 1902 and 1910, and it holds the only remaining Greene and Greene house in the city. The Wheeler-Weil house on Cambridge Street sits among blocks designed by the Heinemann brothers, Hunt and Eager, and Frank M. Tyler. ... See Full Page

Spanish-style houses with red tile roofs and stucco in soft pinks, greens and blues line the side streets of Manchester Square, a South Los Angeles neighborhood along Western Avenue between Florence and Century. Circle Park, a small round green with palms and a fountain on West 76th Street, gives the grid a center that most nearby blocks lack. ... See Full Page

Mid-Wilshire in Los Angeles, as Houseberry draws it, stretches across the Fairfax District, Park La Brea and the Beverly and Melrose corridors, and its center of gravity is the Original Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax. Few neighborhoods in the city put a century-old market, a major outdoor mall and a large public park within a single walk. ... See Full Page

Angelino Heights is the small hilltop neighborhood of Los Angeles that holds the city's richest collection of Victorian houses, many of them lined up along Carroll Avenue. It was laid out in the 1886 land boom, and when the boom collapsed two years later building stopped, which helped the Victorian streetscape survive. ... See Full Page

Adams-Normandie is a compact Los Angeles neighborhood just west of USC that was one of the city's most prestigious addresses at the turn of the twentieth century. It sits south of the 10 Freeway, and a historic preservation district adopted in 2010 now protects much of what survives from that era. ... See Full Page

Baldwin Hills is the part of Los Angeles where the flatlands rise into rolling hills, with Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area and its trails as the neighborhood's backyard. The area covers several distinct pockets, from the hillside Baldwin Hills Estates, known locally as the Dons, to Baldwin Vista and the landmark Village Green. ... See Full Page

Exposition Park is the South Los Angeles neighborhood named for the park at its eastern edge, where the Coliseum, BMO Stadium, the Natural History Museum, the California Science Center and CAAM, the African American history museum, share one campus. The park has hosted the Olympics in 1932 and 1984 and is set for the 2028 Games. ... See Full Page

Historic Filipinotown, the Los Angeles neighborhood locals shorten to HiFi, announces itself with a 30-foot gateway over Beverly Boulevard, decorated with a parol star lantern, a gumamela flower and the mythical Sarimanok bird. It sits between Echo Park and Westlake, and Temple Street and Beverly Boulevard carry most of its daily life. ... See Full Page

The neon sign from Art's Famous Chili Dogs still hangs at Florence and Normandie, and The Breakfast Shack now cooks under it, serving hot link sandwiches on brioche, shrimp and grits and salmon croquettes. ... See Full Page

Hyde Park is one of the older corners of South Los Angeles, a former railroad stop that incorporated as its own city in 1922 and joined Los Angeles the next year. Today it runs along Crenshaw Boulevard south of Leimert Park, a corridor long described as the center of Black commerce in the city. ... See Full Page

Koreatown is the densest part of Los Angeles and stays awake later than almost anywhere else in the city, a few square miles where Korean barbecue, Oaxacan mole and Salvadoran pupusas share the same blocks. ... See Full Page

Wilshire Center is the dense, busy core of central Los Angeles around Vermont Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard, where Korean restaurants, Central American bakeries and Filipino markets share the same blocks. It grew from Henry Gaylord Wilshire's subdivision in the 1890s and later became a corridor of grand Art Deco buildings. ... See Full Page

South Park is built around its namesake, a 20-acre tract bought from a private estate in 1900, when it was planted with walnut, oak and orange trees. That park is still the center of this South Los Angeles neighborhood, which runs from Vernon Avenue down to Slauson between the Harbor Freeway and Central Avenue. ... See Full Page

Florence Avenue gives Florence-Firestone its name and its daily rhythm, and in this part of South Los Angeles, between Slauson and Manchester avenues from the 110 east to Central Avenue, most life happens along the commercial streets. Small family restaurants and bakeries fill Florence, Broadway and Main, and street vendors add to it on busy corners. ... See Full Page

Pico-Union, just west of downtown Los Angeles, has long been a center of Central American life in the city. The stretch of Pico Boulevard near Vermont Avenue is officially designated as the El Salvador Community Corridor, and murals of Óscar Romero and of Central and South American flags mark the streets nearby. ... See Full Page

The Vermont Square Branch Library opened in 1913 as the first library building the City of Los Angeles ever built, and it still lends books from a cream brick, red tile roofed building inside Vermont Square Park on West 48th Street. The neighborhood around it, in South Los Angeles between Martin Luther King Jr. ... See Full Page

Green Meadows was dairy country before Los Angeles annexed it in 1926, and a racetrack called Ascot Park drew crowds here in the early 1900s. ... See Full Page

Earvin Magic Johnson Park, with two lakes, a wetland and a half-mile loop trail, occupies University Park's southeast corner. ... See Full Page

Chinatown in Los Angeles is the newer version of the city's original Chinese district, which was cleared for Union Station, and it opened on this site in 1938. Central Plaza, where a Bruce Lee statue stands near a figure of Sun Yat-sen and a dragon mural, still anchors the neighborhood along Broadway and Hill Street. ... See Full Page

Vermont Vista got its name in 2002, but people have been passing through this corner of South Los Angeles since the late 1880s, when the Los Angeles and Redondo Railway put a station at Vermont and Century. ... See Full Page

Hollywood gave the film industry its name, and living in this part of Los Angeles means sharing Hollywood Boulevard with tourists while the side streets run on a quieter, apartment-heavy rhythm. The flats south of Franklin mix 1920s courtyard buildings, bungalow courts and new mid-rise towers near Vine. ... See Full Page

The Jackie Tatum Harvard Recreation Center, set along 62nd Street, is the backyard for much of Harvard Park, with a pool, a skate plaza and one of the city's inclusive Shane's Inspiration playgrounds. ... See Full Page

Westlake is the dense Los Angeles neighborhood built around MacArthur Park, just west of downtown, and its streets are lined with Guatemalan and Salvadoran bakeries, markets and restaurants. Sixth Street, Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard carry most of its daily life. ... See Full Page

Downtown Los Angeles is the city's densest and most varied neighborhood, a patchwork of districts that includes historic Broadway theaters, Bunker Hill towers, the Arts District's converted warehouses and the Fashion District. Living here means being in the middle of the region's transit, government and cultural hub. ... See Full Page

Little Tokyo is the historic Japanese American neighborhood on the east side of downtown Los Angeles, founded around 1900 and once home to the largest Japanese American community in North America. Today it's a compact, walkable district of plazas, museums and restaurants, with a growing number of apartments. ... See Full Page