The city is divided into over 80 districts and neighborhoods, many of which were incorporated places or communities that merged into the city. These neighborhoods were developed piecemeal, and are well-defined enough that the city has signage marking nearly all of them.
More broadly, the city is divided into the following areas: Downtown Los Angeles, East Los Angeles and Northeast Los Angeles, South Los Angeles, the Harbor Area, Greater Hollywood, Wilshire, the Westside, and the San Fernando and Crescenta Valleys.
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Overview
The city's street pattern generally follows a grid plan, with uniform block lengths and occasional roads that cut across blocks. However, this is complicated by rugged terrain, which has necessitated having different grids for each of the valleys that Los Angeles covers. Major streets are designed to move large volumes of traffic through many parts of the city; many of them are extremely long: Sepulveda Boulevard is 43 miles (69 km)long, while Foothill Boulevard is over 60 miles (97 km) long, reaching as far east as San Bernardino. Drivers in Los Angeles suffer from one of the worst rush hour periods in the world, according to an annual traffic index by navigation system maker, TomTom. L.A. drivers spend an additional 92 hours in traffic each year. During the peak rush hour there is 80% congestion, according to the index.
Los Angeles is strongly characterized by the presence of low-rise buildings. Outside of a few centers such as Downtown, Warner Center, Century City, Koreatown, Miracle Mile, Hollywood and Westwood, skyscrapers and high-rise buildings are not common. The few skyscrapers that are built outside of those areas often stand out above the rest of the surrounding landscape. Most construction is done in separate units, rather than wall-to-wall. That being said, downtown Los Angeles itself has many buildings over 30 stories, with fourteen over 50 stories, and two over 70 stories (the tallest buildings west of Chicago-see List of tallest buildings in Los Angeles). Also, Los Angeles is increasingly becoming a city of apartments rather than single family dwellings, especially in the dense inner city and Westside neighborhoods.
Important landmarks in Los Angeles include the Hollywood Sign, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Capitol Records Building, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Angels Flight , TCL Chinese Theatre, Dolby Theatre, Griffith Observatory, Getty Center, Getty Villa, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Venice Canal Historic District and boardwalk, Theme Building, Bradbury Building, U.S. Bank Tower, Wilshire Grand Tower, Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles City Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Battleship USS Iowa, Watts Towers, Staples Center, Dodger Stadium, and Olvera Street.
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The city of Los Angeles covers a total area of 502.7 square miles (1,302 km2), comprising 468.7 square miles (1,214 km2) of land and 34.0 square miles (88 km2) of water. The city extends for 44 miles (71 km)longitudinally and for 29 miles (47 km)latitudinally. The perimeter of the city is 342 miles (550 km).
Los Angeles is both flat and hilly. The highest point in the city proper is 5,074 ft (1,547 m)Mount Lukens, located at the northeastern end of the San Fernando Valley. The eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains stretches from Downtown to the Pacific Ocean and separates the Los Angeles Basin from the San Fernando Valley. Other hilly parts of Los Angeles include the Mt. Washington area north of Downtown, eastern parts such as Boyle Heights, the Crenshaw district around the Baldwin Hills, and the San Pedro district.
Surrounding the city are much higher mountains. Immediately to the north lie the San Gabriel Mountains, which is a popular recreation area for Angelenos. Its high point is Mount San Antonio, locally known as Mount Baldy, which reaches 10,064 feet (3,068 m). Further afield, the highest point in the greater Los Angeles area is San Gorgonio Mountain, with a height of 11,503 feet (3,506 m).
The Los Angeles River, which is largely seasonal, is the primary drainage channel. It was straightened and lined in 51 miles (82 km) of concrete by the Army Corps of Engineers to act as a flood control channel. The river begins in the Canoga Parkdistrict of the city, flows east from the San Fernando Valley along the north edge of the Santa Monica Mountains, and turns south through the city center, flowing to its mouth in the Port of Long Beach at the Pacific Ocean. The smaller Ballona Creek flows into the Santa Monica Bay at Playa del Rey.
