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Los Angeles: Weather






Los Angeles: Economy


The economy of Los Angeles is driven by international trade, entertainment (television, motion pictures, video games, recorded music), aerospace, technology, petroleum, fashion, apparel, and tourism. Los Angeles is also the largest manufacturing center in the western United States.[56] The contiguous ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach together comprise the fifth-busiest port in the world and the most significant port in the Western Hemisphere and is vital to trade within the Pacific Rim.[56] Other significant industries include media production, finance, telecommunications, law, healthcare, and transportation. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside combined statistical area (CSA) has a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of $831 billion (as of 2008), making it the third largest economic center in the world, after the Greater Tokyo Area and the New York-Newark-Bridgeport CSA.[10][11][12] If counted as a country, the surrounding CSA has the 15th largest economy in the world in terms of nominal GDP.[57]

Until the mid-1990s, Los Angeles was home to many major financial institutions in the western United States. Mergers meant reporting to headquarters in other cities. For instance, First Interstate Bancorp merged with Wells Fargo in 1996, Great Western Bank merged with Washington Mutual in 1998, and Security Pacific Bank merged with Bank of America in 1992. Los Angeles was also home to the Pacific Exchange, until it closed in 2001.

The city is home to seven Fortune 500 companies. They are aerospace contractor Northrop Grumman, energy company Occidental Petroleum, healthcare provider Health Net, metals distributor Reliance Steel & Aluminum, engineering firm AECOM, real estate group CB Richard Ellis and builder Tutor Perini.

Other companies headquartered in Los Angeles include California Pizza Kitchen, Capital Group, Cathay Bank, City National Bank, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, DeviantArt, Farmers Insurance Group, Fox Entertainment Group, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Guess?, Herbalife, J2 Global Communications, The Jim Henson Company, KB Home, Korn/Ferry, Latham & Watkins, Mercury Insurance Group, Oaktree Capital Management, O’Melveny & Myers; Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, Premier America, Premiere Radio Networks, Roll International, Sunkist, The TCW Group, Tokyopop, Triton Media Group, and United Online.

The metropolitan area contains the headquarters of companies who moved outside of the city to escape its taxes but keep the benefits of proximity.[58] For example, Los Angeles charges a gross receipts tax based on a percentage of business revenue, while many neighboring cities charge only small flat fees.[59]

Walt Disney Concert Hall
The University of Southern California (USC) is the city's largest private sector employer and contributes $4 billion annually to the local economy.[60] Los Angeles is classified as an "Alpha(-) world city" in a 2008 study by a research group at Loughborough University in England.[61]

In January 2010 many of the aerospace firms with operations in Los Angeles County are relatively small compared to the larger corporations.[62] The United States Postal Service operates post offices in Los Angeles, the main one of which is located at 7001 South Central Avenue.[63][64]

According to the city's 2009 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report,[65] the top ten employers in the city are the City of Los Angeles, the County of Los Angeles, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente, Fox Entertainment Group, Farmers Insurance Group, TeamOne and Northrop Grumman.


Los Angeles: Culture


Main article: Arts and culture of Los Angeles



Kodak Theatre and Hollywood Sign

Los Angeles is often billed as the "Creative Capital of the World", due to the fact that one in every six of its residents works in a creative industry.[66] According to the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation, "there are more artists, writers, filmmakers, actors, dancers and musicians living and working in Los Angeles than any other city at any time in the history of civilization."[67]

Los Angeles is home to Hollywood, globally recognized as the epicenter of the motion picture industry. A testament to its preeminence in film, the city plays host to the annual Academy Awards, the oldest and one of the most prominent award ceremonies in the world. Furthermore, there are 54 film festivals every year, which translates into more than one every week.[68] Finally, Los Angeles is home to the USC School of Cinematic Arts, the oldest and largest school of its kind in the United States.

The performing arts play a major role in Los Angeles' cultural identity. There are over 1,000 musical, theater, dance, and performing groups.[68] According to the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation, "there are more than 1,100 annual theatrical productions and 21 openings every week."[67] The Los Angeles Music Center is one of the three largest performing arts complexes in the nation.[69] The Walt Disney Concert Hall, the centerpiece of the Music Center, is home to the prestigious Los Angeles Philharmonic. Notable organizations such as Center Theatre Group and the Los Angeles Master Chorale along with the rising Los Angeles Opera are also resident companies of the Music Center. Talent is locally cultivated at premier institutions such as the Colburn School and the USC Thornton School of Music.

There are 841 museums and art galleries in Los Angeles County;[70] Los Angeles has more museums per capita than any other city in the world.[71] The most notable museums are the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (the largest encyclopedic museum west of Chicago), the Getty Center (part of the larger J. Paul Getty Trust, the world's wealthiest art institution), and the Museum of Contemporary Art. A significant amount of art galleries are concentrated on Gallery Row and thousands are in attendance of the monthly Downtown Art Walk that takes place there.


Los Angeles: Media

Main article: Media in Los Angeles
See also: List of television shows set in Los Angeles and List of films set in Los Angeles



The Fox Plaza in Century City, headquarters for 20th Century Fox, is a major financial district for West Los Angeles

The major daily newspaper in the area is the Los Angeles Times; La Opinión is the city's major Spanish-language paper. 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 Daily News (which focuses coverage on the San Fernando Valley), LA Weekly, Los Angeles CityBeat, 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 English- and Spanish-language papers, numerous local periodicals serve immigrant communities in their native languages, including Armenian, Korean, Persian, Russian, Chinese and Japanese. 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 all seven VHF allocations possible assigned to them.[72]



Los Angeles Times Headquarters

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.


Los Angeles: Sports



Dodger Stadium
is the home of the Los Angeles Dodgers

See also: Sports in Los Angeles and History of National Football League in Los Angeles
Los Angeles is the home of the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball, the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League, the Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association, the Los Angeles D-Fenders, an NBA Development team owned by the Los Angeles Lakers, and 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-10 Conference. The Los Angeles Galaxy and Club Deportivo Chivas USA of Major League Soccer are based in Carson. The city is the largest in the U.S. without an NFL team.

There was a time when Los Angeles boasted 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 Oakland. Los Angeles is the second-largest city and television market in the United States, but has no NFL team (see List of television stations in North America by media market). Prior to 1995, the Rams called Memorial Coliseum (1946–1979) and the Raiders played their home games at Memorial Coliseum from 1982 to 1994.[73]



Staples Center
, a premier venue for sports and entertainment, is home to five professional sports teams, most notably the Los Angeles Lakers

Since the franchise's departures the NFL as an organization, and individual NFL owners, have attempted to relocate a team to the city. Immediately following the 1995 NFL season, Seattle Seahawks owner Ken Behring went as far as packing up moving vans to start play in the Rose Bowl under a new team name and logo for the 1996 season. The State of Washington filed a law suit to successfully prevent the move.[74] In 2003, then NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue indicated LA would get a new expansion team, a thirty-third franchise, after the choice of Houston over LA in the 2002 league expansion round.[75] When the New Orleans Saints were displaced from the Superdome by Hurricane Katrina media outlets reported the NFL was planning to move the team to Los Angeles permanently.[76] Despite these efforts, and the failure to build a new stadium for an NFL team, LA is still expected to return to the league through expansion or relocation.

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 soccer's international World Cup in 1994.

Los Angeles also boasts a number of sports venues, including Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles Coliseum, The Forum, Staples Center, a sports and entertainment complex that also hosts concerts and awards shows such as the Grammys. 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, the Los Angeles Kings of the NHL and the Avengers of the AFL.

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 and played at Los Angeles' Wrigley Field and then Dodger Stadium before moving to Anaheim in 1966.[77]

Los Angeles city and the rest of the Los Angeles metropolitan area is 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. 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).[88] 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.[89]

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 then north to the Canadian border through Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle; 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.


Los Angeles: Public Transportation



Current Los Angeles Metro Rail map showing existing and under-construction lines.

The Los Angeles 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 daily ridership of 1.7 million.[90] The majority of this (1.4 million) is taken up by the city's bus system, the second busiest in the country. The subway and light rail combined average the remaining roughly 319,000 boardings per weekday.[91] In 2005, 10.2% of Los Angeles commuters rode some form of public transportation.[92]
The city's subway system is the ninth busiest in the United States and its light rail system is the country's third busiest.[93] The rail system includes the Red and Purple subway lines, as well as the Gold, Blue, and Green light rail lines. The Metro Orange Line is a bus rapid transit line with stops and frequency similar those of a 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.


Los Angeles: Air Transportation



LAX
, the fifth busiest airport in the world.

The main Los Angeles airport is Los Angeles International Airport (IATA: LAXICAO: KLAX). The sixth busiest commercial airport in the world and the third busiest in the United States, LAX handled over 61 million passengers and 2 million tons of cargo in 2006.

 





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