Los Angeles overview

These are interesting times in Los Angeles. First settled in the late 1700s, the city really began to grow about 100 years later when the railroad arrived, and was allowed to expand more or less unchecked throughout the last century. However, the wild growth it enjoyed has come at a cost. And the result, at least in recent years, has been a small but potentially profound change in the way LA manages the further expansion that now seems inevitable.

With space at a premium, architects are building upwards rather than outwards for the first time, with condo towers now starting to look down over the single-family homes that constitute the city's infamous sprawl. And with traffic almost at a standstill, the city's Metro rail network is at last being extended beyond its previously limited reach.

The fact that this new urbanism has been greeted in several quarters by derision and resentment – residents have campaigned against the expansion of the Metro network into their neighbourhoods – is indicative of how deeply wedded some Angelenos are to the lifestyle that brought many of them to the city in the first place.

Over the years, countless people from countless cultures have headed here in search of the year-round sunshine and wide-open boulevards of popular legends. So many, in fact, that the sun is often wrapped in a blanket of smog, partly due to the high volume of traffic.

Up to a point, then, Los Angeles has been a victim of its own success. However, despite problems with its infrastructure, a success it remains. At the turn of the 20th century, this was a city built on hard work and outlandish dreams. One hundred years later, the same is still true. LA began to grow almost as part of a social experiment, an attempt to inhabit a region that appeared uninhabitable.

Despite the heat, the earthquakes and, before William Mulholland piped it in, the lack of water, the experiment has succeeded. Although it appears unmanageable at first glance, LA's spreadeagled immensity is ultimately its greatest asset. Without it, the variety that spices up life here would not be anything like as rich.

Honeypot attractions such as the Getty Center and Disneyland are balanced by unassuming neighbourhoods, which are rich with history and community spirit. The natural appeal of the Pacific coast stands in rugged, bemused opposition to the skyscrapers of Downtown and Century City, and the star-packed likes of Beverly Hills and Bel Air provide a thick contrast to poorer, livelier locales dominated by Thais and Mexicans, African Americans and Japanese Americans. These are interesting times in Los Angeles. But it was ever thus.

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