Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES Los Angeles is America’s second-largest city, after New York, with nearly four million residents in the urban center and more than eleven million in the metropolitan area, according to the U.S. census of 2000. Its rise in population and cultural significance during the twentieth century was no less than dramatic, considering that in 1900 it was not even on the list of top thirty-five U.S. cities and its population barely topped one hundred thousand residents. In the twenty-first century, it maintains a reputation for sprawl and glitz, poverty and violence, diversity and globalism. Environmentally, it is known at once for sun, surf, smog, and earthquakes, and a good deal of lore circulates regarding these conditions. Ethnically, it is an international city positioned in the Pacific Rim and brimming with Asian and Pacific Islander influences, while also called the capital of Mexican America and home to major African American, Jewish, Arab, and Armenian communities. It is also the backdrop for major collegiate cultures and rivalries, such as that between the University of Southern California (USC) and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As a center of folklife, it has a common urban and suburban tradition revolving around its vibrant youth culture, and ethnic and occupational subcultures situated in distinct neighborhoods and sections.