Talk:Los Angeles Voyage Tips and guide

This article was the Collaboration of the week between 24 October 2006 and 30 October 2006.

Contents

The following extlink was added in a manner that suggests the site was advertising itself: http://www.experiencela.com On the other hand, it does look like it might be a useful calendaring site if the extlink policy changes. If someone from LA could evaluate it, that'd be helpful. -- (WT-en) Colin 13:17, 2 Sep 2004 (EDT)

It is one of the best guides on the internet for the Los Angeles area. It's sponsored by a bunch of government agencies, so it doesn't have any advertising. The only real minus to the website is that it doesn't really cover any of the minuses for LA. [[User:(WT-en) GK|(WT-en) gK ¿?]] 02:36, 19 Dec 2004 (EST)

"It's called the Metro, and it's actually only a subway in a few parts of downtown L.A. - the rest of the time it's above-ground light rail."

This isn't true. The Metro red line is a true subway, its below ground all 12 miles. Someone must be confusing it with the blue line that is light rail.

The Gold Line is also above ground for most of it's path. 68.124.173.70 17:00, 20 September 2006 (EDT)

The Green Line light rail in South and Southeast Los Angeles is also above ground, mostly in a freeway median

Urbanrail.com which I consider the foremost authority on such issues calls Red and Purple line subways, and blue, green and yellow lines, light rail. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 18:54, 29 June 2009 (EDT)

It should be mentioned that The Pantry actually has been closed for one day... It failed a county health inspection. It did open up again very quickly, however, due to being owned by Mayor Riordan.

If you feel it should not be in the guide by all means feel free to take it out, however, that is no guarantee that The Pantry won't be reinserted later. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 20:04, 29 May 2006 (EDT)

Is the Metro Kafkaesque or is it one of the easiest and cheapest ways to get around town? It looks like there are two conflicting views expressed here; perhaps someone with more knowledge of LA can merge them appropriately. Hopefully before my next trip to LA.  ;-) -- (WT-en) Jonboy 18:43, 28 June 2006 (EDT)

The answer is that it's probably both Kafkaesque while still being the easiest and cheapest way to get around town - traveling in LA just really sucks whether it's on public transport or in a car ;). This entire article is in dire need of a cleanup, but (WT-en) Jani has listed it as a future Project:Collaboration of the week so hopefully it will get some much needed attention then. -- (WT-en) Ryan 18:46, 28 June 2006 (EDT)

The metro-trashing makes this article infantile and useless. How about providing actual information for potential travelers instead of accusatory supposition? -C

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Metro still sucks hard enough for it to be quite insufficient for tourism. (And I say this as a rabid public transport fanboy who doesn't even have a driving license.) If you want to tour LA, you pretty much need to rent a car, period. (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:27, 27 November 2006 (EST)

Yeah, definitely not ideal, but it has its usefulness for a handful of budget travelers and those wanting a different way to head downtown... hard to rely on it in total, but if you're trying to keep the costs down, you can make some use of it... (WT-en) Cacahuate 06:33, 28 November 2006 (EST)

I know several people who have visited LA recently and used the metro to get around, and they have had no problems. It is slower than driving, and it doesn't go everywhere, but it goes to many of the major tourist attractions. I certainly don't think this article should imply that a car is "needed" in Los Angeles, because many visitors get by just fine without one. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 108.0.47.95 (talk • contribs)

I think the new edits are fair, but I've modified them slightly to note that even with recent improvements LA lags far behind comparable Western cities for public transportation, and that needs to be called out clearly. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 23:00, 4 September 2010 (EDT)

I disagree with these edits. What "comparable Western cities" are we referring to? Los Angeles has the third busiest light rail system and ninth busiest subway in the US. It may lag behind New York, Chicago and the like, but it is definitely superior to the majority of large American cities.

Also, I disagree with the assertion that those who can afford it will "definitely want to rent a car." This is not true based on the experiences of my own guests who have visited LA recently, and may lead visitors into unnecessary hassle and traffic delays. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 169.234.3.126 (talk • contribs)

It would be best if others could weigh in on this issue before any further changes are made, although I've never had a visitor here state that public transit was even acceptable, much less "definitely superior to the majority of large American cities". LA has no rail line to the airport, beaches, museums, etc, meaning that everywhere but downtown and Hollywood are difficult to reach without access to a car, and the problem is compounded by the fact that LA is so spread out. For the second largest city in America my impression, as well as that of (WT-en) Jpatokal and (WT-en) Cacahuate above, is that public transit is improving, but still woefully inadequate. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 18:25, 7 September 2010 (EDT)

is it ok to link to wikipedia sites such as (LAX ^IATA) in the transport section or should it just be (LAX)? (WT-en) Cacahuate 09:13, 28 October 2006 (EDT)

Since the IATA and ICAO templates are local to Wikivoyage, they can redirect the templates whenever necessary. So we've been slowly converting all the links to (LAX ^IATA) or (SMO ^IATA, ICAO:KSMO) format. Generally, IATA is used for the major airports, ICAO for the smaller general aviation airports; ICAO is planned to eventually replace IATA. In any case, having _some_ tag here so they can be found is better than having no tag.--(WT-en) justfred 13:11, 28 October 2006 (EDT)

So there's already a discussion going on on the Talk:Los Angeles/West page about the Westside, but I'd also like help just figuring out the grey areas in general of the city so we can make some clearer boundaries for the existing and future district pages. Since it's a Huge City, it should conform to that template, but it needs a few things sorted and at least one or two more districts before we can move stuff off the main Los Angeles page.

We already have:

• Los Angeles/Downtown

• Los Angeles/Hollywood - need to define it's borders...

• Los Angeles/East covering the areas between Hollywood and Downtown such as Los Feliz, Silverlake, Echo Park, Koreatown and MacArthur Park - someone mentioned on that talk page that the name conflicts with the actual "East LA", but I don't think it does and that page hasn't even been created yet. I think there's room for both when the time comes. But if someone thinks of a better name for this area...

• West Hollywood - what is it's eastern border? WH is a weird shape if you actually look at a map, but I think we should make it a little more square for the sake of a travel guide - i think we should pick either Crescent Heights or Fairfax as it's border.

So what to do with the middle area between West Hollywood and downtown that is south of Hollywood? Firstly I think we should pick a street that is the southern border of Hollywood - for me, Hollywood consists of Franklin, Hollywood and Sunset Blvds.

Then you have Mid-Wilshire, which could be it's own district article at a point maybe... but what about the areas in between Mid-Wilshire and Hollywood, such as Santa Monica Blvd, Melrose Ave, Beverly Blvd and Third St? Melrose is probably the most deserving of it's own district page, so one thought is to call it Los Angeles/Melrose and have it cover the greater Melrose area, but some would probably not like that including me. Or Los Angeles/Central but that's not really accurate either. Perhaps if Fountain was made the border for Hollywood's south then everything between SMB and Wilshire Blvd could be one district? Or SMB to Third St one district, then Wilshire down to Pico or Venice Blvd it's own district?

Also, should Melrose, Beverly and Third St to the west of Crescent Hts be considered West Hollywood for the sake of this guide?

If you know LA well, please help! (WT-en) Cacahuate 06:49, 22 December 2006 (EST)

And what about Larchmont Blvd? (WT-en) Cacahuate 06:54, 22 December 2006 (EST)

Well, more thoughts after looking at the Wikivoyage page for Hollywood. They link to this neighborhood council map which is a good reference. If we went with that then we could possibly define the Hollywood borders as Franklin to the north (except the part that gets into Los Feliz), Vermont to the east, La Brea to the west and Melrose to the south. I think it makes a lot of sense to have Melrose covered in Hollywood. The only small disagreement I have is that I think that Fairfax Ave should be the border between Hollywood and West Hollywood. And then businesses on those four border streets should be included in the Hollywood article also. (WT-en) Cacahuate 07:19, 22 December 2006 (EST)

Also useful could be this list of districts from Wikipedia page... the district box at the very bottom I think is good and well thought out - the only exception would be that I would combine the sections for "Eastern Los Angeles", "Echo Park and Westlake" and "Los Feliz and Silverlake" and use Los Angeles/East to cover all of those areas. (WT-en) Cacahuate 07:34, 22 December 2006 (EST)

The name seems wrong. It may be east of Hollywood, but a lot of it is west of Downtown. How about "Near North? North of Downtown up to and including Griffith Park, west to about Western (where Los Feliz ends). Going far enough east to include Highland Park, Eagle Rock, etc. It all tends to be Hispanic down in the flats, but Anglo up on the hilltops.

Maybe it would be better to start with a long list of subjective neighborhoods, so for example Little Ethiopia, the old Jewish part of Fairfax, and the new Russian area on Fairfax and east along Santa Monica are three separate items. Then decide how to lump these into larger groupings. Simply running a boundary down Fairfax does violence to what's actually going on at the neighborhood level. If you begin at the subjective neighborhood level, you're not so tempted to draw lines on a map. In reality, neighborhoods intersect and overlap. They are states of mind more than physical locations. For example the Wilshire Corridor cuts through residential neighborhoods that may not differ very much on either side of the highrise corridor. It's hard to say whether the focus of the neighborhood is the high rises along Wilshire or the temples and shuls along Pico and Olympic. Maybe both, depending on the day of the week. Koreatown is an area where practically all the businesses are Korean, but the majority of residents happen to be Hispanic. There is an Asian Indian concentration along Venice Blvd in and near Culver City, but they probably aren't a majority of the population there. 76.168.50.104 15:32, 6 August 2008 (EDT)

One thing that has irked me about our coverage of LA is that places like Hollywood, Studio City and Universal City are technically districts of LA, but for all practical purposes they are treated as their own entities. While normally we might make these places districts, in this case I'm not sure it is the best way to build a travel guide, and given free reign I'd say that any "district" of LA that uses something other than "Los Angeles" for the mailing address (for example "1234 Example Street, HOLLYWOOD, CA") should get a separate, non-district article, which to a traveler would (I think) make sense - people aren't likely to look for Hollywood as a district of LA, they expect it to be in a standalone article...

As to the suggested breakdown you're creating, I don't know the city all that well but will try to do some research tomorrow. -- (WT-en) Ryan 04:31, 26 December 2006 (EST)

I took a quick look through the list at WikiPedia:List of districts and neighborhoods of Los Angeles, and that convinced me even moreso that there are so many "districts" of LA that it doesn't make sense to treat places like Venice or Studio City as sub-articles of a larger LA article. While officially the government might be the same, from a traveler's perspective, from the perspective of most locals, and from the postal service's perspective these are all distinct entities. I suspect that if we just create districts for Los Angeles/East Side, Los Angeles/West Side, and Los Angeles/Downtown then that would cover the city of LA, and then outlying places such as Los Feliz or Hollywood could just be given their own article. Again, however, I'm still relatively new here, so other opinions are needed. -- (WT-en) Ryan 01:18, 27 December 2006 (EST)

I could live with Venice and Studio City where they are, as their own entities, especially ones that are that far outlying and have plenty to warrant their own article anyway. Hollywood is already a district page, I think it should stay there since it's such a central part of LA, and for the record the mailing address for that whole area is just 'Los Angeles', but a handful of people get a kick out of using 'Hollywood', and naturally the mail still arrives (although it's not unknown for mail to do a detour via Hollywood (Florida)  :).

Does anyone have opinions about the borders of Hollywood, and what to call the area to the south of it? That area has plenty of stuff to make a full guide, so we should come up with something and move those listings there... (WT-en) Cacahuate 00:12, 28 December 2006 (EST)

So I created Los Angeles/Wilshire for now to cover the area south of Hollywood. That's roughly what Wikipedia does. If anyone's got a better idea later, speak up! But for now I've moved the listings there. (WT-en) - Cacahuate 20:31, 18 February 2007 (EST)

LOL @ "Hollywood — The place where movies are made..." since most movies are made in Culver City, Century City, Burbank and other places in The Valley. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 99.95.29.3 (talk • contribs)

Hey there Roger, I just reverted a few of your changes to the Districts section. Firstly, we should just keep the descriptions short and sweet, and any specifics can go in the actual district articles. Secondly, while the San Fernando Valley is a part of LA city, for the sake of putting the traveler first and as far as our geographical heirarchy is concerned we're treating it as a region of Los Angeles County. Also, Hermosa, Redondo and Manhattan Beaches are included in the South Bay (Los Angeles County) article. Thanks for you contributions! – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 19:14, 12 May 2007 (EDT)

There have been a few edits recently that list the San Fernando Valley as a district of LA. While that may technically be true since many cities in the Valley are technically part of LA I don't think that matches the structure we've created - the Los Angeles article is about the actual city of LA, and districts of the city include those parts that are NOT entities on their own. While places in the Valley such as Studio City or Universal City might technically be a part of LA, from a traveler's perspective (and from the perspective of someone who lives here) they are separate and I don't think it improves the guide at all to lump them into LA solely due to an unusual system in which LA acts as a parent for the many surrounding cities that it has absorbed over time. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 20:51, 29 January 2009 (EST)

For future reference, here is a map of the LA area and what cities are officially part of LA versus separate entities. For Wikivoyage purposes many cities that are officially part of LA are listed as separate entities, such as Hollywood or Venice (California). -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 15:53, 14 July 2009 (EDT)

Is the "Mobile phones" list under Los Angeles#Contact really needed? That information would seem to be applicable across the US, so I'm not sure that having it in the LA article is appropriate. -- (WT-en) Ryan 11:47, 22 February 2007 (EST)

I'm not attached to it... I thought it varied a little across the states, but I'm not sure... feel free to trash it :) (WT-en) - Cacahuate 12:17, 22 February 2007 (EST)

"From the Greyhound station, take a taxi to get downtown." Or take the local bus, right? Or is there something wrong with the bus? (WT-en) Nurg 01:49, 29 September 2007 (EDT)

I just hacked down this section substantially, we really don't need that much info, it was making LA look like a disaster zone. We don't need to warn people of any possible thing that could ever happen, just things that are likely to confront travelers occasionally... and tornadoes, tsunamis and landslides are a serious stretch of the imagination. – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 19:19, 2 January 2008 (EST)

Whoa! Whoa! Hold your horses, cowboy. You don't understand the threats of L.A. at all! We need to reinsert this info with the following to be added:

The most damning threat to travelers is the Meyer Centre in Brisbane. The mall may be a few thousand miles from Los Angeles, but do not be fooled for it is, in fact, scientifically possible that you may be knocked unconscious and robbed after sipping on a Coca-Cola that was gassed in the Meyer Centre, then transported to L.A. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 19:37, 2 January 2008 (EST)

always one step ahead of me Sapphire, damn you – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 19:45, 2 January 2008 (EST)

The information on Wildfires should be reinserted since that is the most common and possible disaster, even more-so than earthquakes.--199.168.7.243 10:30, 3 January 2008 (EST)

The question is whether or not it's something that travelers to Los Angeles need to be worried about, and the answer is definitely no. I live in LA, I don't even think about them. It's rare that they would affect travelers, and if some break out, then we'll do what we did for the last ones, and put warning boxes on the relevant pages. – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 18:58, 3 January 2008 (EST)

Hi there, PLEASE stop adding Farmer's Daughter to this page, and to others... the ONLY place that it is ok to list it is in the appropriate district article, which in this case is Los Angeles/Wilshire. I've said this to you via email before. For huge cities like LA we divide them into districts, with just a general overview of sleep-related info on the main page, and individual listings on the district pages only. Thanks! – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 23:14, 7 July 2008 (EDT)

Hey there, I just got back from LA. I was trying to build something that worked to connect the LA article to the various amusement park articles. I started something then deleted it because it didn't look right, does anyone have any ideas? I don't want this to get too redundant. --64.205.0.18 13:37, 23 September 2008 (EDT)Trew

For things that are nearby but not in a city, we use the "Get out" section at the bottom of the article... I've added Disneyland, feel free to add Magic Mountain or whatever else you're thinking of. Thanks! – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 20:44, 23 September 2008 (EDT)

I would hardly say that Angelenos generally consider the hotel bars the best place to have a drink. I'm sure some do, but most probably don't. That's a terribly broad generalization, especially when the term "Angelenos" encompasses such a broad group, and there are so many places to get a drink in this city. I doubt anyone I know would agree with that statement.

Feel free to change it – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 21:12, 2 November 2008 (EST)

I couldn't do it...just tossing the idea in the air...anyone familiar with L A Metro want to do a district map? Maybe akin to the Vancouver or Copenhagen ones? Keep smiling, (WT-en) ee ^talk 21:19, 4 November 2008 (EST).

It's high on my list, I'll be working on it very soon – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 02:55, 5 November 2008 (EST)

Any news on this? I always thought it was weird how poorly LA compares to San Francisco considering how many regulars and admins live in the area - and how big a destination it is. I think a map would help help a lot in encouraging casual passers by to add stuff --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 10:57, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, still high on my list! Just trying to get the time to sit down and do it. It's not the easiest city to chop up, but it shall be done..... – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 11:11, 9 May 2009 (EDT)

I've taken the liberty of reverting these edits by User:(WT-en) Alossix, since eg. the original

Los Angeles' massive sprawl and dysfunctional public transportation makes getting around rather painful, especially during weekends when service can be more erratic. The only rational way of getting around is to rent a car, in which case you'll get a crash course in the complex freeway system and, if you're "lucky," a taste of the notorious traffic jams.

...seems rather more realistic than this:

Los Angeles' massive size limits ease of travel around the city. Despite a growing rail transit system that covers many of the city's sightseeing destinations, some may find it easier to rent a car. Los Angeles is home to the second-largest bus transit system in the United States, and much of the central city is blanketed with coverage.

Discuss. (WT-en) Jpatokal 08:15, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

I'd suggest that and other edits be examined — edit summaries such as "adding more neutral language" suggest the contributor may not be familiar with Project:Be fair and Project:Tone, and how this site differs from Wikipedia. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 09:00, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

I beg to differ that LA has a 'dysfunctional' public transit system. That language is rooted in old cliches and isn't a help to those visiting the city. While you're right - I don't need to focus on "neutral" language (and from here on out won't), the point of the transportation entry is to ensure people visiting Los Angeles know what to expect. Yes, the Los Angeles metro area is sprawling. But keep in mind that most attractions that most visitors will be seeing are within a relatively compact area, well-served by public transportation. (WT-en) Alossix 17:47, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Different people are going to have different experiences of a city. I've navigated LA only by public transport during two stays there, and the bus system is comprehensive, and I didn't find anywhere that I couldn't get public transport to. The bus drivers (except on the Disneyland route) looked genuinely surprised to see someone non-local on the bus, and went out of their way to explain the routes, and point out the stops to interchange at, and seemed to have a genuine interest in getting you where you were going. Getting the metro to Hollywood Blvd is a breeze, and without any parking hassles. I have to say changing buses downtown and even in Hollywood after dark was a little on the scary side, as was waiting outside of NBC for a bus late at night. I wouldn't do those things again. I like the language of the former, but to say that the only rational choice in LA is to get a car sounds a little to opinionated to me. Last time I tried to drive from Universal City to LAX I ended up stuck on the 101 while my plane flew over. I can also imagine that for people uncomfortable with freeway driving, or driving on the right, or whatever, that they may not want to drive in LA, and might want to know there are practical alternatives.

In essence, we need to separate the discussion on tone from the discussion on public transport in LA. Lets keep the tone, but lets not be unduly harsh on LA transport, by comparison San Francisco gets a good write up on public transport, and navigating that city by public transport IMO sucks. Half the attractions there aren't on any transport route, MUNI is just so slow, and doesn't integrate in the region. BART is so sparse outside of the city. No such probs in LA. --(WT-en) inas 20:39, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Just an anecdote, but when I was in LA a few years back, I investigated getting from El Segundo (LAX) to the Getty Museum on public transport. At the time, this would have required taking the train plus three different buses with transfers in dodgy neighborhoods, and even this gauntlet would have been impossible on a Sunday, as some of the buses didn't run then. It doesn't get much more dysfunctional than this!

It appears that due to some brain fart I didn't revert this after all. Should it stay, or should it go? (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:26, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Or you could take the LAX Flyaway shuttle from your terminal nonstop to Westwood (the Flyaways are the best way to get to/from LAX), and the 761 Rapid Bus to the Getty Center Drive. It'd probably take under an hour. Google Transit just started offering LA Metro trip planning, but it still has yet to add Flyaway data. 75.16.60.165 03:20, 9 July 2009 (EDT)

I went through and tried to restore the good stuff that was whitewashed, although there is a bunch of lively writing that still is lost in the "Get around" section, which would be painful to fix, since there were a lot of changes. Unfortunately, the good in recent edits (trimming, organizing) is pretty thoroughly mixed with the bad (neutering), so hopefully someone more motivated than me will go through that section to merge the good from the earlier version with the good from the new.

My $0.02 on accuracy: LA's public transit is notoriously bad. If that's not entirely fair, then keep the text that refers to its notoriety, then add after it that it's not entirely fair, for X reasons. And for a city of its size and scope, LA's rail system is a bit of a joke. Bus transport is far better (by necessity), but buses are rarely a very quick way of crossing any large city. The purely whitewashed version will lack credibility, and is far less fun to read. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 22:45, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

I agree with the notorious part. The locals don't seem to know there is a bus network in LA, and scoff at the metro. I agree with dodgy connection locations - many involve crossing streets, walking blocks to transfer. Getting from LAX to The Getty Center on a Sunday by public transport in LA, is certainly very possible, and I'm equally confident you could do it without a transit anywhere dodgy. Is there anywhere in the world you can get from the airport to a museum in the suburbs without a connection? In many cities the airport has a single connection to the city centre, in LA you have a choice of several local buses, free shuttle to the green line, and various other express type buses to various points. I'm sure you would have three or four different options to get the Getty, even on a Sunday. It is also cheap. LA may be notorious for poor public transport, but the reality is that you can get just about anywhere, fairly cheaply by public transport if you want to, and you can get by without a car as see all the major attractions. Frequency drops after hours and on weekends, but you can generally count on at least 30 minute frequency on most services. If your trip involves more than one bus this can mean long waits at non-peak times if you are unlucky. Buses can often get caught in the same traffic jams that the rest of LA is in. Take care after dark (and sometimes during the day) as transit points can be deserted or in undesirable areas. --(WT-en) inas 00:05, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

Tried it again, just for yucks: it's now recommending either three buses or one train plus two buses, and the trip is possible on a Sunday. [1] Bonus: neither "Getty Museum" nor "1200 Getty Center Drive" were recognized by the Metro website, but "Getty Center" was accepted. (WT-en) Jpatokal 01:34, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

Probably because of the nature of what you want to do is to go across town. You could probably do it in one connection if you went via downtown. Cutting across town is difficult in all but the most sophisticated transit networks, and I certainly agree LA doesn't even approach one of those. It isn't Paris or Tokyo. And trip planners are for the birds, anyway. Yo need one of those A2 size fold out route maps, with the full beauty of the LA bus network laid out thereupon, and track those tiny numbers across the city. --(WT-en) inas 03:00, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

So you would agree that, from the traveller's POV, LA has a dysfunctional public transport system? (WT-en) Jpatokal 08:03, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

I guess. I agree you need a certain amount of public transport enthusiasm to cope with the buses in LA. However, this is generally true on the west coast of the US, and LA has the advantage of the dense coverage which some other cities lack. I think we are heading in the right direction. --(WT-en) inas 01:41, 22 June 2009 (EDT)

Maybe regional differences have a lot to say here; Coming from Europe, Japan, Singapore or Hong Kong anything outside NY or Chicago is bound to look dysfunctional, whereas people from the rest of the world probably wouldn't be quite so appalled. So who's standard to go for, when we are a global site? --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 04:17, 22 June 2009 (EDT)

At the end of the day, for any city anywhere, the question is simply "what's the best way to get around", and for LA, the answer to that is "by car". (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:53, 22 June 2009 (EDT)

That is pretty much true, as much as I would like to disagree. PT has improved a lot, but still has a long way to go.... I'm a big advocate for Metro expansion, and am one of the few locals I know that take it despite having a car, but.... A weekend visitor may well want to visit Hollywood Blvd, the La Brea Tarpits, the Getty, Huntington Gardens, Venice Beach, the Third St Promenade, shop in BH and spend an afternoon in Malibu.... that would be painful and quite difficult without a car – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 17:22, 22 June 2009 (EDT)

Surely we are not trying to answer the question "what is the best way to get around" for every city anywhere. I don't think there is ever going to be one answer. It is always going to depend on your itinerary and personal circumstances, and the priority should be to get accurate information into the guide for the traveller to make the best choices for them. There are lots of people who travel to LA and don't hire a car. --(WT-en) inas 19:35, 29 June 2009 (EDT)

No, I definitely don't think we should do that, but when it's noteworthy, and when there's a clear winner, it should be mentioned.... LA is widely known for being a car-heavy city.... it is slowly moving towards other useful forms of transport, but undoing the damage intentionally inflicted by the auto industry has been a sllllooooowwww process here, and there's still a ways to go – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 20:44, 29 June 2009 (EDT)

Sure. I think the intro now gives a good summary, without losing any of its color. --(WT-en) inas 20:42, 30 June 2009 (EDT)

This is actually a misleading statement in the article. Technically, yes, there are a few miles of Los Angeles that touch the Pacific, like near the airport on the western side and around the port on the southern end. But the few miles of L.A. that border the ocean are mostly used for industry such as the aforementioned airport and port facilities. Venice Beach and an area north of Santa Monica are the only beach/waterfront areas that technically lie in Los Angeles and that are accessed by the public. Los Angeles, with its whopping 464 square miles, covers more area inland than area that actually rims the coast. Suburban cities and towns like Malibu, Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, Long Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, and several other communities see the bulk of beach visits. It seems the phrase "miles of coastline on the Pacific Ocean" is incorporating these other cities under the Los Angeles name when that would be a better statement under a "Los Angeles metro" article. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 66.192.176.30 (talk • contribs)

That's fair - I reverted the original edit because it was made without any comment provided by an anonymous editor, and as you've stated LA does in fact have many miles of coastline so it struck me as factually inaccurate. Feel free to re-update the article. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 18:37, 14 July 2009 (EDT)

Popular Road trips should be added. For example, the popular LA -> Vegas road trip via route 66. See sites like AAA and RoadtripMania. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Richardeastes (talk • contribs)

Please go ahead and add them yourself! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 12:50, 23 February 2010 (EST)

I removed East L.A. as a neighborhood to avoid at all costs as I don't think it's true. While it may not be the first (or 10th) place a casual tourist will want to visit, it is a gold mine for those interested in experiencing LA's Chicano culture as well as some of the best Mexican food in the world. And with the new Gold Line extension, East LA is more accessible than ever. If I start to figure this wiki thing out, I may give it it's own page (with appropriate safety precautions). It's not Beverly Hills, but it's not a war-zone either.--(WT-en) Guero57 22:02, 17 May 2010 (EDT)guero57

Given the range in safety between places such as Compton and Bel-Air our Los Angeles articles could probably do a better job conveying how "safe" a neighborhood actually is. You're right that East LA is definitely worth visiting, and I think we can probably revisit safety concerns as the articles further develop. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 23:18, 17 May 2010 (EDT)

Well maybe at last we can get a districts map going  :) Some thoughts....

1. I think the entire valley can be one color and grouped as San Fernando Valley, another map can reside there with the breakdown.
2. Not sure what to do with Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Bel-Air and Beverly Crest.... don't all need own articles.
3. How should we group the eastern areas? Los Feliz-Atwater? Silverlake-Echo Park (and include Elysian?)?
4. Can everything from Eagle Rock down to Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights etc all fit as East LA?
5. Everything from Mid-Wilshire through Westlake into Los Angeles/Wilshire? Or break off Koreatown-Westlake?
6. What to do with Mar Vista & Palms & Playa Vista?
7. For South, can Baldwin Hills through southeast LA and Watts all go in Los Angeles/South?

Not sure how soon I'll be able to work on this, if someone else has the urge to map it go for it – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 21:30, 11 July 2010 (EDT)

A note regarding the map shown - I think the districts of LA are better handled like we did New York City rather than trying to create just a handful of "Los Angeles/District" articles. The approach thus far has been to try to split Los Angeles County into logical regions, and then break those regions into city articles where it makes sense, so for example Culver City and Marina del Rey have their own articles since they are municipalities with defined borders, but neighborhoods such as Palms (per Wikipedia: "Palms has no official boundaries") are grouped into more general articles.

Given that starting point, the breakdown we currently have is the following, which duplicates some cities and may need cleanup. A map would help greatly in showing areas that we treat as municipalities versus the more ambiguous "Los Angeles/District" articles, which aren't well thought out or well-defined. Additionally, it would show us where we have gaps or where we have articles for things that should be articles:

• Los Angeles (see Los Angeles#Districts)
  • Los Angeles/Downtown
  • Los Angeles/East
  • Los Angeles/Harbor Area
  • Hollywood
  • San Fernando Valley
  • Los Angeles/South Central
  • Los Angeles/West.
  • Los Angeles/Wilshire

• Antelope Valley
  • Palmdale
  • Lancaster
  • Others?

• Gateway Cities (Los Angeles County)
  • Artesia (California)
  • Bell
  • Bell Gardens
  • Bellflower
  • Cerritos
  • City of Commerce
  • Compton
  • Cudahy
  • Downey
  • Hawaiian Gardens
  • Huntington Park
  • La Mirada
  • Lakewood
  • Long Beach
  • Lynwood
  • Maywood (California)
  • Montebello
  • Norwalk (California)
  • Paramount
  • Pico Rivera
  • Santa Fe Springs
  • Signal Hill
  • South Gate
  • Whittier

• San Fernando Valley
  • Arleta
  • Burbank
  • Calabasas
  • Canoga Park
  • Chatsworth (California)
  • Encino
  • Glendale (California)
  • Granada Hills
  • Hidden Hills
  • Lakeview Terrace
  • Mission Hills
  • North Hollywood
  • Northridge
  • North Hills
  • Pacoima
  • Panorama City
  • Porter Ranch
  • Reseda
  • San Fernando (California)
  • Sherman Oaks
  • Studio City
  • Sun Valley (California)
  • Sunland
  • Sylmar
  • Tarzana
  • Toluca Lake
  • Tujunga
  • Universal City
  • Valley Village
  • Van Nuys
  • West Hills
  • Winnetka
  • Woodland Hills

• San Gabriel Valley
  • Alhambra (California)
  • Arcadia
  • Azusa
  • Baldwin Park
  • Bradbury
  • City of Industry
  • Claremont (California)
  • Covina
  • Diamond Bar
  • Duarte
  • El Monte
  • Glendale (California) (also listed as part of San Fernando Valley for some reason)
  • Glendora
  • Hacienda Heights
  • Irwindale
  • La Cañada Flintridge
  • La Puente
  • La Verne
  • Monrovia (California)
  • Monterey Park
  • Pasadena
  • Pomona
  • Rosemead
  • Rowland Heights
  • San Dimas
  • San Gabriel
  • San Marino (California)
  • Sierra Madre
  • South El Monte
  • South Pasadena
  • Temple City
  • Walnut
  • West Covina
  • Whittier (California)

• Santa Clarita Valley
  • Canyon Country
  • Castaic
  • Newhall
  • Saugus (California)
  • Santa Clarita
  • Stevenson Ranch
  • Valencia (California)

• South Bay (Los Angeles County)
  • Avalon
  • Carson
  • Cerritos
  • El Segundo
  • Gardena
  • Hawthorne
  • Hermosa Beach
  • Inglewood
  • Lawndale
  • Lomita
  • Manhattan Beach
  • Palos Verdes Estates
  • Rancho Palos Verdes
  • Redondo Beach
  • Rolling Hills
  • Rolling Hills Estates
  • San Pedro
  • Torrance
  • Wilmington

• West Side (Los Angeles County)
  • Agoura Hills
  • Bel-Air
  • Beverly Hills
  • Century City
  • Culver City
  • Los Angeles/Westwood
  • Malibu
  • Marina del Rey
  • Pacific Palisades
  • Santa Monica
  • Venice
  • West Hollywood

I don't by any means think that the list above should not be changed, but it is helpful in showing the amount of material we're dealing with and why a map would be helpful in figuring out how best to organize things. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 22:52, 11 July 2010 (EDT)

The LA Times' Mapping LA project (http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-la/neighborhoods/) might also be a useful tool for defining boundaries within LA County. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:20, 27 July 2010 (EDT)

Los Angeles really is a mess compared to other cities we feature on Wikivoyage. I think with LA we only cover the municipality of LA and some areas associated with it (Beverly Hills and South Bay, not the rest of Los Angeles County). The municipality only has 4 million inhabitants, so it should easily be possible to use the normal way of districtifying (the way used in New York City is exceptional and should not be the standard case for any big city). My proposal would be the following:

• Los Angeles/Downtown
• Los Angeles/East
• Los Angeles/Harbor Area and South Bay
• Los Angeles/Hollywood
• Los Angeles/Beverly Hills
• Los Angeles/Santa Monica and Venice
• Los Angeles/San Fernando Valley
• Los Angeles/South Central
• Los Angeles/West
• Los Angeles/Wilshire

Hope to hear your opinions. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 09:50, 3 June 2011 (EDT)

While I'm glad to see this discussion re-started, I think that list leaves some holes, and the "Santa Monica and Venice" district in particular seems an odd one to me. Additionally, the fact that LA has officially absorbed many of its suburbs leads to confusion - Studio City and Hollywood are officially parts of LA, but Beverly Hills and Santa Monica are independent cities, even though from a traveler's perspective all four seem like independent cities. As a result I really think it makes sense to use districts solely for portions of LA that aren't pseudo-suburbs, and to then try to come up with divisions within LA county for everything else. The Mapping LA breakdown seems to me like it might be a good place to start as it does a decent job of dividing things up, although we probably want to re-consider some of the outlying regions (Angeles Forest, The Verdugos, Northwest County) since those aren't in common usage as far as I'm aware, and then treat Northeast L.A., The Eastside, Central LA and South LA as LA city proper. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:13, 3 June 2011 (EDT)

I know Beverly Hills and Santa Monica are independent cities, but from a traveler's point of view, a trip to LA is incomplete without having been there. For me, visiting Beverly Hills is not much different as visiting Hollywood, even though there are different administrative borders drawn.

That LA mapping project is really interesting and a great place for us to start. In fact, I think most of those borders drawn there could figure as districts. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 10:45, 4 June 2011 (EDT)

I'm uncomfortable with trying to use districts for cities that aren't part of the city of LA as I think doing so leads to a situation where most of Los Angeles County becomes the "LA" article, and you then have to try to shoehorn at least a hundred city articles under that umbrella. This area contains ten million people and covers four thousand square miles, which would be pretty humongous for a single city article. That said, if there are strong reasons as to why that approach makes more sense than a more standard regional breakdown then counter-arguments would be welcome. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 19:12, 5 June 2011 (EDT)

I think this one is our biggest challenge since districting London. Once there is a little more clarity on the approach, LA may be a good candidate for a Collaboration of the Month?--(WT-en) Burmesedays 22:48, 5 June 2011 (EDT)

I'd definitely be a very willing participant in such a collaboration, time permitting. One note about the Mapping LA project - per http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-la/about/#the-data that data is CC-SA-non-commercial, so we would not be able to use it directly for creation of LA region/city maps. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 00:45, 6 June 2011 (EDT)

That article is more about how to group certain neighborhoods, we could always later use OSM to make the map itself. Burmesedays is right about the scope of this project, which is huge, but definitely necessary. I would be in favor of expanding over LA Municipality, but I also understand that this might be too unwieldy. The problem with just using LA Municipality is that this would lead to many gaps and unincluded areas, which would be unpractical to navigate through for the average traveler. A visit to Santa Monica, Venice, Beverly Hills and (West) Hollywood for most would be key visits to a trip to LA, and many travelers probably don't know they are separate administrative entities. But including 88 cities in one city article also sounds unrealistic, so maybe a double layer set-up like New Orleans or New York City could be used, as we discuss on how we could define what to include in LA Municipality and what in LA County. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 15:29, 18 July 2011 (EDT)

Just to clarify, Mapping LA appears to be claiming rights over the border definitions themselves ("The Times neighborhood boundaries are available for use...") so we would have to be careful in using them. Obviously they can't claim copyright over an official city border, but copying all neighborhoods & their borders from that project would likely land us in a weird legal gray zone. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 21:12, 1 August 2011 (EDT)

That Mapping LA project is effectively making this task 5x harder. I'm going to contact them and see what they're willing to do, since I don't think they meant to screw over the free culture world in choosing that license. --Peter ^Talk 20:45, 31 October 2012 (CET)

As far as I'm aware, information cannot be copyrighted, only the way information is presented. So we can just use their borders, as long as we'd make our own maps. Globe-trotter (talk) 23:48, 26 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Facts cannot be copyrighted ("the weight of a sodium atom is XYZ"). There is case law that maps are copyrightable, however, and there have been lawsuits filed by companies that inserted "fake" locations in their maps and then sued competitors for copyright violation when those fake locations appeared on the competitor map [2]. See also things like the Google Maps terms of use, which is clear that "tracing" a map is a violation of copyright: [3]. In this case, while we can use Mapping LA as a reference when figuring out district borders, using them as the basis of our own district maps would at a minimum land us in a legal grey area unless we can get permission from them. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:06, 27 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

I've come back to this many times and always stalled out; the layout of LA is weird to start; but honestly what keeps stalling me out is arguments about what to put in LA city vs LA county articles. I don't disagree with their sentiments in principal. But practically speaking, anyone heading to "Los Angeles" is not going to look at the county article. They are going to end at up at Los Angeles. And that article should be the gateway to the entire area that is commonly though of as LA (including Santa Monica, BH, etc). That doesn't mean they have to be named as districts like Los Angeles/Beverly Hills, but should be listed there for clarity and efficiency. The map at the top of this section isn't a bad starting point either – cacahuate ^talk 08:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

I wanted to throw my opinion into the fold because it appears people are ignoring the audience here.

• This is article is for non-locals. It should take into account the perspective of visitors, not locals.
• For non-locals when referring to Los Angeles they are almost always talking about what Wikipedia calls the Greater Los Angeles Area or Los Angeles Metropolitan Area.
• When people search for Los Angeles here (audience target: visitors) it should direct to whatever you want to title that -- it should *not* direct to the City of Los Angeles to the exclusion of localities typically associated with Los Angeles because it requires visitors to become geo-political-boundary and history experts.
• Such an article can include, "The Greater Los Angeles area is made up of many cities and neighborhoods. Such as the Cities of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Long Beach, Burbank and the neighborhoods of Hollywood, Westchester, North Hollywood."
• As an example, though I live in one of the South Bay cities, I always say "Los Angeles" if I'm speaking to someone who isn't from So Cal or LA.

There should absolutely be a breakdown of the cities and neighborhoods and probably an explanation out there but I think it's wrong to have the main "Los Angeles" page be about the City of Los Angeles instead of the far more relevant Los Angeles Metropolitan Area (which would include things like Disneyland, Hollywood, Long Beach, Downtown Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, the beach cities, Malibu and the Inland Empire).

Obviously locals would quibble about where they are actually from but again I ask, who is the audience? Better to start broadly and then allow readers to narrow down their search than pander to the pride of local residents. CaliGuy (talk) 19:42, 17 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

There are three points I would make: one is that you are right, we need to make sure this article is organized in such a way that users will be able to find relevant information. Second, while organization for readers is ideal, it tends to be locals who contribute most of the information, so they also need to be able to contribute to articles that make sense to them. Finally, if we were to create an article that includes everything from Malibu to Disneyland it would still need to be broken down into smaller pieces. I think the suggestion by User:Cacahuate to re-think this discussion in terms of sub-dividing Los Angeles County might be a good one, although that would still leave out Orange County, which might be problematic. -- Ryan • (talk) • 07:20, 18 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose LA County suggestion, propose additional district and boundaries for districts: First off, as stated below, the current Eastside article is fatally flawed in that the neighborhoods mentioned are west of Downtown. Its current title is absolutely indefensible, completely confusing to a non-Angelino, and needed to be changed yesterday (actually, it was changed yesterday, then wrongfully reverted today). The article devoted to the Eastside should be devoted to neighborhoods east of Downtown, and the current "Eastside" article should be moved to a new ninth region, "Northwest". You want district boundaries; I'll give you district boundaries:

• Downtown: L.A. River, I-10, and CA-110
• Eastside: All areas within the city of Los Angeles east of the L.A. River (unincorporated areas would be covered in East LA)
• Harbor: Anything south of El Segundo Blvd
• Hollywood: Mulholland Drive, Vineland Avenue, LA River/Griffith Park, Vermont Avenue, Beverly Blvd, West Hollywood City Limits (West Hollywood is a separate city, but could be thrown in with Hollywood), Sunset Plaza Drive, Appian Way, Lookout Mountain Drive, Laurel Canyon Blvd
• Northwest: L.A. River, CA-110, I-10, Vermont Avenue, Griffith Park
• San Fernando Valley: All areas north of Mulholland Drive west of Vineland Avenue and North of Griffith Park or the L.A. River east of Vineland Avenue (the jump is so Universal City can be in Hollywood)
• South LA: Anything in LA City of La Cienega Blvd between I-10 and El Segundo Blvd
• West LA: Mulholland Drive, Laurel Canyon Blvd, Lookout Mountain Drive, Appian Way, Sunset Plaza Drive, West Hollywood City Limits (West Hollywood not included in West LA), San Vicente Blvd, Fairfax Avenue, La Cienega Blvd, (Beverly Hills, Marina del Rey, Culver City and Santa Monica could be included in West LA), Imperial Hwy, Pacific Ocean
• Wilshire: Beverly Blvd, Vermont Avenue, I-10, Fairfax Avenue, San Vicente Blvd

Now let's get this done already. None of this glacial, wait-for-more-comments, it's time for action. You want a map, I can make that happen Purplebackpack89 00:28, 22 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

A map of your proposal would be great - just roughly drawn outlines for now; I think that will help to attract more feedback. I think you're grouping too much into "Hollywood" and WH and BH are too central to be considered part of "West" imo. I also think we need a different name than "Northwest", but we can discuss naming of the areas later, let's get lines drawn and agreed upon as the first step – cacahuate ^talk 01:47, 22 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

I thought BH was included in Westside above. Anyway, here's my map. It's non-free. As you can see, most of the city is included in the Westside and Valley areas; the Hollywood, NW/Whatever, DTLA and Wilshire areas are lilliputian by comparison Purplebackpack89 02:28, 22 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Just as an FYI, I sent Mapping LA an email about re-using their neighborhood boundaries, but I think it got lost in the out-of-office holiday shuffle. I just resent it. I'd love to make a map of LA. --Peter ^Talk 01:54, 22 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Mapping LA is looking into what they can do regarding the license. I'll keep updating as I get more information. --Peter ^Talk 01:54, 24 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Being able to use the Mapping LA boundaries and names would be great - most locals will recognize the city and region names, and the breakdown should be easy for non-locals to use provided a map is available. Full support from me if that is an option. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:39, 24 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Comment: I would like to note that of the 18 "regions" of LA county, the "Central" L.A. region would combine four existing articles (DTLA, NWLA, Hollywood and Wilshire) probably contain close to 100 KB of data, and stretch from the LA River all the way to Fairfax. On the other hand, what I'm calling the Eastside would be split into two articles, on the Eastside and the Northeast. So you're left with one massive article that combines a bunch of neighborhoods that don't really have a lot in common, and two smaller articles. You'd also have to combine Los Angeles/Harbor Area with Long Beach. If we do it by neighborhoods instead of regions, we'd be looking at over 100 articles for L.A. County, some of which would have little or no content. Not to toot my own horn here, but I think my solution is lot more useful than that thing. I also contest the notion that all locals refer to the regions in the manner listed on that. Nobody refers to Hollywood or the Miracle Mile as being part of "Central L.A.". Nobody refers to "The Verdugos". Purplebackpack89 03:12, 24 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Also, lemme clarify how my proposal differs from the L.A. regions:

• It splits Central L.A. into Downtown, Northwest, Hollywood, and Wilshire
• It combines East L.A. with Northeast L.A. (note that both Mapping L.A. and I agree that what is presently called the "Eastside" is a misnomer; we both refer to the "Eastside" as something East of the L.A. River
• It splits Harbor and Long Beach
• San Fernando Valley includes Sunland-Tujunga
• South L.A. and the Westside are unchanged Purplebackpack89 03:21, 24 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

I don't think we need to exactly copy Mapping LA, but it is definitely a good starting point. As you've noted, we could easily combine "Eastside" and "Northeast LA" into your "Eastside" region. "Verdugos" can be renamed to "Los Angeles Foothills" (or something similar) if necessary. The advantage of starting with their breakdown is that it provides very clear borders for sub-divisions of all of LA County, and our job is then just figuring out what needs to be combined (as you've started doing), making the job much simpler. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:37, 24 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hey Peter, any update from Mapping LA? – cacahuate ^talk 22:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

I move that since we haven't heard from Mapping LA, we enact the only as-yet viable proposal out there, i.e. my map above Purplebackpack89 01:23, 19 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

No word for a while now. I'll poke. --Peter ^Talk 00:15, 21 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

To update, we're still actively hashing this out, but things seem promising. I think we'll get permission to use the boundaries (only) without the NC problem. --Peter ^Talk 23:21, 25 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

There's a big problem with the way "Eastside" is defined here. It includes too many disparate neighborhoods, some of which aren't very "Eastside"...they're West of L.A. River, West of Downtown, and have "West" in their street addresses. Some of these neighborhoods (particularly Westlake, Macarthur Park, and Pico-Union) are rarely referred as "Eastside". I propose that the neighborhoods west of the L.A. River (Los Feliz, Angelino Heights, Echo Park, Elysian Park, Elysian Valley, Silverlake, Griffith Park, East Hollywood, Westlake, Macarthur Park, and Pico-Union) be split off into a new article entitled Los Angeles/Northwest or Los Angeles/North Central. Neighborhoods east of the L.A. River (Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, El Sereno, Highland Park, Heritage Square, Garvanza, Mount Washington, Montecito Heights, Hermon, Cypress Park, and Eagle Rock) should be covered in Los Angeles/Eastside. Compare w:Template:Northwest Los Angeles and w:Template:Los Angeles Eastside. To refresh, the borders of the new articles would be:

• Northwest or North Central: L.A. River, CA-110, I-10, Vermont Avenue, Griffith Park
• Eastside: All areas within the city of Los Angeles east of the L.A. River (unincorporated areas would be covered in East LA)
• Downtown: L.A. River, I-10, and CA-110

See also This website

Since we'll need to have another color, I propose dark blue Purplebackpack89 18:15, 17 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

I totally appreciate your enthusiasm, but I'm moving Eastside back to where it was until a consensus is established; Northwest is possibly the weirdest suggestion yet; please hold off on moving anything else around, including listings. Thanks! – cacahuate ^talk 23:40, 21 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Also note that the first step in changing LA's districting is to get the entire overview laid out with a map, we need to conclude the discussions above – cacahuate ^talk 23:58, 21 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

In reverting my edit, you have re-added factually inaccurate information! Calling Northwest L.A. "Northwest L.A." isn't the weirdest suggestion yet. The weirdest suggestion is calling Northwest L.A. "the Eastside" when all the neighborhoods mentioned are west of Downtown. Please provide some reasonable evidence as to why Northwest Los Angeles should be called the "Eastside". You've also removed 6 KB of content from mainspace when you deleted the new Eastside article. Please explain why. Purplebackpack89 00:01, 22 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Please don't, it will be reverted again. I'm not suggesting your ideas are wrong, they just need to be discussed and agreed upon first; this discussion has been going on for quite some time, and needs a conclusion before major changes and page moves are started. It's nice to have a new voice in this conversation, I hope you will put your energy into the conversations above about districting so that we can move onto next steps – cacahuate ^talk 01:24, 22 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

And success! It took a bit of work and patience on this discussion page's end, but Mapping LA has now changed the license for their neighborhood boundaries to CC-by-SA-2.0 [4]. I'm going to get to work (once I figure out how to convert one of those formats to XML) putting together a comprehensive SVG map, so all I'll need from this page is a list of which neighborhoods [5] (click regions for individual neighborhoods) go into which districts. --Peter ^Talk 01:20, 15 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Or how to import that XML into an SVG... Or how to convert one of their formats to SVG... --Peter ^Talk 02:11, 15 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Banging up against a wall now and am going to put this aside for the time being. I've tried the following tools with no success: [6],[7],[8],[9]. Would someone else try their hand at getting the SHP/KML/JSON files converted to an SVG? --Peter ^Talk 02:39, 15 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

I won't get to this anytime soon, but I'll add it to my TODO list for the next long airplane trip in case no one else (yourself included) gets to it first. We've gone without a decent map of LA for ten years, so a few more weeks won't hurt. -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Why don't you just screen-capture it? Purplebackpack89 17:17, 25 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Importing directly from the data files would give us neighborhood boundaries for the entire LA area that are exact to the street level, giving us an detailed base from which to begin any modifications (when combined with an OSM map). Trying to do that by copying screen captures would be a huge job and we would lose a lot of accuracy, unless I'm overlooking something. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:31, 25 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

I could do this by hand, but that's a huge job, and one that should be avoidable. Waiting is frustrating, though ;) --Peter ^Talk 19:04, 25 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

great news Peter! Apologies in advance for the back and forth that is imminent with dialing in LA's complicated geography, I'll do my best to chime in often as it takes shape, excited this is finally happening – cacahuate ^talk 05:26, 18 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I'm late to the party here, but I just want to get some clarification on a few points: since we're looking at the Mapping L.A. thing, are we still proposing combining Los Angeles with Los Angeles County? Cause I'm totally on board for that; I think it makes more sense from a traveler's perspective.

And if that is the case, then would the Los Angeles namespace be expanded to everything in the county, or limited to those articles that already have it (that is, Downtown, Eastside - which I guess we'll rename to something like "Westlake", South Central, West, and Wilshire)? I'm figuring the latter, since it's less work, but just thought I'd check.

I'm guessing Harbor Area would be merged to what we now call the Gateway Cities. Also, can someone explain to me why Los Angeles/West has a sub-district? PerryPlanet (talk) 19:44, 21 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, when the heck are we gonna finish it, and move the Northwest LA article away from the bogus "Eastside" title, which should be for the content at East LA? Purplebackpack89 19:12, 27 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hopefully within a week or two, I'll get my hands on a copy of ArcGIS, which would allow me to work with the formats provided. If anyone could get the data converted to SVG in the meantime, though, that would still be enormously helpful (still learning ArcGIS). --Peter ^Talk 13:48, 1 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

And I've got it! I'll upload a basic SVG file with the neighborhood shapes today so other people can work with this, but it will take more time to actually get the OSM data imported, because of this insanely frustrating problem that is causing me to pull out my hair after having spent much of today trying to find a solution. It's honestly seeming possible that I simply won't be able to use OSM data in making maps anymore. --Peter ^Talk 22:59, 16 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

So here are the neighborhoods as raw objects. If anyone wants to start working on the groupings (grouping them into districts/regions), please edit away in Inkscape—all you'll need to do is change the objects colors accordingly and export a PNG for upload to Commons to then share here. To figure out which object is which neighborhood, you'll need to look at the Mapping L.A. project itself. (Although I'll get working on creating a names layer.) --Peter ^Talk 23:07, 16 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Awesome! I'll go ahead and get cracking on this. Thanks for making this, Peter (if I had had any clue how to work on whatever it was you were doing before, I would have helped... all the more reason to help out now)! PerryPlanet (talk) 00:17, 17 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Cool, just remember not to work on adding individual neighborhood names, since that's what I'm currently working on ;) --Peter ^Talk 02:23, 17 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

And set! I used the colors on Los Angeles County, save for Central L.A. (Downtown, Northwest LA, Hollywood, Wilshire, South Central), where I used different shades of green. For the most part, I just followed the existing Wikivoyage layout to figure out where to put what. The only times where I deferred was with Northwest LA (or "Eastside" as we currently refer to it); one because both Northwest LA and Hollywood lay claim to Griffith Park, so I decided to grant it to Northwest LA because you need to go through Los Feliz (which is claimed by Northwest LA) to get to it. I also put Dodger Stadium in Northwest LA (it's currently in Downtown) because it seems to be surrounded by Echo Park, which is definitely in Northwest LA, so it seems to make more sense there. Other than that, it all follows the existing Wikivoyage layout. PerryPlanet (talk) 03:51, 17 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

As an aside, Peter, when you get that name layer ready I'll go to work on some of these larger regions. I'm currently trying to figure out the layout of the West Side, so when you get those names added in I'll put forward what I hope to be a coherent organization for that region. PerryPlanet (talk) 06:32, 18 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Oh, the name layer is already up. I just turned it invisible, since they're not legible zoomed so far out. I'm working on other stuff now, so knock yourself out without worrying about knocking heads ;) I do plan to overlay this on an actual street map, though, so don't work on that. --Peter ^Talk 07:16, 18 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

In that case, allow me to extend an invitation to any interested members to Talk:West Side for getting the layout of the West Side figured out! PerryPlanet (talk) 10:47, 18 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hey, here's a new map—it's quite a bit of work to line up those regions to a street map! I could add the small streets layer, which I've kept in a separate SVG (it alone is about 9MB), but I think it would make the map too busy at this zoom level. --Peter ^Talk 20:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Nice! Yeah, adding the small streets layer would probably overshadow the nice color scheme you got there (not to mention a file that large would probably crash Inkscape for me). PerryPlanet (talk) 04:50, 22 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

So how are we all feeling about this? Are we ready to put a ring on it and merge Los Angeles County to here? Also, are we cool with finally renaming Los Angeles/Eastside to Los Angeles/Northwest? Obviously there's been enthusiasm for doing it before, and today I discovered that a precedent has been set for that term. There doesn't seem to be much point in putting it off any longer. PerryPlanet (talk) 16:11, 28 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, uh, where did everyone go as soon as we finally got the map? ;) Full support from me, anyway, although my knowledge mostly comes from the work I did in making the map... --Peter ^Talk 05:07, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

I've been busy, sorry. This looks fine to me, and is definitely far better than the existing confusion, so make it so and we can always tweak things later. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:37, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

And then it was made so. I'll try to tidy up some of the coverage as part of the merger of LA County to here, but the basic district layout above is now there. PerryPlanet (talk) 03:50, 3 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

Los Angeles/Eastside still redirects to Los Angeles/Northwest. I'm assuming it's okay to have it redirect to East LA instead? Eco84 (talk) 22:22, 4 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

Although now I notice the district map above shows "East Side" instead of "East LA". Eco84 (talk) 22:25, 4 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

I actually considered doing the exact same thing, but I was afraid of causing confusion while there was still any page left that linked to "Eastside". I think I got them now though, so go ahead and redirect it over to East LA, since that makes more sense. PerryPlanet (talk) 23:20, 4 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

• This is great! I didn't participate in the discussion for a couple months, and yet everything is turning out just the way I wanted Purplebackpack89 11:45, 8 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

Guys this is great, I haven't been able to be around much lately, but happy to see the progress! Some thoughts: Is Wilshire an agreeable name to everyone for that whole area? What about Mid-City? Should Northeast LA be distinct from East LA at this level? I almost think it should. First thoughts. Thanks! – cacahuate ^talk 01:19, 23 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Northeast LA is a distinct entity from East LA, but given that it only has maybe three or four listings at this point, there doesn't seem to be enough material to justify it being its own page at this stage. As for Mid-City, the Mapping L.A. boundaries for Mid-City don't include Wilshire Blvd and vicinity, and given that most of the tourist attractions covered by that article are along Wilshire, I'd argue "Wilshire" is a perfectly appropriate name. PerryPlanet (talk) 02:01, 23 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Good point re NE LA, in that case I suggest that we park that page at Los Angeles/Eastside for now, as East LA isn't accurate to encompass Eagle Rock, Highland Park, etc.... how's that sound? – cacahuate ^talk 23:02, 23 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I have no problem with that. Los Angeles/Eastside already redirects to East LA, so it should be a simple matter to switch it around. PerryPlanet (talk) 23:27, 23 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I just noticed that there is a link to Ladera Heights from the "Go next" section of Inglewood. Since that community is almost entirely residential I think it makes sense to incorporate it into a neighboring article, but I couldn't quite figure out where it fit in - it's not Culver City, but I don't know if it's ever considered a part of Westchester, Inglewood, or some other district. Any advice from anyone who might know? @PerryPlanet:? -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:57, 20 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

I don't think I ever figured out what to do with Ladera Heights. It's an unincorporated area between Culver City and the incorporated neighborhoods of South L.A. And I'm not familiar with the neighborhood, so I'm not sure where it would be most appropriate to put. PerryPlanet (talk) 03:21, 20 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

What if we group it into Los Angeles/South Central? It's not Inglewood and it's not Culver City, so unless I'm overlooking something then that leaves South Central and Westchester (California) as the only remaining areas that border Ladera Heights. Since "South Central" seems to have the more ambiguous borders of the two (Westchester actually has fairly well defined borders) it seems like that would be the default choice. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:14, 20 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

Sounds good to me! PerryPlanet (talk) 22:12, 20 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

I've made Ladera Heights into a redirect. The South Central mapmask will need an update, but I'm rather inexperienced in that area so will leave it to the pros. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:34, 20 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

Taken care of. Although it's not a difficult task; it's more tedious than challenging. PerryPlanet (talk) 22:44, 20 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

Since the above district discussion has focused on expanding the scope of this article to cover all of Los Angeles County, I'm wondering if we should move the routebox info on this page down to the level of the individual districts/cities. L.A. is so crazy spread out that saying a freeway passes through some point in the city doesn't really tell you that much. PerryPlanet (talk) 04:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. --Peter ^Talk 16:25, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Alright, so since this has come up again, let me offer an additional reason why I think keeping a routebox on this page is problematic: the routebox wasn't designed to work on two different geographical hierarchy levels simultaneously, because it creates a conflict in where you put the "route". Ideally, you should be able to follow a route, through the links, in either direction through each article. But planting an additional one on this page is problematic, because you're essentially creating a dead link; you can click out of the routebox on this page to the next destination on the route, but if the one on the next page links to the individual cities/districts, then you won't be able to follow it back here. And since this guide now covers a region with literally nearly a hundred different municipalities, it's impractical to move all that info up to here. PerryPlanet (talk) 00:34, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

• Keep the routebox: This is the article for the city of Los Angeles (as well as the region), and by virtue of its status in that regard, there should be a routebox. Most other cities that have been divvied up into neighborhoods (New York City, Chicago, Houston, San Diego) have routeboxes. I don't understand why this shouldn't to. When people click on "Los Angeles" as a control city, they're not expecting DTLA or some other region of LA, they're expecting this article. Likewise, when people are in Buttonwillow or Kettleman or Camarillo and see Los Angeles as the control sign on the 5 or the 101, they know that it can mean "Los Angeles or the cities around it", and most of the roads that connect the suburbs of Los Angeles to the outer world (101, 5, 10, Historic 66) start or run through Los Angeles. Purplebackpack89 03:23, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Furthermore, articles like Buttonwillow and Camarillo that have Los Angeles as a control city but link to DTLA should have their links changed to this article. This article is more representative of LA than DTLA is: only a small sliver of LA is DTLA and it's likely many travelers to LA are desirous of going to "someplace in LA" (i.e. what's covered here) rather than just DTLA. Purplebackpack89 03:32, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Yes, most cities that have been divvied up into neighborhoods have the routebox on the city article - but not the district level, like LA does. That's the key point here: the routebox generally only functions well if it's kept to a single geographical hierarchical level. Once you get into trying to incorporate the information for multiple geographical levels, the routebox becomes a hopelessly confused mess.

Even if you can find a way to account for multiple geographical levels, here you would run into the issue of whether the routebox here should reflect the city or the county. I'd argue it would have to be for the county, since that's the area covered by this article (so having, say, the City of Commerce on a routebox here wouldn't make sense, since that's technically within the coverage area of this article).

I admit that having the routebox control city on articles like Buttonwillow link to Downtown LA is kinda funky, but honestly, that was the best solution I could come up with seeing as trying to incorporate multiple geographical levels through the routebox is just a really complicated task. Although I'm open to suggestions, if anyone has any ideas. PerryPlanet (talk) 14:55, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

• Routebox should be removed per PerryPlanet. Sure, keeping it here may still work for I-5, but not for I-405, I-210, etc. --Rschen7754 08:28, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

@RSChen7754:, I-405 wasn't in the routebox I had made, partly because it doesn't work well, but also because it doesn't leave the metro area. You have also ignored the fact that this is the only major city article in the country with no routebox, and that people aren't looking for DTLA when they click "Los Angeles" from another article. See here for what my routebox looked like: I think it's perfectly reasonable that the routebox should be kept, and that PerryPlanet's arguments are either fatally flawed or outweighed by the fact that every other major city has a routebox. Purplebackpack89 14:45, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Per my response above, I don't think the argument that we use routeboxes on other city pages really applies here, because they don't use routeboxes at the district level. We've created a rather unique case with Los Angeles in making the city page the regional metropolitan area page as well. PerryPlanet (talk) 14:59, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

...which was probably a mistake, because it gave us problems like this. Purplebackpack89 16:08, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Is the lack of a routebox really such a problem that making the LA article cover the entire region was a mistake? There was a long, long discussion about that process above that struggled with this question for a long time and produced plenty of justifications for why Los Angeles was a unique case fitting for this approach. I personally consider the lack of a routebox a minor drawback in the grand scheme of things (unless someone can think of a way to have the routebox simultaneously work on two different geographical levels without making it a convoluted mess - anyone who can pull this off will have my kudos!). PerryPlanet (talk) 17:27, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

It's hardly the only one (and I believe when the discussion took place, I was either dissenting in making it a region or AFK). The way you do it is that from Glendale or Monterey Park or Santa Monica, the next city is Los Angeles (here), and from here, link to Glendale, Monterey Park and Santa Monica. Having the trunk routes like US 101 and I-5 going through various neighborhood articles, now, that might have been a mistake. Purplebackpack89 17:51, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

But you're talking about making the routebox on this page apply only to the city of Los Angeles, when the content of this page covers the entire county of Los Angeles. Not only does that present an inconsistency in the information we're giving our viewers, but the whole reason we wound up making this article cover the entirety of the county is because the city limits of Los Angeles are — quite frankly — completely and utterly bonkers. A traveler to LA is going to expect to see popular attractions like Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and Beverly Hills covered in a guide to LA, even though those destinations aren't technically within the limits of the city of Los Angeles. This is why we expanded the scope of the article to cover the entire county, because in the case of LA that was a better way to present this info in a manner digestible to a tourist. In the case of NYC or San Francisco, you could just use the city limits because they matched what tourists expect to see in a guide for those cities. That luxury is thrown out the window in the case of LA.

In sum, what I'm saying is that I'm quite ready to utterly disregard the LA city limits (as we effectively have), because from a traveler's perspective they are next to useless in this case. PerryPlanet (talk) 19:05, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

On a side note, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to moving just the trunk routes up to a routebox on this page; that would address the control city issue you mentioned earlier. The problem you run into there is you have to figure out whether you can still include them on the city level. Would the cities in Antelope Valley (edit: sorry, I meant to say the Santa Clarita Valley) still get to keep I-5 in their routeboxes? What about the PCH, does it still get to be in Malibu and Santa Monica's routeboxes? Picking an arbitrary point within the county limits to link it to a routebox on this page presents problems in terms of the consistency of the info we're presenting to people here. PerryPlanet (talk) 19:28, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

The trunk routes was what I had done; I-405, I-210, I-110, etc were always left out. One of the problems of PCH is that it enters Los Angeles, leaves it, enters it again, leaves it again, then enters it a third time before leaving it for good. I-5 is in Los Angeles at two different points, but I-10, CA-60, and Hist 66 are one each Purplebackpack89 20:33, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Well then, there's the perfect example why trying to come up with a routebox just for the city of LA is so problematic. PerryPlanet (talk) 21:40, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

After giving it some more thought, I think I've come up with a bit of a workaround for this issue, so that routeboxes for far-flung destinations can link to the broader Los Angeles page (which does make more sense), while those within the L.A. area link to the individual districts. Since "Los Angeles" as we're defining it covers the whole county, the "minor" destinations in the routebox on this page can simply be the next town across the county line, outside the scope of this page. On those pages, the split between "region" level (this page) and "local" level (district pages) has been made clear. So now if a routebox says it links to "Los Angeles", it will actually take you to this page. PerryPlanet (talk) 22:02, 23 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Remember when this page was still a jumbled collection of info that only dealt with the City of Los Angeles? We've come a long way in the last few years.

Lately, I've been working to get the district pages and region guides immediately below this page to "usable" status, and I've also been working to fill in some of the more obvious content gaps on this page. With that done, I think we're very close to getting this page to "guide" status. So I would like to ask you guys (particularly Ryan, since he lives in the L.A. area), what else do we need to get in here before we're comfortable upgrading this one? PerryPlanet (talk) 23:32, 18 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

The diffs I've looked at recently have all seemed like good changes, but I'm on the road for work and don't have a lot of time to provide detailed feedback right now - please ping me again if I don't provide some feedback in the next 24 hours. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:13, 19 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

The Los Angeles article looks great, and definitely worthy of promotion - very nice job. I made a few small tweaks, the most significant of which was probably adding a paragraph to "Eat" about upscale dining, since Beverly Hills in particular is world-famous for its fancy restaurants. One question - since "Los Angeles County" redirects to "Los Angeles" I would assume that the Queen Mary and Aquarium of the Pacific should be mentioned in the "See" section? I was going to add them since they are major attractions but wanted to get a second opinion. I didn't go through all of the district articles, but having previously looked at most of them I'm confident they merit the "usable or better" requirement necessary to upgrade the LA article to guide status. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:56, 20 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

Good point regarding the Queen Mary and the Aquarium of the Pacific; I just added them. PerryPlanet (talk) 03:11, 20 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

Swept in from the pub

There seems to be some confusion in the hierarchy of Los Angeles. There have been a lot of discussions, so part of it is probably as good as it can get, but I noticed problems with Antelope Valley, where its parent regions are listed as subregions (I put a note on the talk page).

The immediate problem is that the scope of Antelope Valley is ill defined in the article. The scope should probably be just the part of the valley that belongs to Los Angeles County.

The problem with Los Angeles is (at least) that it is a "huge city" with both districts and subregions. Wouldn't it be more sensible to have Los Angeles County as parent region for on the one hand the huge city of Los Angeles and on the other the regions of the county? (Or some other name if not everything belongs to the county.)

--LPfi (talk) 10:25, 15 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

No. The City of Los Angeles is an entity only for government. The people consider L.A. to be L.A. County. I agree with you that the scope of Antelope Valley is ill defined in the article. The part of it that's in L.A. County needs to be a region of L.A. with constituent cities and/or rural areas that completely cover it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:40, 15 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

OK. But having regions as districts is unusual, and may be a problem at least for automatic tools (and for editors like me, who don't know the region and the corresponding discussion). It is clearly presented for the reader in the L.A. article, but should perhaps also be explained at the top of the talk page, and may require some special care in the subregion articles. --LPfi (talk) 11:10, 15 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

(edit conflict) In the U.S., small suburban towns typically aren’t incorporated into larger cities, even when those suburbs are de facto part of the larger city. Examples include Greater Orlando, Chicago, Metro Atlanta, etc. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 11:14, 15 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Another unusual city article hierarchy is New Taipei. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 11:17, 15 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Suburban areas being independent towns is quite common. Paris proper or City of London cover only part of the centre and even most suburbs of Helsinki are outside the city boundaries. But that is irrelevant as we ignore formal boundaries when they don't make sense (with or without a short comment). L.A. differs in that we include regions as districts, which breaks the consistency of our hierarchy. I don't want to question the decision, but I hope our tools do handle it. Such exceptions should probably be mentioned in Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy. --LPfi (talk) 11:53, 15 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

It looks wrong to me. Wide-open regions like Antelope Valley should not be part of a Huge City. Shouldn't we put L.A. Central and the other regions underneath a Los Angeles County guide? Powers ^(talk) 21:22, 15 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Yes. While I maintain what I said above, I think something about the region hierarchy should be changed. I've never thought of that region as part of L.A. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:33, 15 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

L.A. County should redirect to L.A. People there distinguish "City of L.A." when they're talking about it, but by default and almost always, L.A.=L.A. County. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:48, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I've lived in the LA area for 15 years and also asked the opinion of someone born & raised, and the consensus was that most people from LA would not consider LA County & Los Angeles to be synonymous. Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, Palmdale, Pomona, Calabasas, the Angeles National Forest, etc are all in LA County, but I think it would be rare for someone to consider those places to be "Los Angeles". -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:41, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

[edit conflict] So should Los Angeles cover all the area as before but be transformed into a region and a new Central Los Angeles be the huge city? We wouldn't have to emphasize the article classification for readers – the wording of the {{PrintDistricts}} template is problematic in many articles – if that would be the problem. Or is the problem that there is little to say about central Los Angeles that is not better said in LA or the district articles, and the middle layer would thus just be a distraction for the reader? --LPfi (talk) 05:53, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Central (which I would take to mean Downtown) L.A. is not a city. The City of L.A. is a city, but it has odd borders that make it an arbitrary entity for Wikivoyage. Ryan, what would you consider the borders of L.A. to be? I'm not a native and haven't lived there, but my experience is that Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley are considered part of L.A., and certainly, Santa Monica - though de jure an independent city - is. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:04, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Downtown L.A. is one of the districts under the heading "Central Los Angeles" in Los Angeles. Antelope Valley & al are under a separate heading, "Los Angeles County regions". These subregions are what is odd for a "huge city", so making Central L.A. a huge city listed alongside the regions would avoid having regions in the city (we'd still have an asymmetry, but I am not sure that is a problem). --LPfi (talk) 07:29, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I see. But would anyone consider L.A. to consist only of what's listed in Los Angeles#Central Los Angeles? I can't imagine. What about Westside (Los Angeles County) and South Bay (Los Angeles County), for example? I'd like to hear back from Ryan and hear from some Angelinos before we do anything rash. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:08, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Los Angeles#Geography is of some relevance to this discussion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:11, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

FWIW when I was adding banners to regions a few years ago I remember noticing many oddities in how we divide California into regions and sub regions. L.A. and Antelope Valley both being subregions of each other was one thing (the other region in Antelope Valley, Kern County, is breadcrumbed below and listed in San Joaquin Valley - maybe Antelope Valley should be an extraregion), and there might have been something else with L.A. in addition to that.

Then there are San Bernardino County and Riverside County which are breadcrumbed below and listed in Southern California but also listed in Desert (California) and I think there was some overlap somewhere in the Bay Area too. --Ypsilon (talk) 09:51, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘To me San Joaquin Valley is a strange region; if you look at the map it’s just part of the larger Central Valley, which IMO should be its own region. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 10:37, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

(responding to @Ikan Kekek:) As LPfi and Selfie City alluded to, the confusion here seems to be over "city of Los Angeles" and "Los Angeles metropolitan area". If you ask someone where the Rose Bowl is, it's in Pasadena, not Los Angeles. Cities like Pasadena, Santa Monica, Malibu, Beverly Hills, etc are part of the LA metropolitan area, but they are distinct cities and regarded as separate entities from Los Angeles. Using Los Angeles to refer to everything within the LA city limits, and using Los Angeles County as a synonym (sort of) for the LA Metropolitan area, would (I think) be clearer and avoid some of the issues that have been raised above, and would be less confusing than introducing a new "Central Los Angeles" concept. Just because LA is such a sprawling city that has absorbed many of its suburbs there are still going to be challenges with districts and overlapping sub-regions, but Wikivoyage already supports extraregions so I don't think it's a unique issue to Los Angeles. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:16, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Alright, if you think that would be the most sensible way to divide stuff up, please propose a way to do that at Talk:Los Angeles when you have a chance. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:56, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

As someone who's only been to LA twice, I like the way it's organized now. So many of the things people want to see and do on a trip to LA are both inside and outside the actual city limits that I think it's easier for a casual visitor to plan a trip if it's all under "Los Angeles". Looking at the current Los Angeles#See and Los Angeles#Do sections, the coverage is comprehensive -- beaches, movie studios, museums, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and so on. If metro LA is handled in a separate guide, we lose that single comprehensive overview, and I feel that makes our guide less useful. Separately, the quality of writing in Los Angeles is also quite good, so I think there's a high bar to meet to ensure we don't have worse articles because we changed the hierarchy. -Shaundd (talk) 03:46, 17 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I share your reluctance to make wholesale changes to the hierarchy. I think it can be profitably tweaked around the edges, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:48, 17 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I don't see that any big changes are needed in the current Los Angeles article, but the formal hierarchy levels differ from the rest of Wikivoyage, which makes it confusing – and the overlaps and conflicting descriptions should be handled. I suppose the divisions were well thought out, but never well described in the actual guides, and thus ignorant users have made incompatible changes. --LPfi (talk) 08:37, 17 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I agree. I think having a 2-level districting structure is OK, but it has to be clearer. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:18, 17 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

A comprehensive regional article should have all the things mentioned by Shaundd. But it just seems incongruous to me to include all those large empty areas in the article for one of the largest cities on the continent. Powers ^(talk) 18:54, 22 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-07-27/l-a-s-church-architecture-goes-way-beyond-your-school-mission-project looked like something that might interest someone. An itinerary, perhaps? I remember seeing someone talking about a similar subject once, but I can't remember who it was, so I'm just dropping this here in case it happens to inspire someone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:21, 7 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

I notice that Los Angeles and some of its neighborhoods and suburbs don't mention the K Line. However, there's an extension of it that is likely going to open in a few months. When it does, I will edit those page. Somebody remind me to make those edits. Purplebackpack89 04:51, 20 September 2024 (UTC)Reply