On the Westside of the City of Los Angeles there is a population of approximately 1,000,000 people and that includes both the incorporated areas and those that are incorporatated cities.
Cheviot Hills, Century City, Bel Air, Beverly Crest, Beverlywood, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Palms, Rancho Park, Sawtelle, West Los Angeles, Westwood Venice, Mar Vista, Playa del Rey, South Robertson, Playa Vista, and Westchester, as well as the incorporated cities of Beverly Hills, Culver City, Santa Monica, and the unincorporated county territory of Marina del Rey and Playa Visa.
The Westside is pictured by most people outside of Los Angeles, as the City of Los Angeles. Where as in reality the Westsidea small portion of the city.The misconception is due to films and Television that often are shot on the westside. Why..Because there is such diverse housing. Along with multimillion dollar homes overlooking the Pacific in Pacific Palisades and estate sized private homes in Brentwood and Beverly Hills, you will find oceanfront homes in Santa Monica and Play del Rey. In the Culver City area, along with some small 1920s bungalows, just to mention a few.
There are many major production corporations, talent agencies, and entertainment law firms in Century City, a major business hub of the Westside. New developments such as Playa Vista near LAX are important entertainment industry centers along with Venice, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills.
The Westside is a rival to downtown Los Angeles for the number of people commuting to it from other areas, particularly the South Bay to the south and the San Fernando Valley to the north.
Because the area does not have an effective mass transit system and due to the inadequate freeway system, the commute from these areas during high traffic times is horrible. A good deal of development took place in anticipation of new freeway construction, which never occurred resulting in significant congestion on the area’s surface streets. Because the proposals to widen the existing freeways or extend the Purple Line to the ocean have been stalled by their great expense, and with no relief being seen in the near future, a popular old proposal to turn Pico and Olympic into one-way streets has been revived.
