The People You’ll Meet in Los Angeles
Los Angeles is a melting pot on a grand scale. In fact, all of Southern California is ethnically and culturally diverse; the people who live here come from everywhere. SoCal residents come from 180 countries and speak 140 languages. If you move to Los Angeles, your neighbors might be from halfway around the world or just the next state over.
Are you thinking of moving to Los Angeles? If the city’s population is any measure of how much people like it, there’s substantial evidence that living in Los Angeles is pretty great. 4 million people live within the city limits, and 18.7 million reside in the Greater Los Angeles area. But what is living in Los Angeles *really* like – the people, attitudes, culture, and economic opportunity.
Can you hack big-city living? Do you like warm, sunny weather? If so, here are some of the main reasons why moving to Los Angeles may be a good fit for you (or not)!
Being a newcomer to Los Angeles is nothing new. Starting with contact between the area’s First Peoples and Spanish explorers in 1542, to the first settlement in 1781, and up to the present day, L.A. has consistently grown via an influx of immigrants.
That’s why there are as many versions of Los Angeles as there are Angelinos. Each has their reasons for coming here and perspectives on why it’s a great place to call home. The West Coast has always been a place for dreamers and entrepreneurs and Los Angeles is still that way today, the modern American frontier.
Quick fact: Los Angeles does not have a majority population.
- 48.6% Latino
- 25.9% White Non-Hispanic
- 7.7% Black or African American
- 14.5% Asian
- 2.4% from two or more races
- 0.2% Native American and Alaskan Native
- 0.2% Pacific Islander
- 0.4% Other Race
Cost of Living in Los Angeles
Using an indexed score put together by the U.S. Census Bureau, where the average U.S. City is 100, the cost of living in Los Angeles scores 136.
What is similar to other cities is the price of groceries, utilities, health care, and transportation. The greatest difference is the cost to put a roof over your head. The housing index for Los Angeles is 207.
Only a handful of places like New York City, Honolulu, Orange County (surprisingly), and San Jose have higher housing costs. Nearby San Diego is not far behind and is consistent with the broader story the data reveals: folks pay more to rent or buy homes in coastal cities.
Of course, within major cities, there are always high-end neighborhoods and exclusive enclaves, too. Some of Los Angeles’ most expensive neighborhoods have luxury homes — sometimes priced over $100M — that are out of reach to all but the very wealthy.
L.A. Traffic
Sitting in traffic is a big, unfortunate part of living in Los Angeles. While the City of Los Angeles increases the number of subway lines and Metro ridership slowly increases, cars are still the modi operandi.
You might be asking yourself why “traffic” falls under the “lifestyle” section of this article? It’s because you will spend so much of your life in your car, stuck on the 101, 405, 605, 110, or 210 (to name just a few). Oh! That’s another thing: people here refer to freeways by number, not by name.
Living in Los Angeles means dealing with traffic congestion all the time. Freeways are jammed with regular Monday thru Friday commuters but don’t expect any relief on weekends. People drive everywhere, every day. You can quickly get stuck on the Southbound 101 on a Saturday morning. Here’s traffic for a typical evening commute. For perspective, the scale for the image below is about 50 miles wide.