Home > Westwood, Los Angeles, California

Developed by the Janss family in the 1920s, it is best known as the home of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). A center of movie-going in West Los Angeles and the site of many movie premieres, Westwood is home to several vintage theaters, including the Pacific Crest, the Fox Village and the Bruin. The district is also home to the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, the last resting place of many of Hollywood's biggest stars. The area's permanent residents are generally quite affluent, living in high-rise apartment buildings and some of the more luxurious single-family houses in Los Angeles.

The winding two-mile section of Wilshire Boulevard to the southeast of the Village is dominated by residential high-rises; it is traditionally known as the Golden Mile. High-rise condominiumThere are two meanings of condominium In international law, a condominium is a territory in which two sovereign powers have equal rights. In housing tenure, a condominium is a type of joint ownership of real property in which portions of the property are penthouseIn architecture, a penthouse is a building on the roof of another building, or alternatively, an apartment on the top floor of a building. See penthouse apartment. Penthouse apartments are often expensive, and associated with a luxury lifestyle: this conns in the corridor routinely sell for amounts in excess of $20 million.

The Westwood Village shopping district successfully retained its cozy village atmosphere even as the San Diego Freeway came through the area in the 1950s and high-rise office towers went up around it in the following decades. However, much of this construction was planned around the never-built Beverly Hills Freeway; in combination with a severe parkingParking is the act of stopping a vehicle, exiting it, and leaving the vehicle unoccupied for more than a brief time. It is against the law virtually everywhere to park a vehicle in the middle of a highway or road. In all countries where motor vehicles are shortage at UCLA, high-density development in Westwood has created some of the worst traffic congestionTraffic congestion occurs when the volume of traffic on a roadway is high enough to be detrimental to its performance. In congested conditions, vehicles speeds are reduced increasing drive times. These conditions are also more taxing for drivers, and auto in Los Angeles. Even with the opening of numerous municipal parking structures in the 1990s and 2000s, finding a parking spot in Westwood is still a notoriously difficult task, and parking and traffic issues dominate local planning debates.

Although Westwood is still busy and vibrant on weekend evenings, the number of empty storefronts and vacant lots has gradually increased since 1990: many nationally successful chains have opened stores in the area, only to close them within two years. Many local observers contend that Westwood's heyday was between the 1960s and the mid-1980s, when some of the streets were so crowded with pedestrians that they were closed to vehicular traffic. The murder of innocent bystander Karen Toshima, during a gun battle between rival gangA gang is a group of individuals who share a common identity and, in current usage, engage in illegal activities. Historically the term referred to both criminal groups and ordinary groups of friends, such as Our Gang. Most commonly, the word "gang" refers on January 30, 1988, led to the widespread impression that even affluent Westwood was not immune to the crime wave then ravaging Los Angeles; it would take more than a decade for this perception to fade. Today, while Westwood is again regarded as one of the safest neighborhoods in the city, its retail sector has been slow to recover in the face of increased competition from Century City and newly revitalized Culver CityCulver City is a city located in western Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 38,816. Since the 1920s, Culver City has been a major center for motion picture and later television production, in part bec.