About the City | Global Classrooms: Los Angeles

The city of Los Angeles in California is the second most populous city in the United States with an estimated population of about 4 million people as of 2009. LA is the principal city in a metropolitan region between San Buenaventura in the north, San Clemente in the south, and San Bernardino in the east.

For a century following its founding in 1781, Los Angeles was a provincial outpost ruled by a succession of Spanish, Mexican and American rulers. Over the years, LA’s temperate climate and promising real estate opportunities drew hundreds of thousands of people from all over the United States and the world. After World War II, LA experienced a new wave of migration from Asia. By 1960, Los Angeles was home to 2.4 million people.

The opening of the Panama Canal and the creation of a deep-water port had invited a multitude of international influences into the city of Los Angeles. Fueled by trade with the Pacific Rim countries, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach together ranked first in the nation in trade volume.

As home to the film, television and recording industries, contemporary Los Angeles serves as a global cultural center. With Los Angeles International Airport serving as the modern day “Ellis Island” for foreign immigration to the United States, the metropolitan region has become a mosaic of ethnic and cultural diversity. LA holds the greatest number of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the US and boasts one of the largest Hispanic communities in the world, next only to that of Mexico City and Guadalajara. As home to people from 140 countries with over 92 different languages, its internationalism certainly makes Los Angeles an ideal Global Classrooms city.

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