I made a youtube short that went a little viral on this so I figured why not expound more on the topic since you guys liked it, Welcome to Los Angeles, the city with the dumbest map in the USA! Also UPDATE* Dammit misspelled "Torrance"
For a US example of the city not being everything, look to St. Louis. The city is actually pretty small and the county eclipses it in people, money, land area, etc. That's why the Stl crime stats look so bad.
Not really. Many central cities have used water & sewer access to grow. Some cities extended lines into undeveloped areas without requiring annexation into the city. Others require a short timeline to come into the city. Central cities 'fight' to keep from getting landlocked by their suburbs. Hence, the panhandle. Also depends upon state annexation laws. In Ohio, the process is initiated by the property owner. Cities like going after tax rich producing areas while going around the tax poor ones Look at a map of Columbus, Ohio. It has landlocked suburbs within its borders. It has township remnants. It has panhandles, and it's the fastest growing area in the state. Ohio law prevents discontinuous chunks of cities UNLESS the remnants of a township FINALLY form a city or merge with its township seat city. Curious thing about the South and West as they permit such isolated city chunks until the city connects in between them. Smaller municipalities in South Caroline seem to start out circular and annex from there. Have seen several examples. Must be state laws?
@@JayYoung-ro3vu Maybe the circles are a Southern thing. A few cities in Georgia are also roughly circular shaped. There's actually an outer suburb of Atlanta called Social Circle.
Small correction at 4:25, unincorporated means there is NO city government there (the county operates all functions for these areas). Burbank, Glendale, Inglewood, Culver City etc are NOT unincorporated because they operate as a municipality (basically their own city government overlaying above the county). Also at 9:15 / 10:50, that area isn't actually incorporated into the city of Torrance, it is an unincorporated area, they simply use Torrance postal addresses. If you go a few blocks west you will be within the borders of LA City but the properties still use Torrance addresses as well great video, not trying to hate just educate
Yes, also the City of Los Angeles Harbor Gateway North neighborhood has a Gardena city address ,while Harbor Gateway South has a Torrence city address.
To me it sounded like he was saying they aren’t incorporated into Los Angeles because he made that reference and also goes on to say they have their own police, etc… maybe not but that’s how I understood that part.
Example : Marina Del Rey is an unincorporated area within the L.A. City Limits. It is considered L.A. County and instead of having LAPD they have LA County Sheriffs, they have LA County Fire Department instead of LA City Fire Department, they contract with private garbage pick up company and other infrastructure maintenance but also pay the City of L.A. for other services.
@13_13k I don't know if you realize you stated, "Marina Del Rey is an unincorporated area within the LA city limits." Perhaps you meant to say "Unincorporated area of Los Angeles County , "which is why Marina Del Rey is patrolled by the Sherriff. The first principle of unincorporated presupposes, not a city, nor in any city limits/proper.
This video does a great job explaining one of many reasons why it’s really really hard to build housing in LA, because it’s not just LA City you have to work with.
You are correct. I work in RE and LA county is the WORST to deal with in terms of permitting. It’s why we build way more in Orange County and the IE. LA RE is basically a monopoly for major apartment building companies. They make it impossible on anyone else.
Somewhat, but a lot of the dumb borders came from the city expanding by annexing towns but then not being able to annex certain towns that border towns they did annex
@@duqial Monaco is independence do to the casino. Gambling was in most places not legal. there it is. plus for France there is no incentive to conquer Monaco there is no recourse to be found there to be of use. But it does get money from Monaco for it's defence budget.
Correction for Universal’s location: Universal actually isn’t part of Burbank. Most of it actually sits within an LA county unincorporated community called Universal City, which shares a northern boundary with Burbank.
Americans, I’m sorry, but your weird city maps is the exact reason why people outside your country just lump different cities into one. That whole urban area is LA to me.
We americans also do that. The weird quirks in our city maps only matter in situations for the purposes of taxes, utilities, or legal/politcal matters. Edit: Clarified when quirks in city boundaries matter.
@@Mediaphiliafair enough, but I have spoken to Americans that are from places like Fort Worth, Katy, or Fort Lauderdale, and they’re adamant they’re from completely separate cities 😂 legally they are, but being real here, that’s basically Dallas, Houston and Miami respectively
I live in Pasadena currently and if I’m asked abroad where I live, I will just say I’m from LA because I don’t want to have to explain myself. If I’m in California, I will say I live in Pasadena because it gives people who know, a better idea. You would be the person I’m not trying to explain it to😂
I do remember a handful of conversations where someone says they are from LA and then asked what part, and they say somewhere like El Monte or La Puente and they are teased that that is not actually LA
So, I kinda dig this new series of more chill videos, where they talk about all sorts of random stuff, like weird admin rules in different countries or cities. They sometimes throw in some news-related videos too, but honestly, I like it. I know it’s not really what Paul had in mind at first-he was more about getting out there, y'know, hitting the ground. But for now, these videos are still pretty cool, and I’m always down to watch whatever’s next, whether it’s more about geography or travel vibes. I get it, though. Keep doing your thing.
I actually work in that Torrance knot section at Harbor Gateway. It's funny because we call the building our "LA office" yet our official address says Torrance.
I really dig these new, more obscure geographic topics that you're tackling now that your main objective is over! They're super interesting and I'm all for it! Sincerely, a subscriber since the Belgium video
@@GeographyNow Would love a whole series about Los Angeles. It's so huge! Like cities within cities within cities. And the history of how it came to be like that.
this is one of my favorite youtube videos ever now because LA geography is one of my favorite things to talk about but everyone I talk about it with is always so confused or uninterested. Its especially bad since I live in Virginia now
Funny you'd move to Virginia. It's THE BEST example of what this video is about considering Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News, Suffolk, Hampton, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach create the "7 Cities" of the Hampton Roads area in southeastern VA and it's allllllllllllllllllll about THIS
That's not Tokyo City, that's Tokyo Prefecture (actually Metropolis, but whatever) which consists of multiple cities, towns and villages. While there is no single city called 'Tokyo', the special wards area is often considered to be the 'core' of the Tokyo Metro, with each 'ward' having similar powers to (and stylizing themselves in English as) a city, i.e. 世田谷区 in Japanese but City of Setagaya in English.
@@Mario123007Toronto Pearson Airport is similar to Tokyo Disney. The airport is in the neighboring city despite having the name of city/place that it isn't in.
Gardena High School was built as an LA Unified school in 1907. The City of Gardena was founded in 1930 and they didn't want to create their own school district.
The real reason comes down to history. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo legally required the U.S. to recognize Mexican, Spanish, and Californio rights to existing land holdings-mostly ranchos-which were sold off or acquired through eminent domain over the following century. This led to the slow and unsystematic development of cities founded from these land grants.
The video left out that a "City" in the US in an incorporation - it's a corporation, a fictitious person. And like corporations do, a city can buy and sell things, including land. As you point out, historically there were large land holdings and some of them were bought by different corporations (er, cities.)
@@argon408 many of them did. Most Hispano-Mexican ranches only survived into the 20th century because the ranchers married their daughters off to wealthy Anglo/Irish settlers. A famous example is McAllen, TX.
Fun fact (probably not so fun) about water supplies, since you mentioned it: the city of Santa Monica used to get its water from a natural spring called Kuruvungna. Kuruvungna is a sacred site for the Tongva people that eventually became the property of the Los Angeles Unified School District - sitting on part of the campus of University High School. The land was slated to be sold off for private development, but a movement led by members of the Tongva community were able to secure its designation as a historic landmark, and blocked the sale. Technically the land is leased in perpetuity to the tongva people, with the intention for the site to be open for spiritual purposes. This promise has been abrogated repeatedly, and LAUSD red tape has made it such that the site is only open officially one day per month for a few hours
My compliments on all the complicated graphics you had to get your drone and your computer and god knows what else you had to do to get them on our screens. You’re awesome!
I grew up in So Cal. I spent the last 25 years in LA County and even some time in the City of Los Angeles. The best description of Los Angeles I’ve ever heard was from a little French book, when the author described it as “a collection of villages”. So accurate. From Silver Lake to Redondo Beach to Calabasas to Montebello to Compton to Hawaiian Gardens… a collection of villages. No other place like it.
As a former Angeleno I was always interested in the little nuances of the city of LA's geography. I'm only here to raise my grievances about you revealing the 6th St back to 110 shortcut that I've used for years while living down there and still use when I need to go that way when visiting LA from the Bay Area. I hope you continue to make videos for a long time Barbs and love your segway into city geography and micro-geography.
Seriously. It sums it all up how the two main exterior scenes in Return of the Jedi (the Sarlacc pit and the Endor forests) were both filmed in California, albeit at literally opposite ends (the Sarlacc pit in the Imperial sand dunes in the southeastern corner and the Endor forest near Crescent City in the northwestern corner).
when I was in elementary school my school taught us about California and we even read a big book all about California geography, I first I thought it was a little weird, but now that I'm all grown up it makes complete sense, this was at a school in East Los Angeles
You are truly an urban planning and geography nerd! I would be proud to call you my son. I thought I was the only urban planning. Geography nerd out there. That was before UA-cam. I’ve discovered lots of planning geeks all around the world! You rock. Keep up the good work.😅
@GeographyNow would be a very interesting and insightful episode, especially considering your Italian heritage, looking forward to it! Cheers from malta 🇲🇹😊
I hope that you can make more of these on different cities in different states including cities districts. Hopefully your explanation can clarify the confusions.
This is some of your best content, I always thought the usual videos were a bit too highly produced and impersonal compared to other geo channels. Felt like videos I would watch in school, which isnt bad but not as entertaining and thus less informative to me overall. The topics were also so broad that it was hard to really dig into anything. Absolutely love the more personal speaking style and presentation here, you nailed it!!! you have a new sub!
1:12 Brussels is similar. The Brussels Capital Region is its own region within Belgium (1 of 3), and generally, when one mentions Brussels, they're referring to the region. But there is also the City of Brussels, which is the largest of 19 municipalities within the Brussels region. The City of Brussels actually used to be smaller-just the Pentagon city center-but it has merged with other municpalities over time and become the largest, but with weirdly shaped, non-contiguous borders.
If you look at New York City it seems pretty straightforward, until you learn that the neighborhood of Marble Hill is not technically part of The Bronx, but Manhattan across Spuytun Duyvil Creek (Dutch or maybe Old Dutch for Spite the Devil). The creek used to be north of Marble Hill and it was a nightmare for navigation. The Army Corps of Engineers not only deepened it, but decided to slice Marble Hill off of Manhattan to straighten the creek. The old creek bed was then filled in to attach Marble Hill to The Bronx, but it was never legally incorporated with the Bronx. The only difference between Manhattan and Marble Hill is the telephone Area Code, the people wanted 212, but the phone company was like, “That’s too complicated, you’re getting 718 like everything else around you.”
Me being Dutch and having some understanding of old Dutch (still a challange). the Spuytun Duyvil Creek a literal translation would be the spouting devil creek. As it might have been a wild and dangerous or unpredictable creek. a more correct translation would be the raging devil creek. as Spouting could also imply you speaking like a mad man.
Also Ellis Island. A NY enclave landlocked within a New Jersey island. The enclave is the original island. All reclaimed land was later deemed to be long to NJ
I grew up in San Fernando, and I remember when all the regulations on lawn watering were being passed and it was being talked about in the news; the city sent out flyers to each home letting us know we didn’t have to follow those regulations because of our own water supply but to still be mindful.
There's a city in the Philippines called Caloocan where it's separated into two pieces. North and South. Story was that Quezon City annexed a large part of the city called Novaliches when it was created. What makes it interesting is how different North and South Caloocan is. South is seen as dangerous, poor and crowded while North is wealthy, leafy, and suburban.
@@ks_ig2728, in Metro Manila, two cities have two separate lands. Manila's city limits has an exclave surrounded by Makati since they have the land of Manila South Cemetery.
@@grantorino2325 Luzon is a name originated from the Portuguese (originally Luçoes, Spanish translated to Luzones) and the name stuck. Spaniards called it Nueva Castila originally but reverted back to Luçon, then eventually Luzon. Quezon City was named after Manuel Luis Quezon, the President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Quezon City, originally designed by William Parsons (but died in 1939) was named in honor of him and got incorporated in 1939 during his tenure. After WW2, the Province of Tayabas was divided into two, and renamed to Quezon (province) and Aurora (after First Lady Aurora Quezon) respectively.
Just a clarification - not all of the enclaves and weird holes within the LA area are "unincorporated". For example, you higlight the distinction between Beverley Hills and Los Angeles, but Beverley Hills is an incorporated city that happens to be completeley surrounded by the city of Los Angeles - it has a city government, a police force, etc. Unincorporated areas are places like Marina Del Rey, which fall under the County administration and rely on the Sherriff's department for law enforcement.
Beverly Hills is not actually surrounded by the city of L.A. Part of it borders West Hollywood, which has its own weird history. Until 1984 it was an unincorporated part of the county that didn't become a part of the city because it wanted less supervision by the authorities. It was (and still is to some extent) an area with movie studios and other entertainment related businesses along the Sunset Strip. WeHo incorporated as a city to protect its renters who are the majority of residents. Also it has large communities of Russians and LGBTQ folks with different cultures and lots of bars and restaurants. All the other parts of Hollywood, East Hollywood, North Hollywood, Studio City etc are neighborhoods of the big city. The confusion for a lot of people is that we think of our neighborhoods as our hometowns, and our addresses are called by the neighborhood names instead of Los Angeles. I live in North Hollywood, which is nicer than Van Nuys, but not as expensive as Studio City or Sherman Oaks. I have NoHo pride, but vote in L.A. city elections. There are about four million people in the city and ten million in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the U.S.A.
What's really funny is how most San Fernando Valley residents have absolutely no idea they live in the City of Los Angeles lol Due to many neighborhoods having their own mailing addresses like Encino, Van Nuys, Sun Valley, Woodland Hills, Granada Hills, etc., they are often mistakenly assumed to be their own independent cities, but they're actually not.
@@bradjohnson4126 I live in the San Gabriel valley and we are not city of LA and I even knew that. But I probably should know I am a surveyor and work all over LA.
I live in LA and almost every day I hear people on the radio or in person call their LA city neighborhood with its own mailing address a city. “I live in the city of”: Van Nuys Wilmington North Hollywood Etc. It drives me crazy. I want to yell at all of them that you’re not a city, you’re an LA city neighborhood!!
For me it’s the opposite. Most people in the LA basin or the core of the city don’t know they the SFV is part of LA cuz it’s so far away. They don’t claim us.
Auckland City in New Zealand used to be divided between four cities and several smaller district councils until around 2010. Apparently, the government thought it was a wise idea to copy how LA did things, except that all the councils were successfully assimilated into the "Super City" Borg construct. People were getting tired of the lack of cooperation between the councils impacting infrastructure and responsiveness to local affairs. The idea was a single streamlined local council would be more responsive and quick to act without mountains of bureaucracy getting in the way. What happened instead was the "Super City" council became even less responsive, more incompetent and more undemocratic. Go figure.
It's funny because London is essentially divided into 32 separate borough governments, but still suffers from lack of responsiveness. In LAs case, one of the big problems is the county is governed by just five people, and there isn't really a separate legislative and executive body. So it's VERY unresponsive, plus people don't vote in their county elections.
Paul, it’s so weird how your timing of posting this video was perfect. I have been an Angelino for the past 34 years and learned so much from your video. And what’s happening in our city now makes more sense and at the same time doesn’t cause who is responsible for not preparing infrastructure for the fires of this magnitude? Not Every city is a part of Los Angeles city. Maybe you can make a separate video on that, what you think about this whole situation.
They were sundown towns and, like san fernando, have their own water source; they ardently did not want any black troops stationed there back in the early days. As well as starting off as a major manufacturing hub, they never needed to be part of the city and hollywood likes it to not pay LA city taxes, which isn't "heavily heavily subsidized" by it like the video states.
When I saw a map of an area near Hilliard, I knew that the decades-long annexation policy had some issues. To get within one subdivision in Columbus, the main road that is mostly within Hilliard must be accessed. Or vice versa. What I have never liked, the multiple areas of unincorporated county land. Signs reading "Entering Franklin County" are very common throughout Columbus.
I noticed that you had a map of the Kansas City earlier in the video. KCK and KCMO have always been independent from the get go. KCMO was founded in 1853 as the City of Kansas. It was renamed to Kansas City in 1854 upon the creation of Kansas Territory. KCK didn’t form until 1872 via consolidation of smaller settlements. The numbered streets of KCK are north-south. However, the numbered streets in KCMO are east-west. It irks me that some people think that Kansas City isn’t in Kansas. But, most people think of KCMO when they see “Kansas City.” But alas.
4:31 Actually, no, they don;t all have their own city councils, police forces, etc. If they're an incorporated city, like Beverly Hills, they do. Often times, though, they are unincorporated areas, like unincorporated East Los Angeles, or the unincorporated enclave of the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center entirely surrounded by the City of Los Angeles, that do not have their own city council, police force, etc., but are instead governed directly by the County of Los Angeles. LA County Sherriffs are their police force, the LA County Board of Supervisors is their governing body, etc.
@ Well, it has its own security force and governing body for hospital and land use affairs, but is still technically legally controlled by Board of Sups and Sheriffs would respond to any major emergency/to make arrests to transport to LA County jails.
Additional fun fact about london: it has about 20%+ forested area which is one of the highest for a capital city in fact London can technically be classed as a forest. Also Westminster here is like d.c. in the US a separate area normally for government buildings
Atlanta's forested area is ~48% which is the highest in the US, and it's a major capital city. Also I live in Decatur which borders Atlanta but was actually founded before it in 1823 (Atlanta was founded 1837)
I’m from Altadena which is a small unincorporated area north of Pasadena but Altadena was able to stay disconnected from LA because it used to be a part of Pasadena and some of pasadenas utilities including water in some areas are present in Altadena, LA county takes care of most other utilities but the remnants of being a part of pasadena can be seen with the strange borders between Altadena and pasadena
@@silverfishofdoom1312 no it's not. Altadena is unincorporated Los Angeles county. While* Pasadena is incorporated as a city with a mayor and city council. Just because it borders Pasadena doesn't mean it is governed the same. Pasadena has its own police department for example. They do not patrol or have jurisdiction in Altadena. There is no Altadena police department. They have a sheriff department that has jurisdiction.
Is Altadena that one area that for decades (like since the 70's) has successfully fought off some major freeway expansion that Caltrans has been trying to complete?
I grew up in Fresno. Had no idea it was such a mapping mess. That explains why half the time we drove through Clovis and my 10 year old brain thought we were far away from home. Not exactly sure, but Fresno also has a canal system to distribute water so water supply may also be a factor in its strangeness.
You should look at the map of Modesto, absolutely screwed up between 3 neighboring cities and some parts are not incorporated despite being in the middle of town.
Super interesting! Glad you mentioned my city, Houston. Fun fact; unlike Houston, Austin & San Antonio, Poor little Dallas😢 can no longer grow because it is surrounded by smaller suburbs with their own city limits. Houston ,with its octopus fingers that follow major highways, will find new territories to annex in the next decades to come. We annexed Kingwood and nearby Lake Houston to control surface runoff pollution in the area since Lake Houston is a major source of drinking water for over 2 million people. We Love your little geo chats, Barbs! ❤️😎⭐️🥇🏆👍🎤📺
Houston wants the tax revenue from commercial (freeways /1960/6/NASA/ The port), without servicing the residential. And careful when buying fireworks and driving across 1960/6. Depending on the area, you may have illegally transported fireworks into Houston by crossing the street.
It’s even more complicated than that. The City of Houston also has extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) over all parts of unincorporated Harris Co and adjacent portions of the surrounding counties. That means places like Spring, Atascosita, The Woodlands, Crosby, and several others, while not legally part of the city of Houston, are not legally separate either since they aren’t incorporated as legal cities. Houston laws apply in those places, but they are allowed to create their own MUDs, police departments, fire departments, etc. which are legally separate from Houston’s. And of course, all public school districts in Texas (sans Stafford MSD), are independent of cities and MUDs, so they can define their own borders that are sometimes more important than whichever city you’re technically in.
Thanks for the excellent video! I love learning about a city by a) a passionate and knowledgeable local who did all the leg work to save me the trouble, b) put in the effort to put in a well produced and engaging format to be stumbled upon at my convenience. Information content was dense but avoided being dry with non-static scene cuts and logical connections in subject flow. Also appreciated how you roped in your cousin and had the courage to keep in the humanizing family dynamics of non-scripted honesty. So much was said in the her unsaid pause after "but do YOU like what I do" and your immediate, accusatory burst of laughter steeped in self-deprecation and subtext of "WHY DID I HAVE TO ASK?!", made me snort. Had to like and subscribe. I wanna see the same excellence and commitment on other subjects and non-lived in cities. Keep 'em comin'!
This aspect of local government in the US always fascinated me. You have a gigantic metro area but just a teeny tiny blob in the center is actually, legally, part of the city. In Germany this usually doesn't happen because state governments can order local governments to merge/be annexed whether they like it or not. One can argue that this is undemocratic but it definitely simplifies urban planning.
As Jay Foreman said in his Unfinished London video on the subject, even the way the borders of Greater London are weird. For example, where I live, is on the edge of south western Greater London, but according to the postal address, it's in Surrey. A nearby town to where I live, is Epsom, yet despite it fitting the criteria for an outter suburb of London, it's not a part of Greater London. Even the Borough boundaries of Kingston upon Thames is weird, it has a narrow panhandle that faces south west, happening to encompass the theme park Chessington World of Adventures. Another London based UA-camr, Geoff Marshall, (who lived in Charleston, South Cariona for a few years and in his final year there did a road trip around the Continental United States visiting places that shared names with stations on the London Underground map) talked about how the boundaries of Greater London are often oversimplified to "everything inside the M25 motorway", when in fact, it's entirely true. There are parts of the M25 that are entirely outside the Greater London boundaries and parts that are entirely within it.
I actually find this pretty interesting. I used to live in Mid-City which is very LA, but close enough to BH, and Culver city that it made me wonder. Even more so after I was able to purchase a house in the harbor city area, which makes up part of the shoe string. After researching I found that the purchase of the shoe string (harbor gateway and harbor city) was an intimidation tactic to get San Pedro to incorporate. LA wanted the port, and wanted San Pedro to incorporate, but San Pedro did not want to. LA decided to buy the shoestring land and and pre-fix the neighborhoods as "Harbor" and threatened to trench out their own port into these areas which the shipping industry would end up favoring due to the higher resources LA was willing to pour into its own harbor, and offer to businesses and logistics. This tactic worked eventually leading to San Pedro incorporating. This worked out in my favor when purchasing the house in this area as, the LA utilities are actually much cheaper and more affordable that the private utilities from other surrounding areas. I am also able to vote for LA city elections and bills, which have higher impact than those living in the surrounding areas, which are only able to cast votes for the county, and their own local municipality.
Gothenburg, Sweden have that problem too. I live in, technically, the northernmost municipality of Halland county, but we’re the southern end of the Greater Gothenburg metropolitan area. This’ve become a problem with health care, as the nearest major hospital is in Gothenburg, but everyone with more serious issues is directed to Varberg south of where I live, which is of a longer distance than just going to Gothenburg. And the (Halland) county wants to move the emergency department of Varberg even further south to Falkenberg. The point is that the Greater Gothenburg metropolitan area is effed up, geographically speaking.
Long Beach local here. I've always thought that the port corridor was one of the stupidest looking things ever, but I always thought it was due to port revenue. Even Long Beach has Signal Hill within its city boundaries because of oil.
13:05 CORRECTION: San Pedro is NOT the South Bay. The South Bay refers to the south of the Santa Monica bay. The South Bay is El Segundo through Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Redondo Beach, to Palos Verdes. You made this same mistake in your short also
False. San Pedro is part of the South Bay (I live there), this is easily researchable information. The LA Metro website, The Los Angeles County Economic Development Center website, and Wikipedia all list San Pedro as part of the South Bay, along with many other places not on your list such as Inglewood, Carson, Torrance, Harbor City, and Wilmington. I couldnt find a single website that didnt list San Pedro as part of the South Bay.
@@shard4756 What bay do you think is being referred to? It’s the Santa Monica Bay. The South Bay is the cities in the south of the Santa Monica Bay. And even if you for some weird reason consider San Pedro part of the South Bay, calling it “THE South Bay areas” is still wrong
@@shard4756 San Pedro is most often not included in South Bay. Look up "Mapping LA" from the LA Times for a quick example. South Bay stretches from Westchester to Palos Verdes, with San Pedro on the border but in what they call the "Harbor" region along with Long Beach and other cities.
@@michaeltnk1135 What i or you think about which bay is being referred to is irrelevant. Thats a subjective opinion. The only thing that matters is what is classified as the South Bay by the state and local entities and they consider San Pedro, and the other cities I listed, as part of the south bay, therefore they are.
Just a clarification - not all of the enclaves and weird holes within the LA area are "unincorporated". For example, you higlight the fact that places like Beverley Hills, Glendale, and Culver city (which you called "unincorporated") are distinct from Los Angeles, but they are incorporated cities - they have a city government, a police force, etc. Unincorporated areas are places like Marina Del Rey, which do not have a city administration, and fall under the County administration, relying on the Sherriff's department for law enforcement.
About Tokyo. That string that you saw was not the city but the prefecture of Tokyo. Same as a province. There are like Manila and Los Angeles multiple cities in the area. Like Long beach, Anaheim, Hollywood, Beverly hills for Los Angeles and Queson, Pasig, Caloocan, Antipolo, Paranaque for Manila. And its Shibuya crossing not Shinjuku crossing.
I just found this channel. I’m from LA and I’ve wondered about LA’s cluster of cities/communities for a long time. I still have a few questions- if I address a letter to someone who lives on Woodburn St. (Made up) in Pacific Palisades or Rosemead, but accidentally write “Woodburn St, Los Angeles, CA, will it still get there?
Here's why L.A. is mapped the way it is: Back in the 1920s or so, Los Angeles owned all these different areas, including San Pedro and Venice. Around the 1930s, an ordinance was issued that said cities needed to be fully connected. There was a popular dog track near Culver City, so L.A. bought that narrow strip of land to keep it. Likewise, L.A. wanted to keep the harbor in San Pedro, so they bought the string called the Harbor Gateway to keep the revenue from San Pedro.
Wow. I always thought Burbank, Santa Monica, Pasadena and all the others mentioned in movies and TV shows are like miles away from each other. I knew they were all in California, but California is pretty huge (around 4 times bigger then my home country), so I assumed these are all miles apart. Seeing that these are all in one cluster gives me a whole new perspective...
@shard4756 all of that is driveable in 30 mins(excl traffic). That's average for all big cities. I think the person above meant tens or hundreds of miles away
@@amanshilanov6237 Yes, that's what I meant. We use metric here, so I'm not that familiar with miles and didn't wanted to sound stupid by accidentally giving a ridiculusly large order of magnitude. I meant that these cities are further apart, like Berlin and Hamburg in Germany or London and York in the UK.
This video helped me much to finally get city names right. Context is that I manage a band wiki and all the shows need to display the *actual* city names, not the advertised metropoles on the posters.
Yeah speaking as a Londoner, our city just sprawls out into the rest of southern England and people have differing views on what constitutes as London because of so many different factors
The England is also strange (from a North American perspective) because most authority rests with the national government you can have these more ambiguous boundaries.
Luckily, the entirety of London will remain in its current shape thanks to the Greenway. For the ppl in the San Fernando Valley myself including, Traffic is becoming a nightmare and the surrounding neighborhoods once known for their vastness of nature with moderate cosmopolitan feel, low population density and many Affordable houses have now transformed into Overinflated sky rise prison like apts, price gouging restaurants, dirty damaged and uneven roads, scattered Trash, broken glass / smelly and stained sidewalks/ pee and poop with homeless folks under the overpasses and constant auto traffic throughout the night to the wee hours to the rest of the hellish day. In the past you can ride your bicycle on the shoulder of a major street with no bike lane for a good 40 min and have only a handful of cars pass by. But sometime starting in 2013, It all got ruined thanks to WAZE/Google NAV. Today many streets in the SFValley have buffered/gated bike lanes but it's virtually impossible to have a smooth ride without having deal with so many hobos impeding your path getting in the way, nails , shattered glass, turned over waste receptacles, junkies, smudged Dookie ,and Pick up trucks improperly parked. Not to mention bad drivers and bumper to bumper jammed streets. Wouldn't be surprised if the ppl want to secede in the future.
Technically, Tokyo gets even more complicated because despite there being the Prefecture of Tokyo, there isn't actually a City of Tokyo (kinda sorta). What we call Tokyo is a group of wards with their own cities and their own mayors. It's Shibuya City within Shibuya Ward within Tokyo Prefecture. Prefectures are closer to a State (in US terms), so it's like labelling LA as California City.
8:59 I don’t think this is actually a split, it’s just that Google Maps refuses to extend municipal boundaries across bodies of water. That part of the LA River is still in Los Angeles, so you aren’t actually leaving the city as you suggest
3:16 Phoenix’s borders aren’t even that weird by its own region’s standards. A lot of the other cities went so insane with annexing land in the 70s that our state legislature had to curtail municipal annexation powers. Some of the craziness from other cities includes: - Buckeye bordering Surprise, even though the old town sites for those cities are at least 20 miles away from each other, and Goodyear and Glendale are in the way. Buckeye’s borders in general are very weird. - Mesa preventing Gilbert from annexing Williams Field, even though Williams Field is around 20 miles away from downtown Mesa. Mesa is in the top 50 of US cities by population. - Sun City being surrounded on three sides by Peoria, but being unincorporated. - Peoria having a 1 mile wide strip of land that connects the southern half of the city to the northern half, which extends into a different county. - Glendale’s strip annexation around Luke Air Force Base. Our Glendale is probably a bit larger than yours. - Scottsdale being 2 miles wide from the Tempe border to Doubletree Ranch Road due to tribal politics. At least a lot of the valley cities, especially in the west valley, agreed to base their location address systems as an extension of Phoenix. The east valley cities, except Scottsdale and Queen Creek, still use their own address systems. I’m not sure why Queen Creek adopted Phoenix’s system, when the cities between them and Phoenix have their own. The valley is a common nickname for the entire Phoenix region. Also, the city of Phoenix is so huge that some people, especially when referring to the outskirts, use the names of the “urban villages” to refer to those areas, even though the urban village system is something the city government created to try to spread out and concentrate development, and the villages have very little power to do anything.
@@BK_718, New York City is divided into 5 boroughs. To the west is New Jersey. Staten Island and Manhattan are two lone island boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens are on the western portion of Long Island, and The Bronx is in the continental landmass and north of it is Westchester County.
Really great stuff! I go into the piece-by-piece details of how LA grew from 28 square miles to 468 square miles in a book that just came out this year, "Inventing Paradise: The Power Brokers Who Created the Dream of Los Angeles." The Shoestring strip, the little "holes" that remained independent, water politics, I dig into all that and more.
In the Philippines, the capital city of Manila is actually one part of a larger region of 16 cities and 1 municipality called the National Capital Region (also known as Metro Manila, hence some foreigners mistake the other cities as part of Manila proper). The region was created in the 70s during the Marcos administration; prior to that, the areas were part of different provinces except for Manila and Quezon City.
One important distinction to make is the use of the word "incorporated." The phrase "incorporated" (for the purpose of the United States) means a municipal government exists and controls an area. Generally, an area is considered unincorporated when the location is not a part of a town, village, or city government; usually when no incorporated municipal government exists, the county government has responsibility and control over an area. Los Angeles County contains 88 incorporated municipalities, the City of Los Angeles is only 1 of those incorporated municipalities. For example, the referenced City of San Fernando, is an incorporated city, not 'an unincorporated area' as stated in the video. Large portions of the deserts around Palmdale are unincorporated areas. Other incorporated city examples include: Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Gardena, Montebello, and 80+ more. There are also several incorporated cities that contract their emergency services to the county, providing for further confusion to the average resident (ex. West Hollywood). Names of places also get wonky, for example West Hollywood is an incorporated city that is west of Hollywood, the neighborhood within the City of Los Angeles, there's also East Hollywood which is another neighborhood, then there's North Hollywood which is actually completely north of the Hollywood mountains and is actually east of Burbank; the LA City neighborhood of North Hollywood doesn't even touch the neighborhood named Hollywood as there are a few other smaller neighborhoods between them, not to mention the mountain. Generally, people as far East as the Cities of San Bernadino and Riverside, in San Bernadino County and Riverside County respectively, and as far South as the southern border of Orange County, consider themselves to be a part of the "Greater Los Angeles area" since, without a map that shows all these drawn lines, all of these cities and areas are one super-giant urban sprawl.
I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. It resembles one huge suburb which stretches for miles. Mailing addresses there do not use Los Angeles, even though The Valley, as it's known locally, is technically within the city limits. Instead, names of smaller neighborhoods are used (Van Nuys, Northridge, Sherman Oaks, Granada Hills, etc.) It even had its own newspaper, The Valley News and Green Sheet, part of which was printed on green colored paper. I don't know if it still exists. I haven't been there in years.
I live in a consolidated city-county. So while the city/county limits might have some weird lines, there's no question that everything within thoses lines is part of the city.
Bro, as a native New Yorker who moved to LA and was living there for four years. I am in complete shock to know that only a tiny ass fraction of it is actually LA now it makes sense why the Alweg system didn’t get built back 63
6:35 You equated San Fernando as "unincorporated" but it is a City government, so it is incorporated. Unincorporated communities don't have city governments they rely on County level for most services instead of just some. Maybe just a small misspeak but a pet peeve of mine.
Somewhat unrelated, but there is a very popular shopping centre in my town called Chadstone Shopping Centre. It is located outside of the suburb of Chadstone, which is in the neighbouring municipality. Chadstone Shopping Centre is a huge money maker to the municipality it is in. Why is it differently named? The suburb the shopping centre is in originally shared the same name but the people there wanted to be part of the upmarket suburb of "Malvern" so petitioned to have their part renamed Malvern East. The shopping centre already had a successful name though so it stuck with that.
Basically any large American city does this. No one thinks of it as being a "proper", but they are the same idea. Like I like in Indianapolis. That has little townships in it, but within a stone throw are 5 or so cities that touch the city and are outside the county; fishers, Noblesville, Carmel, greenwood, Westfield, etc. all of that to me is Indianapolis. Its all the same general city line that has grown together and amalgamated. Fort Wayne probably has the same idea, multiple cities attached at the hip to make the whole fort Wayne area. If you look at maps for broadcasting like radio, then it'll extend almost an hour out.
Indianapolis is a little unique in that in 1970 they created Unigov, which basically Incorporated all of Marion County into the city. The enclaves were already their own cities such as Lawrence, Speedway, and Beech Grove. While Indy confines itself to Marion County, cities like Aurora, Illinois straddle four counties.
@@timmmahhhh I never thought too hard about Indy and Marion county being the same thing essentially. I know they but, but never put the 1 and 1 together
@@wheeliebeast7679same with Louisville, Nashville, Columbus ga, Lexington ky and a few other cities. I think its called consolidated gov where the city combines with the rest of the county. St louis and Baltimore did the opposite and separated fron its countries and became independent cities which didn't age well for both cities
Tokyo isn't even a official city. "Despite most of the world recognizing Tokyo as a city, since 1943 its governing structure has been more akin to a prefecture, with an accompanying Governor and Assembly taking precedence over the smaller municipal governments which make up the metropolis"
I made a youtube short that went a little viral on this so I figured why not expound more on the topic since you guys liked it, Welcome to Los Angeles, the city with the dumbest map in the USA!
Also UPDATE* Dammit misspelled "Torrance"
what isn't dumb there
Welp duh 🙄
I would love a series like this on cities across the world. From Tokyo to Toronto.
Why do you still respond to comments more regularly if your channel is so big
For a US example of the city not being everything, look to St. Louis. The city is actually pretty small and the county eclipses it in people, money, land area, etc. That's why the Stl crime stats look so bad.
The whole "have your own water supply or be annexed" situation sounds like a medieval siege
Not really. Many central cities have used water & sewer access to grow. Some cities extended lines into undeveloped areas without requiring annexation into the city. Others require a short timeline to come into the city.
Central cities 'fight' to keep from getting landlocked by their suburbs. Hence, the panhandle. Also depends upon state annexation laws. In Ohio, the process is initiated by the property owner. Cities like going after tax rich producing areas while going around the tax poor ones
Look at a map of Columbus, Ohio. It has landlocked suburbs within its borders. It has township remnants. It has panhandles, and it's the fastest growing area in the state. Ohio law prevents discontinuous chunks of cities UNLESS the remnants of a township FINALLY form a city or merge with its township seat city.
Curious thing about the South and West as they permit such isolated city chunks until the city connects in between them.
Smaller municipalities in South Caroline seem to start out circular and annex from there. Have seen several examples. Must be state laws?
😂😂
Las Vegas NV is a big upside L in shape 750k+
The Las Vegas Metro is the whole bowl 2.8+ million
@@JayYoung-ro3vu Maybe the circles are a Southern thing. A few cities in Georgia are also roughly circular shaped. There's actually an outer suburb of Atlanta called Social Circle.
When water supply is successful, people don't think about it. There can be a real struggle, visible for resident in the bills only.
Small correction at 4:25, unincorporated means there is NO city government there (the county operates all functions for these areas). Burbank, Glendale, Inglewood, Culver City etc are NOT unincorporated because they operate as a municipality (basically their own city government overlaying above the county). Also at 9:15 / 10:50, that area isn't actually incorporated into the city of Torrance, it is an unincorporated area, they simply use Torrance postal addresses. If you go a few blocks west you will be within the borders of LA City but the properties still use Torrance addresses as well
great video, not trying to hate just educate
Yes, also the City of Los Angeles Harbor Gateway North neighborhood has a Gardena city address ,while Harbor Gateway South has a Torrence city address.
To me it sounded like he was saying they aren’t incorporated into Los Angeles because he made that reference and also goes on to say they have their own police, etc… maybe not but that’s how I understood that part.
@@chriscavanaugh1697yes, I understood it that way as well 💯
Example : Marina Del Rey is an unincorporated area within the L.A. City Limits. It is considered L.A. County and instead of having LAPD they have LA County Sheriffs, they have LA County Fire Department instead of LA City Fire Department, they contract with private garbage pick up company and other infrastructure maintenance but also pay the City of L.A. for other services.
@13_13k I don't know if you realize you stated, "Marina Del Rey is an unincorporated area within the LA city limits." Perhaps you meant to say "Unincorporated area of Los Angeles County , "which is why Marina Del Rey is patrolled by the Sherriff. The first principle of unincorporated presupposes, not a city, nor in any city limits/proper.
This video does a great job explaining one of many reasons why it’s really really hard to build housing in LA, because it’s not just LA City you have to work with.
Don't forget the NIMBY's making it all worse
You are correct. I work in RE and LA county is the WORST to deal with in terms of permitting. It’s why we build way more in Orange County and the IE.
LA RE is basically a monopoly for major apartment building companies. They make it impossible on anyone else.
LA has finally started building, it's the suburbs that need to build as well.
I’m not fully knowledgeable on the small details pertaining to the RE situation, but I can definitely observe it around me living here
@@pbcash7788 OC and IE only build suburbs, literally the reason LA has problems as is.
The answer to why LA has this shape is that America is not a nation. It's a massive real estate market.
The rich areas don't want their taxes going to 'poor' areas?
Mostly yes.
Somewhat, but a lot of the dumb borders came from the city expanding by annexing towns but then not being able to annex certain towns that border towns they did annex
It's probably also like Monaco being independent rather than a part of a bigger country for more comfortable legislation rules?
Land of the NIMBYs.
@@duqial Monaco is independence do to the casino. Gambling was in most places not legal. there it is. plus for France there is no incentive to conquer Monaco there is no recourse to be found there to be of use. But it does get money from Monaco for it's defence budget.
Correction for Universal’s location:
Universal actually isn’t part of Burbank. Most of it actually sits within an LA county unincorporated community called Universal City, which shares a northern boundary with Burbank.
Not all of it is in unincorporated land
@@trainsandmore2319 --- it's Studio City which is LA City.
Americans, I’m sorry, but your weird city maps is the exact reason why people outside your country just lump different cities into one. That whole urban area is LA to me.
We americans also do that. The weird quirks in our city maps only matter in situations for the purposes of taxes, utilities, or legal/politcal matters. Edit: Clarified when quirks in city boundaries matter.
@@Mediaphiliafair enough, but I have spoken to Americans that are from places like Fort Worth, Katy, or Fort Lauderdale, and they’re adamant they’re from completely separate cities 😂 legally they are, but being real here, that’s basically Dallas, Houston and Miami respectively
I live in Pasadena currently and if I’m asked abroad where I live, I will just say I’m from LA because I don’t want to have to explain myself. If I’m in California, I will say I live in Pasadena because it gives people who know, a better idea. You would be the person I’m not trying to explain it to😂
I do remember a handful of conversations where someone says they are from LA and then asked what part, and they say somewhere like El Monte or La Puente and they are teased that that is not actually LA
Totally okay, I live in New Jersey so I totally understand this as whenever people from outside the USA ask where I’m from I just say NYC or Philly
Who is here after the fires?
its still going
So, I kinda dig this new series of more chill videos, where they talk about all sorts of random stuff, like weird admin rules in different countries or cities. They sometimes throw in some news-related videos too, but honestly, I like it. I know it’s not really what Paul had in mind at first-he was more about getting out there, y'know, hitting the ground. But for now, these videos are still pretty cool, and I’m always down to watch whatever’s next, whether it’s more about geography or travel vibes. I get it, though. Keep doing your thing.
I actually work in that Torrance knot section at Harbor Gateway. It's funny because we call the building our "LA office" yet our official address says Torrance.
Oo like 90210 but. Really Filmed in a studio in burbank
I really dig these new, more obscure geographic topics that you're tackling now that your main objective is over! They're super interesting and I'm all for it! Sincerely, a subscriber since the Belgium video
They are also shorter, easier to watch, and easier for me to edit, it’s a win-win! Glad you guys like them!
@@GeographyNow Would love a whole series about Los Angeles. It's so huge! Like cities within cities within cities. And the history of how it came to be like that.
this is one of my favorite youtube videos ever now because LA geography is one of my favorite things to talk about but everyone I talk about it with is always so confused or uninterested. Its especially bad since I live in Virginia now
Funny you'd move to Virginia. It's THE BEST example of what this video is about considering Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News, Suffolk, Hampton, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach create the "7 Cities" of the Hampton Roads area in southeastern VA and it's allllllllllllllllllll about THIS
@Titoroski187 that's funny but I'm not in those places. I'm in Harrisonburg for school. I barely leave town except maybe for DC or Charlottesville
That's not Tokyo City, that's Tokyo Prefecture (actually Metropolis, but whatever) which consists of multiple cities, towns and villages. While there is no single city called 'Tokyo', the special wards area is often considered to be the 'core' of the Tokyo Metro, with each 'ward' having similar powers to (and stylizing themselves in English as) a city, i.e. 世田谷区 in Japanese but City of Setagaya in English.
Also it's actually common knowledge among Japanese that Tokyo Disneyland actually isn't in tokyo it's in the Chiba prefecture lol.
Also Kawasaki Motors that makes the motorcycles isn't located in Kawasaki City near Tokyo, they're based in Akashi city, which is right next to Kobe.
Very much like NYC.
@@zeitgeistx5239no. NYC is compromised of 5 counties and is wholly in New York State.
@@Mario123007Toronto Pearson Airport is similar to Tokyo Disney. The airport is in the neighboring city despite having the name of city/place that it isn't in.
This video didn't even aged but it went well.
One might say it read the room well.
look at the fire warning icon in the thumbnail, right at the Palisades. Was the thumbnail updated? It came out weeks before the fires started....
Funnily enough, this video was posted at 2AM in LA
If only it was posted 4 hours and 16 minutes later in LA
Lol go to sleep lol
And at 5am in Montreal Canada
and at 11 at night in new zealand
@@mayortyranno4645 11 Am in France 😂
Gardena High School was built as an LA Unified school in 1907. The City of Gardena was founded in 1930 and they didn't want to create their own school district.
The real reason comes down to history. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo legally required the U.S. to recognize Mexican, Spanish, and Californio rights to existing land holdings-mostly ranchos-which were sold off or acquired through eminent domain over the following century. This led to the slow and unsystematic development of cities founded from these land grants.
The video left out that a "City" in the US in an incorporation - it's a corporation, a fictitious person. And like corporations do, a city can buy and sell things, including land. As you point out, historically there were large land holdings and some of them were bought by different corporations (er, cities.)
And hence, why so many unincorporated places have names that start with “Rancho” like “Rancho Cucamonga” and “Rancho Palos Verdes”
How nice that the Spanish et al didn’t have their stolen land stolen.
@@argon408 many of them did. Most Hispano-Mexican ranches only survived into the 20th century because the ranchers married their daughters off to wealthy Anglo/Irish settlers. A famous example is McAllen, TX.
@@argon408they gave it to Mexico and Mexico lost it.
Fun fact (probably not so fun) about water supplies, since you mentioned it: the city of Santa Monica used to get its water from a natural spring called Kuruvungna. Kuruvungna is a sacred site for the Tongva people that eventually became the property of the Los Angeles Unified School District - sitting on part of the campus of University High School. The land was slated to be sold off for private development, but a movement led by members of the Tongva community were able to secure its designation as a historic landmark, and blocked the sale. Technically the land is leased in perpetuity to the tongva people, with the intention for the site to be open for spiritual purposes. This promise has been abrogated repeatedly, and LAUSD red tape has made it such that the site is only open officially one day per month for a few hours
Correction: Tokyo Disneyland is located in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, not Tokyo. It's called Tokyo Disneyland due to PR reasons.
And Disneyland Paris is not in Paris either.
And Disney World is not in Orlando.
And Disneyland Hong Kong is not on Hong Kong Island.
And Disneyland is not in LA
Not Disney Related: Toronto Pearson Airport is not in Toronto.
My compliments on all the complicated graphics you had to get your drone and your computer and god knows what else you had to do to get them on our screens. You’re awesome!
I really like this new segment of yours, Geogra-talk, quite niche but interesting stuff. Keep up the great work Barbs!
I grew up in So Cal. I spent the last 25 years in LA County and even some time in the City of Los Angeles. The best description of Los Angeles I’ve ever heard was from a little French book, when the author described it as “a collection of villages”. So accurate. From Silver Lake to Redondo Beach to Calabasas to Montebello to Compton to Hawaiian Gardens… a collection of villages. No other place like it.
As a former Angeleno I was always interested in the little nuances of the city of LA's geography. I'm only here to raise my grievances about you revealing the 6th St back to 110 shortcut that I've used for years while living down there and still use when I need to go that way when visiting LA from the Bay Area. I hope you continue to make videos for a long time Barbs and love your segway into city geography and micro-geography.
the fire icon in the thumbnail right at the Palisades did not age well
California geography could be an entire series in itself
Seriously. It sums it all up how the two main exterior scenes in Return of the Jedi (the Sarlacc pit and the Endor forests) were both filmed in California, albeit at literally opposite ends (the Sarlacc pit in the Imperial sand dunes in the southeastern corner and the Endor forest near Crescent City in the northwestern corner).
when I was in elementary school my school taught us about California and we even read a big book all about California geography, I first I thought it was a little weird, but now that I'm all grown up it makes complete sense, this was at a school in East Los Angeles
California is bigger than any European or Asian country.
You are truly an urban planning and geography nerd! I would be proud to call you my son. I thought I was the only urban planning. Geography nerd out there. That was before UA-cam. I’ve discovered lots of planning geeks all around the world! You rock. Keep up the good work.😅
I am excited to visit LA for the first time next year!
Also, Barbs: PLEASE Give us a regions of Italy video!!!
@@chrisclancy6756 eat the Mexican food in East LA and/or Boyle Heights
Would love this video 😊
Mind the used needles and hobo dumps.
A lot of people are requesting it… I might have to…
@GeographyNow would be a very interesting and insightful episode, especially considering your Italian heritage, looking forward to it!
Cheers from malta 🇲🇹😊
I hope that you can make more of these on different cities in different states including cities districts. Hopefully your explanation can clarify the confusions.
This is some of your best content, I always thought the usual videos were a bit too highly produced and impersonal compared to other geo channels. Felt like videos I would watch in school, which isnt bad but not as entertaining and thus less informative to me overall. The topics were also so broad that it was hard to really dig into anything. Absolutely love the more personal speaking style and presentation here, you nailed it!!! you have a new sub!
1:12 Brussels is similar. The Brussels Capital Region is its own region within Belgium (1 of 3), and generally, when one mentions Brussels, they're referring to the region. But there is also the City of Brussels, which is the largest of 19 municipalities within the Brussels region.
The City of Brussels actually used to be smaller-just the Pentagon city center-but it has merged with other municpalities over time and become the largest, but with weirdly shaped, non-contiguous borders.
Who came here after LA 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
I guess you could say Los Angeles looks fire 🔥
If you look at New York City it seems pretty straightforward, until you learn that the neighborhood of Marble Hill is not technically part of The Bronx, but Manhattan across Spuytun Duyvil Creek (Dutch or maybe Old Dutch for Spite the Devil). The creek used to be north of Marble Hill and it was a nightmare for navigation. The Army Corps of Engineers not only deepened it, but decided to slice Marble Hill off of Manhattan to straighten the creek. The old creek bed was then filled in to attach Marble Hill to The Bronx, but it was never legally incorporated with the Bronx. The only difference between Manhattan and Marble Hill is the telephone Area Code, the people wanted 212, but the phone company was like, “That’s too complicated, you’re getting 718 like everything else around you.”
Me being Dutch and having some understanding of old Dutch (still a challange). the Spuytun Duyvil Creek a literal translation would be the spouting devil creek. As it might have been a wild and dangerous or unpredictable creek. a more correct translation would be the raging devil creek.
as Spouting could also imply you speaking like a mad man.
Or that NYC is 5 counties that mostly gave up their self governance to the city
Also Ellis Island. A NY enclave landlocked within a New Jersey island.
The enclave is the original island. All reclaimed land was later deemed to be long to NJ
@ If the city never consolidated, Brooklyn would be the 3rd largest city in the country.
@ it had whirlpools and because it’s connected to major estuaries at both ends Hudson River, Harlem River the tides were a wild ride.
I grew up in San Fernando, and I remember when all the regulations on lawn watering were being passed and it was being talked about in the news; the city sent out flyers to each home letting us know we didn’t have to follow those regulations because of our own water supply but to still be mindful.
There's a city in the Philippines called Caloocan where it's separated into two pieces. North and South. Story was that Quezon City annexed a large part of the city called Novaliches when it was created.
What makes it interesting is how different North and South Caloocan is. South is seen as dangerous, poor and crowded while North is wealthy, leafy, and suburban.
@@ks_ig2728, in Metro Manila, two cities have two separate lands. Manila's city limits has an exclave surrounded by Makati since they have the land of Manila South Cemetery.
Kamusta ka!
I never understood why the island where Manila is located is called _Luzon_ , but Manila's largest suburb is called _Quezon_ City. 🤔
@@grantorino2325 Luzon is a name originated from the Portuguese (originally Luçoes, Spanish translated to Luzones) and the name stuck. Spaniards called it Nueva Castila originally but reverted back to Luçon, then eventually Luzon.
Quezon City was named after Manuel Luis Quezon, the President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Quezon City, originally designed by William Parsons (but died in 1939) was named in honor of him and got incorporated in 1939 during his tenure. After WW2, the Province of Tayabas was divided into two, and renamed to Quezon (province) and Aurora (after First Lady Aurora Quezon) respectively.
Nah, the north part is crowded, poor, and messy. The south part is clean, suburban, and modern. It is all swapped, but you have a point.
Just a clarification - not all of the enclaves and weird holes within the LA area are "unincorporated". For example, you higlight the distinction between Beverley Hills and Los Angeles, but Beverley Hills is an incorporated city that happens to be completeley surrounded by the city of Los Angeles - it has a city government, a police force, etc. Unincorporated areas are places like Marina Del Rey, which fall under the County administration and rely on the Sherriff's department for law enforcement.
Parts of the marina del rey are in the city part is county
Beverly Hills is not actually surrounded by the city of L.A. Part of it borders West Hollywood, which has its own weird history. Until 1984 it was an unincorporated part of the county that didn't become a part of the city because it wanted less supervision by the authorities. It was (and still is to some extent) an area with movie studios and other entertainment related businesses along the Sunset Strip. WeHo incorporated as a city to protect its renters who are the majority of residents. Also it has large communities of Russians and LGBTQ folks with different cultures and lots of bars and restaurants. All the other parts of Hollywood, East Hollywood, North Hollywood, Studio City etc are neighborhoods of the big city.
The confusion for a lot of people is that we think of our neighborhoods as our hometowns, and our addresses are called by the neighborhood names instead of Los Angeles. I live in North Hollywood, which is nicer than Van Nuys, but not as expensive as Studio City or Sherman Oaks. I have NoHo pride, but vote in L.A. city elections. There are about four million people in the city and ten million in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the U.S.A.
Tokyo Disneyland isn’t even in the special wards. Angry Chibans will be after you now.
lols I did a little eyebrow raise when I head him say Disneyland was part of Tokyo city
Sorry, brief correction on Tokyo. Tokyo Disneyland isn't actually in Tokyo, but in Chiba, a separate prefecture.
What's really funny is how most San Fernando Valley residents have absolutely no idea they live in the City of Los Angeles lol Due to many neighborhoods having their own mailing addresses like Encino, Van Nuys, Sun Valley, Woodland Hills, Granada Hills, etc., they are often mistakenly assumed to be their own independent cities, but they're actually not.
The way the postcode system works would also be an interesting video (to me lol)
I lived in the SF valley. we all knew.
@@bradjohnson4126 I live in the San Gabriel valley and we are not city of LA and I even knew that. But I probably should know I am a surveyor and work all over LA.
I live in LA and almost every day I hear people on the radio or in person call their LA city neighborhood with its own mailing address a city.
“I live in the city of”:
Van Nuys
Wilmington
North Hollywood
Etc.
It drives me crazy. I want to yell at all of them that you’re not a city, you’re an LA city neighborhood!!
For me it’s the opposite. Most people in the LA basin or the core of the city don’t know they the SFV is part of LA cuz it’s so far away. They don’t claim us.
Auckland City in New Zealand used to be divided between four cities and several smaller district councils until around 2010. Apparently, the government thought it was a wise idea to copy how LA did things, except that all the councils were successfully assimilated into the "Super City" Borg construct.
People were getting tired of the lack of cooperation between the councils impacting infrastructure and responsiveness to local affairs. The idea was a single streamlined local council would be more responsive and quick to act without mountains of bureaucracy getting in the way. What happened instead was the "Super City" council became even less responsive, more incompetent and more undemocratic. Go figure.
It's funny because London is essentially divided into 32 separate borough governments, but still suffers from lack of responsiveness.
In LAs case, one of the big problems is the county is governed by just five people, and there isn't really a separate legislative and executive body. So it's VERY unresponsive, plus people don't vote in their county elections.
Paul, it’s so weird how your timing of posting this video was perfect. I have been an Angelino for the past 34 years and learned so much from your video. And what’s happening in our city now makes more sense and at the same time doesn’t cause who is responsible for not preparing infrastructure for the fires of this magnitude? Not Every city is a part of Los Angeles city. Maybe you can make a separate video on that, what you think about this whole situation.
7:27 like for the story of glendale and burbank
he explained Burbank
They were sundown towns and, like san fernando, have their own water source; they ardently did not want any black troops stationed there back in the early days. As well as starting off as a major manufacturing hub, they never needed to be part of the city and hollywood likes it to not pay LA city taxes, which isn't "heavily heavily subsidized" by it like the video states.
why did i get recomended this rn
coz "LA" is trendin and "city" is trending and this has both.
Columbus Ohio looks like something from the Holy Roman Empire
or fallout.
Oh sweet Jesus it's awful
Okay so Go resurrect Napoleon
When I saw a map of an area near Hilliard, I knew that the decades-long annexation policy had some issues. To get within one subdivision in Columbus, the main road that is mostly within Hilliard must be accessed. Or vice versa. What I have never liked, the multiple areas of unincorporated county land. Signs reading "Entering Franklin County" are very common throughout Columbus.
Columbus Ohio is the bane of anyone who plays around with Dave's Redistricter.
I find it concerning that I don't think the map of LA doesn't look that bad.
I noticed that you had a map of the Kansas City earlier in the video.
KCK and KCMO have always been independent from the get go.
KCMO was founded in 1853 as the City of Kansas. It was renamed to Kansas City in 1854 upon the creation of Kansas Territory.
KCK didn’t form until 1872 via consolidation of smaller settlements.
The numbered streets of KCK are north-south. However, the numbered streets in KCMO are east-west.
It irks me that some people think that Kansas City isn’t in Kansas. But, most people think of KCMO when they see “Kansas City.”
But alas.
4:31 Actually, no, they don;t all have their own city councils, police forces, etc. If they're an incorporated city, like Beverly Hills, they do. Often times, though, they are unincorporated areas, like unincorporated East Los Angeles, or the unincorporated enclave of the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center entirely surrounded by the City of Los Angeles, that do not have their own city council, police force, etc., but are instead governed directly by the County of Los Angeles. LA County Sherriffs are their police force, the LA County Board of Supervisors is their governing body, etc.
The West LA va medical center has its own police force and governing body. Not LA county or LA county sheriffs
@ Well, it has its own security force and governing body for hospital and land use affairs, but is still technically legally controlled by Board of Sups and Sheriffs would respond to any major emergency/to make arrests to transport to LA County jails.
Additional fun fact about london: it has about 20%+ forested area which is one of the highest for a capital city in fact London can technically be classed as a forest. Also Westminster here is like d.c. in the US a separate area normally for government buildings
I think that would probably be closer to the National Mall and the area around the Capitol
Yeah, westminster is technically its own city, has it in the title, but it's okay being in London so does it really matter?
One of the 32 boroughs even has the word "forest" as part of its name.
Atlanta's forested area is ~48% which is the highest in the US, and it's a major capital city. Also I live in Decatur which borders Atlanta but was actually founded before it in 1823 (Atlanta was founded 1837)
Thanks for putting this video together after traveling to these places, recording them, and editing them altogether. This video is very insightful.
I’m from Altadena which is a small unincorporated area north of Pasadena but Altadena was able to stay disconnected from LA because it used to be a part of Pasadena and some of pasadenas utilities including water in some areas are present in Altadena, LA county takes care of most other utilities but the remnants of being a part of pasadena can be seen with the strange borders between Altadena and pasadena
Altadena should stay that way too. Pasadena City is so corrupt. I'm from Monrovia/Arcadia unincorporated area.
@@col.cottonhill6655Altadena is essentially a satellite city of pasadnea
@@silverfishofdoom1312 no it's not. Altadena is unincorporated Los Angeles county. While* Pasadena is incorporated as a city with a mayor and city council. Just because it borders Pasadena doesn't mean it is governed the same. Pasadena has its own police department for example. They do not patrol or have jurisdiction in Altadena. There is no Altadena police department. They have a sheriff department that has jurisdiction.
Is Altadena that one area that for decades (like since the 70's) has successfully fought off some major freeway expansion that Caltrans has been trying to complete?
I grew up in Fresno. Had no idea it was such a mapping mess. That explains why half the time we drove through Clovis and my 10 year old brain thought we were far away from home.
Not exactly sure, but Fresno also has a canal system to distribute water so water supply may also be a factor in its strangeness.
You should look at the map of Modesto, absolutely screwed up between 3 neighboring cities and some parts are not incorporated despite being in the middle of town.
Super interesting! Glad you mentioned my city, Houston. Fun fact; unlike Houston, Austin & San Antonio, Poor little Dallas😢 can no longer grow because it is surrounded by smaller suburbs with their own city limits. Houston ,with its octopus fingers that follow major highways, will find new territories to annex in the next decades to come. We annexed Kingwood and nearby Lake Houston to control surface runoff pollution in the area since Lake Houston is a major source of drinking water for over 2 million people. We Love your little geo chats, Barbs! ❤️😎⭐️🥇🏆👍🎤📺
50 years from now Dallas and San Antonio will be part of Houston, right? And then a century from now all of Texas will be Houston.
Houston wants the tax revenue from commercial (freeways /1960/6/NASA/ The port), without servicing the residential. And careful when buying fireworks and driving across 1960/6. Depending on the area, you may have illegally transported fireworks into Houston by crossing the street.
It’s even more complicated than that. The City of Houston also has extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) over all parts of unincorporated Harris Co and adjacent portions of the surrounding counties. That means places like Spring, Atascosita, The Woodlands, Crosby, and several others, while not legally part of the city of Houston, are not legally separate either since they aren’t incorporated as legal cities. Houston laws apply in those places, but they are allowed to create their own MUDs, police departments, fire departments, etc. which are legally separate from Houston’s.
And of course, all public school districts in Texas (sans Stafford MSD), are independent of cities and MUDs, so they can define their own borders that are sometimes more important than whichever city you’re technically in.
Thanks for the excellent video! I love learning about a city by a) a passionate and knowledgeable local who did all the leg work to save me the trouble, b) put in the effort to put in a well produced and engaging format to be stumbled upon at my convenience. Information content was dense but avoided being dry with non-static scene cuts and logical connections in subject flow.
Also appreciated how you roped in your cousin and had the courage to keep in the humanizing family dynamics of non-scripted honesty. So much was said in the her unsaid pause after "but do YOU like what I do" and your immediate, accusatory burst of laughter steeped in self-deprecation and subtext of "WHY DID I HAVE TO ASK?!", made me snort.
Had to like and subscribe. I wanna see the same excellence and commitment on other subjects and non-lived in cities. Keep 'em comin'!
This aspect of local government in the US always fascinated me. You have a gigantic metro area but just a teeny tiny blob in the center is actually, legally, part of the city. In Germany this usually doesn't happen because state governments can order local governments to merge/be annexed whether they like it or not. One can argue that this is undemocratic but it definitely simplifies urban planning.
That's an interesting difference between our Federations
States like Texas have the power to do this as well, but they don't do it because people value decentralization.
Nine of this is a problem anymore as it doesn’t exist 🔥
😂
01:50
Actually, Tokyo Disneyland isn't really in tokyo, it is located in Chiba prefecture.
I love your new format Barbs, keep it going hell yeah!!
Reminded me of Demolition Man where in the future all of these cities merged to become San Angelas.
Barbs, love this type of content. Informative yet fun. Keep it up. All the best bro
As Jay Foreman said in his Unfinished London video on the subject, even the way the borders of Greater London are weird. For example, where I live, is on the edge of south western Greater London, but according to the postal address, it's in Surrey. A nearby town to where I live, is Epsom, yet despite it fitting the criteria for an outter suburb of London, it's not a part of Greater London. Even the Borough boundaries of Kingston upon Thames is weird, it has a narrow panhandle that faces south west, happening to encompass the theme park Chessington World of Adventures.
Another London based UA-camr, Geoff Marshall, (who lived in Charleston, South Cariona for a few years and in his final year there did a road trip around the Continental United States visiting places that shared names with stations on the London Underground map) talked about how the boundaries of Greater London are often oversimplified to "everything inside the M25 motorway", when in fact, it's entirely true. There are parts of the M25 that are entirely outside the Greater London boundaries and parts that are entirely within it.
I actually find this pretty interesting. I used to live in Mid-City which is very LA, but close enough to BH, and Culver city that it made me wonder. Even more so after I was able to purchase a house in the harbor city area, which makes up part of the shoe string. After researching I found that the purchase of the shoe string (harbor gateway and harbor city) was an intimidation tactic to get San Pedro to incorporate. LA wanted the port, and wanted San Pedro to incorporate, but San Pedro did not want to. LA decided to buy the shoestring land and and pre-fix the neighborhoods as "Harbor" and threatened to trench out their own port into these areas which the shipping industry would end up favoring due to the higher resources LA was willing to pour into its own harbor, and offer to businesses and logistics. This tactic worked eventually leading to San Pedro incorporating. This worked out in my favor when purchasing the house in this area as, the LA utilities are actually much cheaper and more affordable that the private utilities from other surrounding areas. I am also able to vote for LA city elections and bills, which have higher impact than those living in the surrounding areas, which are only able to cast votes for the county, and their own local municipality.
he finally shows the LA map at 4:56
This was a really interesting and well shot video. Love to see more like this!
Gothenburg, Sweden have that problem too. I live in, technically, the northernmost municipality of Halland county, but we’re the southern end of the Greater Gothenburg metropolitan area.
This’ve become a problem with health care, as the nearest major hospital is in Gothenburg, but everyone with more serious issues is directed to Varberg south of where I live, which is of a longer distance than just going to Gothenburg. And the (Halland) county wants to move the emergency department of Varberg even further south to Falkenberg.
The point is that the Greater Gothenburg metropolitan area is effed up, geographically speaking.
Cool video, would love to see more videos about LA and LA + California geography including history :)
Long Beach local here. I've always thought that the port corridor was one of the stupidest looking things ever, but I always thought it was due to port revenue.
Even Long Beach has Signal Hill within its city boundaries because of oil.
I work for the city of Los Angeles, best way to know if you’re in “L.A.” if you see LAPD patroling that area.
13:05
CORRECTION:
San Pedro is NOT the South Bay. The South Bay refers to the south of the Santa Monica bay. The South Bay is El Segundo through Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Redondo Beach, to Palos Verdes.
You made this same mistake in your short also
False. San Pedro is part of the South Bay (I live there), this is easily researchable information. The LA Metro website, The Los Angeles County Economic Development Center website, and Wikipedia all list San Pedro as part of the South Bay, along with many other places not on your list such as Inglewood, Carson, Torrance, Harbor City, and Wilmington. I couldnt find a single website that didnt list San Pedro as part of the South Bay.
@@shard4756 What bay do you think is being referred to? It’s the Santa Monica Bay. The South Bay is the cities in the south of the Santa Monica Bay.
And even if you for some weird reason consider San Pedro part of the South Bay, calling it “THE South Bay areas” is still wrong
@@shard4756 San Pedro is most often not included in South Bay. Look up "Mapping LA" from the LA Times for a quick example. South Bay stretches from Westchester to Palos Verdes, with San Pedro on the border but in what they call the "Harbor" region along with Long Beach and other cities.
Why not make LA geography more confusing?!
@@michaeltnk1135 What i or you think about which bay is being referred to is irrelevant. Thats a subjective opinion. The only thing that matters is what is classified as the South Bay by the state and local entities and they consider San Pedro, and the other cities I listed, as part of the south bay, therefore they are.
Just a clarification - not all of the enclaves and weird holes within the LA area are "unincorporated". For example, you higlight the fact that places like Beverley Hills, Glendale, and Culver city (which you called "unincorporated") are distinct from Los Angeles, but they are incorporated cities - they have a city government, a police force, etc. Unincorporated areas are places like Marina Del Rey, which do not have a city administration, and fall under the County administration, relying on the Sherriff's department for law enforcement.
The ones that aren't unincorporated are census designated
About Tokyo.
That string that you saw was not the city but the prefecture of Tokyo. Same as a province.
There are like Manila and Los Angeles multiple cities in the area.
Like Long beach, Anaheim, Hollywood, Beverly hills for Los Angeles and Queson, Pasig, Caloocan, Antipolo, Paranaque for Manila.
And its Shibuya crossing not Shinjuku crossing.
lmfao antipolo is in rizal
I just found this channel. I’m from LA and I’ve wondered about LA’s cluster of cities/communities for a long time. I still have a few questions- if I address a letter to someone who lives on Woodburn St. (Made up) in Pacific Palisades or Rosemead, but accidentally write “Woodburn St, Los Angeles, CA, will it still get there?
Here's why L.A. is mapped the way it is: Back in the 1920s or so, Los Angeles owned all these different areas, including San Pedro and Venice.
Around the 1930s, an ordinance was issued that said cities needed to be fully connected.
There was a popular dog track near Culver City, so L.A. bought that narrow strip of land to keep it. Likewise, L.A. wanted to keep the harbor in San Pedro, so they bought the string called the Harbor Gateway to keep the revenue from San Pedro.
“They have their own water supply” hits diff now 😬
Wow. I always thought Burbank, Santa Monica, Pasadena and all the others mentioned in movies and TV shows are like miles away from each other. I knew they were all in California, but California is pretty huge (around 4 times bigger then my home country), so I assumed these are all miles apart. Seeing that these are all in one cluster gives me a whole new perspective...
They are miles apart. Santa Monica is 25 miles away from Pasadena, and 24 miles away from Burbank.
@shard4756 all of that is driveable in 30 mins(excl traffic). That's average for all big cities. I think the person above meant tens or hundreds of miles away
That map of LA Barbs shows in this video is really big.
@@amanshilanov6237 Yes, that's what I meant. We use metric here, so I'm not that familiar with miles and didn't wanted to sound stupid by accidentally giving a ridiculusly large order of magnitude. I meant that these cities are further apart, like Berlin and Hamburg in Germany or London and York in the UK.
@@franciskafayeszter4138a mile is 1609 meters or the length of one Imperial Class Star Destroyer.
9:37 That is the thickest steering wheel I've ever seen omg
Didn't notice it at first lmao
Hits different January 8th
This video helped me much to finally get city names right. Context is that I manage a band wiki and all the shows need to display the *actual* city names, not the advertised metropoles on the posters.
Yeah speaking as a Londoner, our city just sprawls out into the rest of southern England and people have differing views on what constitutes as London because of so many different factors
The England is also strange (from a North American perspective) because most authority rests with the national government you can have these more ambiguous boundaries.
Luckily, the entirety of London will remain in its current shape thanks to the Greenway. For the ppl in the San Fernando Valley myself including, Traffic is becoming a nightmare and the surrounding neighborhoods once known for their vastness of nature with moderate cosmopolitan feel, low population density and many Affordable houses have now transformed into Overinflated sky rise prison like apts, price gouging restaurants, dirty damaged and uneven roads, scattered Trash, broken glass / smelly and stained sidewalks/ pee and poop with homeless folks under the overpasses and constant auto traffic throughout the night to the wee hours to the rest of the hellish day. In the past you can ride your bicycle on the shoulder of a major street with no bike lane for a good 40 min and have only a handful of cars pass by. But sometime starting in 2013, It all got ruined thanks to WAZE/Google NAV. Today many streets in the SFValley have buffered/gated bike lanes but it's virtually impossible to have a smooth ride without having deal with so many hobos impeding your path getting in the way, nails , shattered glass, turned over waste receptacles, junkies, smudged Dookie ,and Pick up trucks improperly parked. Not to mention bad drivers and bumper to bumper jammed streets. Wouldn't be surprised if the ppl want to secede in the future.
Very interesting, I’d like to see more of these videos! It’s very intriguing to see these crazy city maps
Technically, Tokyo gets even more complicated because despite there being the Prefecture of Tokyo, there isn't actually a City of Tokyo (kinda sorta). What we call Tokyo is a group of wards with their own cities and their own mayors. It's Shibuya City within Shibuya Ward within Tokyo Prefecture. Prefectures are closer to a State (in US terms), so it's like labelling LA as California City.
I would say they’re more like counties than states due to the stronger federalism there, but to each their own.
8:59 I don’t think this is actually a split, it’s just that Google Maps refuses to extend municipal boundaries across bodies of water. That part of the LA River is still in Los Angeles, so you aren’t actually leaving the city as you suggest
Fun point 👉 It's the land under navigable federal water that's incorporated in the city.
3:16 Phoenix’s borders aren’t even that weird by its own region’s standards. A lot of the other cities went so insane with annexing land in the 70s that our state legislature had to curtail municipal annexation powers. Some of the craziness from other cities includes:
- Buckeye bordering Surprise, even though the old town sites for those cities are at least 20 miles away from each other, and Goodyear and Glendale are in the way. Buckeye’s borders in general are very weird.
- Mesa preventing Gilbert from annexing Williams Field, even though Williams Field is around 20 miles away from downtown Mesa. Mesa is in the top 50 of US cities by population.
- Sun City being surrounded on three sides by Peoria, but being unincorporated.
- Peoria having a 1 mile wide strip of land that connects the southern half of the city to the northern half, which extends into a different county.
- Glendale’s strip annexation around Luke Air Force Base. Our Glendale is probably a bit larger than yours.
- Scottsdale being 2 miles wide from the Tempe border to Doubletree Ranch Road due to tribal politics.
At least a lot of the valley cities, especially in the west valley, agreed to base their location address systems as an extension of Phoenix. The east valley cities, except Scottsdale and Queen Creek, still use their own address systems. I’m not sure why Queen Creek adopted Phoenix’s system, when the cities between them and Phoenix have their own. The valley is a common nickname for the entire Phoenix region.
Also, the city of Phoenix is so huge that some people, especially when referring to the outskirts, use the names of the “urban villages” to refer to those areas, even though the urban village system is something the city government created to try to spread out and concentrate development, and the villages have very little power to do anything.
Glendale is also like 2 miles wide at some point around the Arizona Canal, connecting the suburban whiter north with the denser Hispanic south.
And that map looks very different from above currently with the fires.
Now it's all burning down 😢 Hope you and your mom are safe!
13:32 I guess the answer would be 3 weeks...
Most major cities in the US have their city limits spread out in a weird format because of annexation.
NYC perfect example
@@BK_718, New York City is divided into 5 boroughs. To the west is New Jersey. Staten Island and Manhattan are two lone island boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens are on the western portion of Long Island, and The Bronx is in the continental landmass and north of it is Westchester County.
Really great stuff! I go into the piece-by-piece details of how LA grew from 28 square miles to 468 square miles in a book that just came out this year, "Inventing Paradise: The Power Brokers Who Created the Dream of Los Angeles." The Shoestring strip, the little "holes" that remained independent, water politics, I dig into all that and more.
In the Philippines, the capital city of Manila is actually one part of a larger region of 16 cities and 1 municipality called the National Capital Region (also known as Metro Manila, hence some foreigners mistake the other cities as part of Manila proper). The region was created in the 70s during the Marcos administration; prior to that, the areas were part of different provinces except for Manila and Quezon City.
I spent a lot of time in Cubao.
You are not supposed to tell outsiders about that sixth street 110fwy bypass! Damn man.
One important distinction to make is the use of the word "incorporated." The phrase "incorporated" (for the purpose of the United States) means a municipal government exists and controls an area. Generally, an area is considered unincorporated when the location is not a part of a town, village, or city government; usually when no incorporated municipal government exists, the county government has responsibility and control over an area.
Los Angeles County contains 88 incorporated municipalities, the City of Los Angeles is only 1 of those incorporated municipalities. For example, the referenced City of San Fernando, is an incorporated city, not 'an unincorporated area' as stated in the video. Large portions of the deserts around Palmdale are unincorporated areas. Other incorporated city examples include: Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Gardena, Montebello, and 80+ more.
There are also several incorporated cities that contract their emergency services to the county, providing for further confusion to the average resident (ex. West Hollywood).
Names of places also get wonky, for example West Hollywood is an incorporated city that is west of Hollywood, the neighborhood within the City of Los Angeles, there's also East Hollywood which is another neighborhood, then there's North Hollywood which is actually completely north of the Hollywood mountains and is actually east of Burbank; the LA City neighborhood of North Hollywood doesn't even touch the neighborhood named Hollywood as there are a few other smaller neighborhoods between them, not to mention the mountain.
Generally, people as far East as the Cities of San Bernadino and Riverside, in San Bernadino County and Riverside County respectively, and as far South as the southern border of Orange County, consider themselves to be a part of the "Greater Los Angeles area" since, without a map that shows all these drawn lines, all of these cities and areas are one super-giant urban sprawl.
I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. It resembles one huge suburb which stretches for miles. Mailing addresses there do not use Los Angeles, even though The Valley, as it's known locally, is technically within the city limits. Instead, names of smaller neighborhoods are used (Van Nuys, Northridge, Sherman Oaks, Granada Hills, etc.) It even had its own newspaper, The Valley News and Green Sheet, part of which was printed on green colored paper. I don't know if it still exists. I haven't been there in years.
I remember the green sheet. I think the Valley News is now the Los Angeles Daily News.
I live in a consolidated city-county. So while the city/county limits might have some weird lines, there's no question that everything within thoses lines is part of the city.
Bro, as a native New Yorker who moved to LA and was living there for four years. I am in complete shock to know that only a tiny ass fraction of it is actually LA now it makes sense why the Alweg system didn’t get built back 63
6:35 You equated San Fernando as "unincorporated" but it is a City government, so it is incorporated. Unincorporated communities don't have city governments they rely on County level for most services instead of just some. Maybe just a small misspeak but a pet peeve of mine.
I think that's a pretty major item
He also said Universal Studios is in Burbank, when it's in unincorporated county.
@@ldm58427 not entirely, part of it is in city limits
@@ldm58427Burbank PD patrols around there
@@osvaldopulido2553 how? part unincorporated and part of it is burbank?
Somewhat unrelated, but there is a very popular shopping centre in my town called Chadstone Shopping Centre. It is located outside of the suburb of Chadstone, which is in the neighbouring municipality. Chadstone Shopping Centre is a huge money maker to the municipality it is in. Why is it differently named? The suburb the shopping centre is in originally shared the same name but the people there wanted to be part of the upmarket suburb of "Malvern" so petitioned to have their part renamed Malvern East. The shopping centre already had a successful name though so it stuck with that.
Basically any large American city does this. No one thinks of it as being a "proper", but they are the same idea. Like I like in Indianapolis. That has little townships in it, but within a stone throw are 5 or so cities that touch the city and are outside the county; fishers, Noblesville, Carmel, greenwood, Westfield, etc. all of that to me is Indianapolis. Its all the same general city line that has grown together and amalgamated. Fort Wayne probably has the same idea, multiple cities attached at the hip to make the whole fort Wayne area. If you look at maps for broadcasting like radio, then it'll extend almost an hour out.
Indianapolis is a little unique in that in 1970 they created Unigov, which basically Incorporated all of Marion County into the city. The enclaves were already their own cities such as Lawrence, Speedway, and Beech Grove. While Indy confines itself to Marion County, cities like Aurora, Illinois straddle four counties.
@@timmmahhhh I never thought too hard about Indy and Marion county being the same thing essentially. I know they but, but never put the 1 and 1 together
@@timmmahhhh Jacksonville has a similar arrangement with Duval County, the city limits cover like 99% of the county.
New York City, San Francisco and Washington DC are notable exceptions.
@@wheeliebeast7679same with Louisville, Nashville, Columbus ga, Lexington ky and a few other cities. I think its called consolidated gov where the city combines with the rest of the county. St louis and Baltimore did the opposite and separated fron its countries and became independent cities which didn't age well for both cities
Fun. I had just spent 2 weeks there when you posted this until the 3rd. Long Beach mostly. This was very informative to why it was so crazy out there.
Is always good to see another video from this channel
Indeed. Even after being done with UN countries 😊
@Yurinkin exactly
I've been in the SFV for 12 years now, this is basically the north side of Los Angeles. That's the way I see it.
Tokyo isn't even a official city.
"Despite most of the world recognizing Tokyo as a city, since 1943 its governing structure has been more akin to a prefecture, with an accompanying Governor and Assembly taking precedence over the smaller municipal governments which make up the metropolis"