We should step back and talk about what we mean when we say L.A. Somewhat confusingly, L.A. is often used interchangeably for both the City of Los Angeles and the dense cluster of neighboring cities within Los Angeles County.
The city proper is broadly split into the Valley (the warmer, suburban sprawl to the north) and the Basin (the ocean-adjacent flat lands south of the Santa Monica Mountains). Within the Basin, you’ll find fancy suburbs and beachfront towns on the Westside, while Central L.A. harbors multicultural enclaves and hip ’hoods. Some famous neighborhoods in those two regions, like Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood (home of the Sunset Strip) are actually separate cities sandwiched into the middle of the City of Los Angeles. The same goes for some Valley cities like studio-filled Burbank and Glendale and celeb-magnet Calabasas.

We could go on and on when it comes to parts of L.A. that are technically outside of city limits: the South Bay, where Manhattan Beach and its neighbors are their own cities; Long Beach; all of the the communities within the San Gabriel Valley, like Monterey Park and Alhambra; and East L.A., which isn’t technically a city but instead an unincorporated area within L.A. County.