Panorama City, California - Definition and Overview

Panorama City is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley district of Los Angeles, California. It is located near Van Nuys and North Hills. Major thoroughfares include Roscoe, Van Nuys, and Sepulveda boulevards; there are interchanges with the San Diego and Hollywood freeways at Roscoe Boulevard.

Panorama City was developed as a planned community by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser. Contrary to popular perceptions of the development of the central and western San Fernando Valley as solely being a bedroom community for jobs in downtown Los Angeles and Burbank, Panorama City originally included General Motors' largest assembly plant to date, as well as a Schlitz brewery that eventually came under the ownership of Anheuser-Busch.

As originally planned, the community is a mixture of small single-family homes and low-rise apartment buildings. Kaiser and his development partner Fritz Burns barred non-whites from purchasing homes in the new neighborhood; however, as with most of the eastern half of the San Fernando Valley, the area is now dominated by Latinos.