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West Los Angeles is a district in western Los Angeles, California. Much as the term "South Central" originally described only one neighborhood but came to embody an entire region of the city, "West Los Angeles" is often used as shorthand for all of the city's neighborhoods west of La Cienega Boulevard or La Brea Avenue (excepting Crenshaw, which is considered part of South Central).
Like nearby Palms and Venice, West Los Angeles began as a separately incorporated city before its annexation by Los Angeles in the 1910s. It is often confused with Sawtelle, the unincorporated area with which it is still combined by the United States Postal Service as the "City of West Los Angeles." The district is bordered by Santa Monica on the southwest, Sawtelle on the west, Westwood on the northwest, Holmby Hills on the north, Century City on the northeast, Rancho Park on the east and southeast, and Mar Vista on the south. Its major thoroughfares are Olympic, Santa Monica, Pico, Beverly Glen, Westwood, Sepulveda, and Sawtelle Boulevards and Bundy Avenue. It is bisected by the San Diego Freeway, and the Santa Monica Freeway separates it from Mar Vista.
As with most parts of the West Side, West Los Angeles is an affluent neighborhood. Its central location has made it a locus of commercial development, with several high-rise office buildings near the Santa Monica Boulevard exit off the San Diego Freeway. West of the freeway, it also contains a large number of Japanese-owned businesses (most notably the two Giant Robot stores on Sawtelle Boulevard).
Housing in the southwestern areas of West Los Angeles consists mostly of apartment buildings inhabited by young professionals, with some areas of Mediterranean-style bungalows dating to the 1930s.
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