Los Angeles: City overview

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A vast, decentralized urban sprawl, Los Angeles challenges conceptions of what a city should be. It's the ultimate monument to America's love affair with the automobile, where even the food is fast -- four wheels good, two legs bad.

These days of course the freeway ain't so free. The 16-lane snarl-up is an occupational hazard for LA commuters who reputedly total up 99 million miles a day between them. Autopia has become autogeddon, complete with a sub-culture of car chases, car-jackings and drive-by shootings.

Built as far west as geography would allow and hemmed in only by the Pacific, LA is a crazy town where manifest destiny has been given free reign, where anyone can turn up and claim to be someone -- if their agent is any good.

It's a city of angels and demons, where a thin sheen of plastic surgery perfection barely conceals a seedy underworld of hustlers, dealers and movers on the make. That side of the city has long fascinated crime writers from Raymond Chandler to James Ellroy and, more recently, hip hop poets like Dr. Dre and Ice Cube.

In fact felony rates are down, halved since their 1992 peak. But that's hush-hush. After all, crime's good for business, baby.

Slain child's father: 'The monster's in a cage now' The father of a 6-year-old girl, one of four relatives who police say were killed by another family member on Thanksgiving Day, said it was "unbelievable" h ...

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