The Changing Pattern of Southern California's Economy

Abstract

tropolis of Los Angeles, apart from Los Angeles City, includes important satellite cities such as Long Beach, Santa Monica, Burbank, Glendale, Vernon, Downey, Torrance, Hawthorne, El Segundo, Inglewood, and many others in which important defense production has developed. Both the Los Angeles and San Diego industrial areas have felt the steadily increasing effects of the defense program which assumed new and larger proportions after May 1940. In 1940 Los Angeles County had a population of 2,785,643, Los Angeles City a population of 1,504,277, the Los Angeles metropolitan census district 2,904,596, and the five counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura, 3,252,720. This five-county area had increased 1200 per cent from 1900 to 1940, compared with a 365 per cent increase for California and 73.3 per cent for the Nation. Population density in 1940 was considerably larger than for all of California. Between the census in 1940 and January 1942, this five-county area had increased in population by an estimated 164,780 persons.2 The population of San Diego City in 1940 was 203,341, while that of the county was 289,473, the percentages of increase for the 1930-40 decade being 37 and 38 respectively. By January 1, 1942, the population of the county was estimated at 370,000. Thus the population of the six southern counties hav-