L.A City vs L.A County

[KerrTown]

Originally Posted by Texamichiforniasota

As for your example with Houston, that is not unique. USPS designates the city by whatever post office they have assigned to deliver the mail. So, if you live in one city or unincorporated area, but there is a post office a few blocks away in another city that delivers your mail, your address is the address of where the post office is. That doesn't change the fact you vote and pay taxes in whatever city you live in. An example of this is the neighborhood known as Beverly Hills Post Office or BHPO. The neighborhood is in the city of LA, but their mail routes run out of the Beverly Hills Post Office, so they have Beverly Hills Addresses even though they live/vote/attend school in Los Angeles. Also, as you've pointed out, the names of the Post Offices don't even have to be a city, as several in LA and San Diego are named after city neighborhoods.

Here is an intersection in NW Houston where roughly 4 zip codes meet.

https://goo.gl/maps/Zh93f6KFoLFP4TgA8

The corner with the Exxon is in Katy, TX, the houses behind the CVS is in Houston 77084, the houses behind the Specs is in Houston 77095, and the Chase is in Cypress, TX. Only problem is that Downtown Houston is 25 miles to the SE, Katy is 15 miles to the SW, and Cypress is 8 miles to the NW.

This is an unincorporated area of NW Harris County. Also must mention that school district boundaries play a role in determining location in the Houston area. Luckily this intersection is entirely in the Cypress-Fairbanks School District, therefore we are in South (of U.S. 290) Cypress. (The city limits of Katy are very small, but the post office zip codes collectively make up a de facto Greater Katy area. Cypress, TX is unincorporated like most Houston area towns.)

So if you are sending a letter to a friend in South Cypress, you better get the city right. Luckily with computers and the USPS high-level-of-service and mail processing centralization, it's easy to find the address error so the postman will likely deliver it to your friend instead of returning it (despite technically returnable by rule).

But yeah, when in doubt use the USPS website! You can use the "search by zip" feature to find out the recommended city, other recognized cities, and the city names to avoid.

[Taiko]

If your zip code begins with 900 it should be address to Los Angeles, everywhere else is handled by different post offices. I don't know what algorithm the computer uses but sometimes mail is routed to the city with a best guess being made from the street name and number range and sometimes the zip code plus 4 takes priority.

When the letter carrier makes his scanning read on the street he is basically concentrating on the last two digits of the address number and the first few letters of the street name. Should he know that the street has different suffixes he might get around to reading the AVE, ST etc. The regular carrier however subliminally knows the names on his route and that being wrong is likely to be the first thing to catch his attention. Which is why substitute carriers would have a higher percentage of misdeliveries after failing to catch the computer error.

[Texamichiforniasota]

Originally Posted by Taiko

If your zip code begins with 900 it should be address to Los Angeles, everywhere else is handled by different post offices.

There are some exceptions to that: Hollywood, WeHo, Vernon, and Commerce all have 900 as the first 3 digits of their zip. Hollywood is a neighborhood, the rest are cities.There may be others, but I don't know.

Looking on the Wikipedia article on Zip Codes, the USPS has both "preferred" place names, generally the name of where the delivering post-office is located, and also a list of "acceptable" place names, generally either the actual city an address is loated in if the delivering post office is somewhere else, or the name of the city if the PO is named after a neighborhood. There may be some zip codes where you can put the neighborhood and it would be acceptable, even though the city would be preferred. The Wikipedia article says mail will be delivered the same whether you list a preferred or acceptable city name. I don't know where you find the list, but that is why you can either write Northridge or Los Angeles and it will still go through, or in the case of Houston, you can write Pasadena for some neighborhoods in Pasadena that get there mail delivered from Houston PO's.

[Taiko]

Originally Posted by Texamichiforniasota

There are some exceptions to that: Hollywood, WeHo, Vernon, and Commerce all have 900 as the first 3 digits of their zip. Hollywood is a neighborhood, the rest are cities.There may be others, but I don't know.

.

They are handled by the Los Angeles district. The carriers thus can move from Commerce to West Hollywood. Actually Los Angeles because the 90046 zip code for West Hollywood as an example also delivers inside of the City Of Los Angeles limits as well as West Hollywood and a small slice of Beverly Hills. Where as most of Beverly Hills is 902, with some of it 900 coming out of a Los Angeles station.

[Angelino19]

Originally Posted by Cowboy310

Well I mean from the outside looking in, I thought Beverly hills and Santa Monica was part of the city of Los Angeles.

And than Anaheim Angels are in Orange county so how is that an LA team ?

I'm sure different counties in California don't represent Los Angeles right ?

Lot's of pro teams don't play in the cities they represent. The New York Giants and NY Jets play in MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. The San Francisco Giants play in Levi Stadium in Santa Clara. The Dallas Cowboys play at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Tx.

[Cowboy310]

Originally Posted by Angelino19

Lot's of pro teams don't play in the cities they represent. The New York Giants and NY Jets play in MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. The San Francisco Giants play in Levi Stadium in Santa Clara. The Dallas Cowboys play at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Tx.

So it's safe to assume, Los Angeles and New york are the only 2 Mega - cities in America ?

My definition of a mega city is a city within other cities with multiple city centers.

Example, Los Angeles city center could be DTLA and Hollywood, Others may say Beverly hills and Santa Monica. Than we could stretch that down to the South Bay area or back up to the Valley.

I guess there's no wrong answer to this question lol

[Cowboy310]

Originally Posted by ElDiabloJoe

Riverside is pretty far east of L.A

Santa Clarita is in Los Angeles County, however, and borders City of L.A. areas like Sylmar, Northridge, and San Fernando (which is its own incorporated city, however the entire SFV full of City of Los Angeles enclaves is named for it).

Riverside is its own City and County, but the entire 5-county region is commonly used in mass statistical analyses, including the CPI. The 5 counties are considered part of the Los Angeles megalopolis because you can pretty much drive from one to another without ever realizing you left an urban area or city at all. There are no wooded areas for miles between areas in the region (not counting the mountain areas, of course) like there would be between Nashville and Memphis.

The five counties are L.A., Orange, Riverside, Sandy Eggo, and San Bernardino. Caveat: San Bernardino is the largest county in the U.S. per land mass, and stretches allllll the way to Las Vegas, so not really a part of the megalopolis once you are through the City of San Berdoo and its suburbs itself.

In addition, San Diego has its own very separate identity and culture from L.A., as do they all - including Orange County that seceded from L.A. over a century ago in order to gain more local control. So there are subtleties to this regional identification. San Diego's just feels more separate.

It's kinda like if you were in Europe, you'd tell people who asked that you were American. If they knew anything bout America, you'd tell them you were from California. If they knew California, you might say you were from L.A. to indicate the southern portion of the vast state. You continue to drill down based on their frames of reference. So even if you lived in "L.A." but you lived in East L.A., you're still part of the area but on the micro level it is very different from even West L.A.

Another factor in the "regional" identification as L.A. is that most everyone in those areas (except San Diego) watch the major network news stations based in L.A. Those news stations provide weather, news, and traffic for the entire region, not just the City of L.A. There are more local news reporting agencies, papers, and stations, but the big three networks broadcast out of L.A. and S.D. separately. Part of that is that the network antennae on Mt. Wilson and Mt. Baldy can reach LA, OC, SB, and Riverside Counties, but they do not reach San Diego. The shared use of major networks and news encourages a cohesiveness of shared community.

There are lots of variables and factors involved in why some areas easily identify as L.A. even if they are not in the City of or County of Los Angeles. By the way, did you know the great city known as L.A. - known by two letters worldwide, is actually a name of 14 words? The official name is El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula. Now, I could not tell you where the Porciuncula River is, having never seen nor heard of it otherwise. I wouldn't trust any river with "culo" it its name, lol. It actually means The City of Our Lady, Queen of Angels, of the Porciuncula River. L.A. is an abbreviation for Los Angeles, which is Spanish for The Angels.

You really shared some great information about Los Angeles that I never knew before, Appreciate the input.

Now my take on identity is kinda different, I believe Long Beach has it's own identity separate from Los Angeles.

It's the 2nd biggest city in Los Angeles county with a population big enough to have it's own sports team.

Alot of the other cities in L.A county are kinda like mini cities with no real urban downtown area. But Long Beach has it's own Downtown and everything.

Like I said, I guess we can just call Los Angeles a Mega City