Los Angeles is Overrated: Oversimplified

“I want Money, Power, Glory,” the wise Lana Del Rey once said. These three ideas are often associated with modern popular-culture celebrities—Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, and, of course, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. However, on top of their glorious socioeconomic power, these celebrities are united in their location: Los Angeles, California. Typically, when the City of Los Angeles is brought up in conversation, most individuals immediately correlate ideas of wealth, fame, and affluence, glorifying the city and consequently dismissing its detrimental issues.

Considering how Los Angeles faces crippling problems such as its insufficient public transit and the deplorable living conditions in the neighborhood of Skid Row, all while being hailed as one of the best cities in the United States, proves that this metropolis is not only overrated in modern American culture but will continue to have its fundamental issues overlooked until its misleading perception is corrected. 

Public Transit is Deficient

As the wealthy roll through Los Angeles with Rolls Royce Phantoms and Bentley Continentals, their portrayal of the city’s transportation as consisting of luxury automobiles undermines the crippling public transit system that hundreds of thousands of residents depend on daily—embodying how overrated the city is. In Season 1 Episode 7 of Hulu’s series The Kardashians, Kris and Kylie Jenner drive through the Los Angeles metropolitan area in a two-hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes G-Class SUV, doing mundane everyday tasks such as going through an automated car wash and buying groceries from a supermarket. According to Forbes Magazine, this series became the most viewed unscripted series on Hulu as of November 2023 and consequently portrays an image of transportation in Los Angeles that overlooks the cruciality of public transit systems and glorifies the city’s car dependency. According to a 2022 Quarter 4 ridership report from the American Public Transportation Association, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region’s public transportation system had an average weekday ridership of about 820,000 passengers. While eight hundred thousand passengers may seem like impressive ridership levels at first, the genuine scale of the city’s public transit problems is exemplified when compared to other large U.S. cities. The same report from the American Public Transit Association stated that Chicago, Illinois, a city with a 40% smaller population than Los Angeles, according to the United States Census Bureau, has a comparable weekday ridership on their public transportation system of 800,600 passengers (about half the population of Idaho). The lack of usage that the Los Angeles public transit system sees thus acts as another cause of the most infamous traffic jams in the nation, with the city consistently ranking in U.S. News’ Top 10 most congested American cities. Although cities with larger public transit systems, such as Chicago, also see copious amounts of traffic, what makes Los Angeles’ public transit issue particularly dangerous is the fact that the entertainment industry’s portrayal of the city undermines the need for public transit while misleadingly glorifying aspects of the city—such as transportation—as perfectly functioning, dismissing the critical issue at hand and ultimately sustaining its horrifically overrated status. 

A prime example of the endless blocks of tent villages commonly found in LA's Skid Row neighborhood.

The Misleading Eyes of Hollywood

The overrating of Los Angeles through its popular culture portrayal is also exemplified by the historic policy surrounding its neighborhood of Skid Row. Today, Skid Row is a centrally located neighborhood in Los Angeles that has its sidewalks dominated by an enormous homeless population living in deplorable conditions, with many of whom residing in tents. However, the neighborhood was not always like this. In 1976, the City of Los Angeles, according to BBC’s Daniel Flaming and Gary Blasi from Economic Roundtable and UCLA Law School, unofficially established Skid Row as a containment zone where homeless encampments and activities prohibited in other city areas would be tolerated, all while heavily cracking down on such activity in its bordering neighborhoods—resulting in the appalling state of the neighborhood today. However, once again, the problem lies with how Los Angeles is portrayed in the media. For instance, a multitude of talk shows, from Jimmy Kimmel to Ellen DeGeneres, are all filmed in Los Angeles, with various segments even taking place in the city’s public areas. The Ellen DeGeneres Show's presence on a list of Most Popular Daytime talk shows from entertainment media company Screenrant and the exposure that it brings to Los Angeles only further solidifies the show’s portrayal of the city in the minds of its audience. However, Los Angeles talk shows typically do not film segments in neighborhoods of lower socioeconomic status—instead opting for affluent areas such as the Santa Monica Pier or Beverly Hills—due to their efforts to maintain a prestigious status in the entertainment industry. As a result, they overly glamorize their surroundings and consequently avoid accurate portrayals of socioeconomics in Los Angeles. While it can be said again that this is primarily done for both the safety of the cast and the appeal of the show in terms of entertainment, the consequential impression that the show thus creates ends up impairing public awareness of the actual conditions on the streets of Los Angeles. The deplorable conditions in the neighborhood of Skid Row truly symbolize much of the horrific poverty that plagues Los Angeles, and misleading widespread media coverage of the city, as demonstrated by the multitude of reality shows present—only worsens its issues by overlooking the fundamental problem at hand. Until the media accurately portrays the streets of Los Angeles, critical issues such as the conditions in Skid Row will be left inadequately addressed, dismissed by officials, and an ultimate symbol of how overrated the city of Los Angeles remains today. 

As popular culture and media continue to glorify Los Angeles as one of the world’s most extravagant and popular cities, all while facing rampant problems such as ineffective public transit and crippling homelessness in Skid Row, one thing is to be made clear: The city as a whole is blatantly overrated. However, whether it would be billionaire Kylie Jenner or a homeless man on the streets of Skid Row, there is no doubt that the one thing that developed Los Angeles into the gargantuan metropolis it is today is its people. The people’s best interest should, therefore, be prioritized in the future of Los Angeles, and this will only be able to be accomplished once individuals in the United States begin to acknowledge the city’s attributes as a whole—instead of overrating the region and consequently dismissing its issues. When the City of Los Angeles eventually becomes accurately viewed, it will only be then that its people will finally receive effective efforts for city-wide improvements.

Works Cited:

APTAAdmin. “Ridership Report Archives - American Public Transportation Association.”

American Public Transportation Association, 5 Dec. 2023, www.apta.com/research-technical-resources/transit-statistics/ridership-report/ridership-report-archives.

Blasi, By Daniel Flaming And Gary. Los Angeles: Why Tens of Thousands of People Sleep Rough. 19 Sept. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49687478.

Fitzgerald, Toni. “‘The Kardashians’ Sets a Streaming Record as Disney+-Hulu Nears Launch.” Forbes, 10 Nov. 2023, www.forbes.com/sites/tonifitzgerald/2023/11/09/the-kardashians-sets-a-streaming-record-as-disney-hulu-nears-launch.

Lealos, Shawn. “15 Most Popular Daytime Talk Shows Ranked.” Screenrant, 27 Dec. 2023, screenrant.com/most-popular-daytime-talk-shows-ranked-imdb-ellen-degeneres-view-wendy-williams-dr-phil-oz.

“Los Angeles Metro Area Population 1950-2024.” MacroTrends, www.macrotrends.net/cities/23052/los-angeles/population#:~:text=The%20current%20metro%20area%20population,a%200.23%25%20increase%20from%202021.