South Los Angeles is the official name for a large geographic and cultural area lying to the south and southeast of downtown Los Angeles, California. The area was formerly officially called South Central Los Angeles, and is still sometimes called South Central. It borders the Westside on the northwest, and Downtown LA on the northeast.

In 2003, the city of Los Angeles changed the area's official name from South Central Los Angeles to South Los Angeles, hoping to blur collective memories of violence and blight, because the name "South Central" had become almost synonymous with urban decay and street crime. The new name is rather misleading though, since geographically, South Los Angeles would refer to the L.A. Harbor/San Pedro district. Though the city took it upon itself to change street signs and freeway signs with the new name to make it "official", and though media like the Los Angeles Times and L.A. news networks now refer to the area as South Los Angeles, the name is not very widely used; most residents of the Los Angeles area (including residents of South Los Angeles) still use the old name. Prominent figures from South Los Angeles, such as Ice Cube, also continue to refer to the area as South Central Los Angeles.

The name "South Central" originally referred to an area bounded roughly by Main Street on the west and Washington Boulevard on the north, and sharply by Slauson Avenue (which had Santa Fe Railroad track running alongside it) on the south and Alameda Street (including Southern Pacific Railroad track) on the east. Central Avenue bisects this area from north to south. Along with Watts several miles to the south, this corridor was the only district-scale area within the city in which African-Americans could purchase property prior to 1948. While some African-Americans rented and sometimes even owned property in other areas of the city, they were generally confined to single streets or small neighborhoods.

Since the 1950s, the definition of "South Central" has gradually expanded to include all of the areas of the city of Los Angeles (and small unincorporated pockets of Los Angeles County) lying south of the Santa Monica Freeway, east of the city limits of Inglewood and Culver City, and north of the Century Freeway. Some incorporated cities outside of L.A. city limits lying east of Alameda Street are considered identifiable with South L.A. to some extent by their urban or "inner city" characteristics.

The demography of South Los Angeles has been changing since 1990, when Hispanic immigrants from Mexico and Central America arrived to buy or rent apartments and homes vacated by African American renters who moved out of the area. In the 2000 census, 55% of residents in the designated area of South L.A. were Latino, while 40% were African American. A large percentage of small stores and shops are owned by Asian American immigrants, especially Koreans, Filipinos, and Indians.

[Source: Wikipedia]

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