The San Fernando Valley has a subtropical/hot-summer Mediterranean climate, with long, hot, dry summers, and short, warm winters, with chilly nights and sporadic rainfall. Due to its relatively inland location and other factors, summer days are typically hotter and winter nights typically colder than in the Los Angeles basin.
The San Fernando Valley, for the most part, tends to support Democrats in state and national elections.[7]
Services
The Los Angeles satellite administrative center for the valley, The Civic Center Van Nuys, is in Van Nuys. The area in and around the Van Nuys branch of Los Angeles City Hall is home to a police station, limited and unlimited jurisdiction superior courts and Los Angeles city and county administrative offices. Northridge is home to California State University, Northridge (originally named San Fernando Valley State College).
The valley was a center of "the crossroads of cultures and languages, including the Tongva, Fernandeño, and Chumash."[8] The Tongva, later known as the GabrieleñoMission Indians after colonization, the Tataviam to the north, and Chumash to the west, had lived and thrived in the valley and its arroyos for over 8,000 years.[9] They had numerous settlements, and trading and hunting camps, before the Spanish arrived in 1769 to settle in the Valley.[10]
The Valley officially became part of the State of California on September 9, 1850, when the California Statehood Act was approved by the federal government.
In 1874, dry wheat farming was introduced by J. B. Lankershim and Isaac Van Nuys, which became very productive for their San Fernando Homestead Association that owned the southern half of the valley. In 1876, they sent the first wheat shipment from both San Pedro Harbor and from the United States to Europe.[14]
Crowds gather to see the first water reaching the valley via the new aqueduct.
Through the late-19th-century court decision Los Angeles v. Pomeroy, Los Angeles had won the rights to all surface flow water atop an aquifer beneath the valley, without it being within the city limits.[15] San Fernando Valley farmers offered to buy the surplus aqueductWhat "aqueduct"? When? None has been introduced yet.[需要解释] water, but the federal legislation that enabled the construction of the aqueduct prohibited Los Angeles from selling the water outside of the city limits.[16] This induced several independent towns[哪個／哪些？] surrounding Los Angeles to vote on and approve annexation to the city so that they could connect to the municipal water system. These rural areas became part of Los Angeles in 1915.[17]
The aqueduct water shifted farming in the area from dry crops, such as wheat, to irrigated crops, such as corn, beans, squash, and cotton; orchards of apricots, persimmons, and walnuts; and major citrus groves of oranges and lemons.[18] They continued until the next increment of development converted land use, with postwar suburbanization leaving only a few enclaves, such as the "open-air museum" groves at the Orcutt Ranch Park and CSUN campus.
Developments
In 1909, the Suburban Homes Company, a syndicate led by H. J. Whitley, general manager of the board of control, along with Harry Chandler, Harrison Gray Otis, M. H. Sherman, and Otto F. Brant purchased 48,000 acres of the Farming and Milling Company for $2,500,000.[19]Henry E. Huntington extended his Pacific Electric Railway (Red Cars) through the Valley to Owensmouth (now Canoga Park). The Suburban Home Company laid out plans for roads and the towns of Van Nuys, Reseda (Marian), and Canoga Park (Owensmouth). The rural areas were annexed into the city of Los Angeles in 1915.[18][20]Laurel Canyon and Lankershim in 1923,[21]:45Sunland in 1926,[21]:29La Tuna Canyon in 1926, and the incorporated city of Tujunga in an eight-year process lasting from 1927 to 1935.[22] These annexations more than doubled the area of the city.
The advent of three new industries in the early 20th century—motion pictures, automobiles, and aircraft—also spurred urbanization and population growth. World War II production and the subsequent postwar boom accelerated this growth so that between 1945 and 1960, the valley's population had quintupled.[23] Los Angeles continued to consolidate its territories in the San Fernando Valley by annexing the former Rancho El Escorpión for Canoga Park-West Hills in 1959, and the huge historic Porter Ranch at the foot of the Santa Susana Mountains for the new planned developments in Porter Ranch in 1965.[來源請求] The additions expanded the Los Angeles portion of San Fernando Valley from the original 169平方英里（438平方公里） to 224平方英里（580平方公里）.
In the late 1970s, there was a proposed east-west freeway labeled SR 64 that would have cut through the center of the valley from Calabasas in the western end of the valley to the SR-170 and I-5 freeway interchange in Sun Valley, Los Angeles in the eastern end of the valley, but local opposition gained traction and the proposed freeway was never approved or built.
Pop culture
In the 1980s, a distinctive valley youth culture was recognized in the media, particularly in the 1982 Frank Zappa / Moon Zappa song "Valley Girl" and the 1983 film Valley Girl.[2] These helped fix the socio-economic stereotype of the "Valley girl" into the public consciousness, including a distinct Valley accent.[24][25]
The 1994 Northridge earthquake struck on January 17 and measured 6.7 on the Moment magnitude scale. It produced the largest ground motions ever recorded in an urban environment and was the first earthquake that had its hypocenter located directly under a U.S. city since the Long Beach earthquake of 1933.[26] It caused the greatest damage in the United States since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.[27] Although given the name Northridge, the epicenter was located in the community of Reseda, between Arminta and Ingomar streets, just west of Reseda Boulevard.[28] The death toll was 57, and more than 1,500 people were seriously injured. A few days after the earthquake, 9,000 homes and businesses were still without electricity; 20,000 were without gas; and more than 48,500 had little or no water. About 12,500 structures were moderately to severely damaged, which left thousands of people temporarily homeless. Of the 66,546 buildings inspected, 6 percent were severely damaged (red tagged) and 17 percent were moderately damaged (yellow tagged). In addition, damage to several major freeways serving Los Angeles choked the traffic system in the days following the earthquake. Major freeway damage occurred as far away as 25英里（40公里） from the epicenter. Collapses and other severe damage forced closure of portions of 11 major roads to downtown Los Angeles.[29]
This was the second time in 23 years that the San Fernando Valley had been affected by a strong earthquake. On February 9, 1971, a magnitude-6.5 event struck about 20英里（32公里） northeast of the epicenter of the 1994 event. The 1971 earthquake caused 58 fatalities and about 2,000 injuries. At the time, the 1971 San Fernando earthquake was the most destructive event to affect greater Los Angeles since the magnitude-6.3 Long Beach earthquake of 1933.[30]
21st century
Contemporary era
By the late 1990s, the San Fernando Valley had become more urban and more ethnically diverse with rising poverty and crime. In 2002, the valley tried to secede from the city of Los Angeles and become its own incorporated city to escape Los Angeles' perceived poverty, crime, gang activity, urban decay, and poorly maintained infrastructure. Since that unsuccessful secession attempt, a new Van Nuys municipal building was built in 2003; the Metro Orange Line opened in October 2005; 35 new public schools had opened up by 2012, and the valley's ethnic plurality is now Hispanic, edging out its white population by 0.8 percent.[來源請求]
By 2017, numerous urban development projects began in the valley, mainly in the Los Angeles neighborhoods of North Hollywood, Panorama City, and Woodland Hills. These projects started with the first few in Woodland Hills and the NoHo West project in North Hollywood began groundbreaking and construction on April 6, 2017.[來源請求]
LA Metro will begin construction on upgrades of the Metro G Line in 2021 with at-grade crossing gates and two bridges crossing both Sepulveda and Van Nuys Boulevards. The valley will get its first light rail line in seven decades by 2027, with construction of the line beginning in 2021 along Van Nuys Boulevard and San Fernando Road.[來源請求]
The Valley is home to numerous companies, the most well known of which work in motion pictures, music recording, and television production. The former movie ranches were branches of original studios now consisting of CBS Studio Center, NBCUniversal, The Walt Disney Company (and its ABC television network), and Warner Bros.
The valley became the pioneering region for producing adult films in the 1970s and grew to become home to a multibillion-dollar pornography industry, earning the monikers Porn Valley,[33][34][35][36]Silicone Valley (in contrast to Silicon Valley, nickname for the Santa Clara Valley),[37][38][39][40][41] and San Pornando Valley.[42][43] The leading trade paper for the industry, AVN magazine, is based in the Northwest Valley, as were a majority of U.S. adult video and magazine distributors. The Paul Thomas Anderson film, Boogie Nights explores these aspects of the valley. According to the HBO series Pornucopia, at one time, nearly 90 percent of all legally distributed pornographic films made in the United States were either filmed in or produced by studios based in the San Fernando Valley.
The pornography industry began to decline by the mid-2000s, owing, for the most part, to the growing amount of free content on the Internet, which undercut consumers' willingness to pay. In 2007 industry insiders estimated that revenue for most adult production and distribution companies had declined 30 percent to 50 percent and the number of new films made had fallen sharply.[44]
Utilities and infrastructure
Most of the utilities in the valley are served by public municipal governments, primarily the cities of Los Angeles, and Burbank, while there are only two private-owned utilities for gas and electricity in the valley as well. Southern California Edison has their overhead power lines going through the city of Burbank and through the Los Angeles city neighborhoods of Sylmar, Mission Hills, Arleta, North Hollywood, Studio City, Woodland Hills, Granada Hills, Porter Ranch, and Chatsworth as well. Internet, cable television, and cellular phone service in the valley are by large private companies.
The valley is served by the following utility companies:
Victory Boulevard in Van Nuys, lined with low-rise commercial establishments, is typical of the broad, straight boulevards in the San Fernando Valley. Photo, 2002.
Subway, dedicated transitway, and express and local buses, provided by many agencies, serve the San Fernando Valley. Some of the former rights-of-way of the Pacific Electric Railway, which first accelerated population growth in the Valley,[46] have been repurposed for busways and light rail lines.
Metrolinkcommuter rail has two Valley lines, the Antelope Valley Line and Ventura County Line, which connect the Valley and beyond to downtown Los Angeles and south, becoming one line at the Downtown Burbank station. Metrolink always had one Burbank Airport station on the Ventura County Line, but a second Burbank Airport station was built in 2017 on the Antelope Valley Line.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority was planning two stations in the Valley, one in Burbank and the other in Sylmar, but the proposed Sylmar high-speed rail station was canceled owing to local opposition from the city of San Fernando. As of now, there's only one planned station in the valley, located in Burbank with an initial section of the railroad possibly opening in 2029.
The Valley's two major airports are Hollywood Burbank Airport and the Van Nuys Airport. The Van Nuys–Airport FlyAway Terminal provides nonstop scheduled shuttle service to LAX and back to the valley, with parking.
In 1994 there were 180,000 PK-12 students attending Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) campuses in the Valley. During the same year, about 45,000 PK-12 students, or one in five of all such students, attended the over 200 private schools in the Valley.[48]
Cultural assets in the San Fernando Valley include:
The Great Wall of Los Angeles – A 2,754-英尺（839-米）-long mural designed by Judy Baca and painted on the sides of the Tujunga Wash, depicting the history of California.
The Mission San Fernando Rey de España - Is a Spanish mission in the Mission Hills district of Los Angeles, California. The mission was founded on September 8, 1797, and was the seventeenth of the twenty-one Spanish missions established in Alta California. Named for Saint Ferdinand, the mission is the namesake of the city of San Fernando and the San Fernando Valley.[49]
Museums
San Fernando Valley museums:
The Nethercutt Collection – Museum in Sylmar best known for its collection of classic automobiles, also has collections of mechanical musical instruments and antique furniture.
The San Fernando Valley once had an amusement park in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles. Busch Gardens was located at the Budweiser brewery in the middle of the valley, but it was torn down in the late 1970s to make room for a massive brewery expansion. As of now, the only amusement park in the San Fernando Valley is Universal Studios Hollywood in unincorporated Universal City.
The Valley attempted to secede in the 1970s, but the state passed a law barring city formation without the approval of the City Council. In 1997, Assemblymen Bob Hertzberg and Tom McClintock helped pass a bill that would make it easier for the Valley to secede by removing the City Council veto. AB 62 was signed into law by Governor Pete Wilson. Meanwhile, a grassroots movement to split the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and create new San Fernando Valley-based school districts became the focal point of the desire to leave the city. Though the state rejected the idea of Valley-based districts, it remained an important rallying point for Hertzberg's mayoral campaign, which proved unsuccessful.[50]
Measure F
In 2002, the San Fernando Valley portion of Los Angeles again seriously campaigned to secede from the rest of the city and become its own new independent and incorporated city. The movement gained some momentum, but measure F did not receive the necessary votes to pass. There were multiple name choices for the new city. "Valley City" was the chosen name for the new city. Among the proposed names for the new city were "Mission Valley", "Rancho San Fernando", "Camelot", or "Townsville".[51][52][53][54]
District renamings
The NoHo Arts District was established and the name chosen as a reference for its location in North Hollywood and as a play off New York City's arts-centered SoHo District. According to the San Fernando Guide, the change helped develop a "primarily lower to middle-class suburb into … a collection of art and a home for the artists who ply their trade in the galleries, theaters and dance studios in this small annex."[55]
According to the Lake Balboa Neighborhood Council, from 2002 through November 2007 there was a debate about the official recognition of Lake Balboa as a community by the City of Los Angeles. New community names were not sanctioned by the city until January 2006, when the city adopted a formal community-naming process (City of Los Angeles Council File Number 02 -0196). On November 2, 2007, the City Council of Los Angeles approved a motion renaming a larger portion of Van Nuys to Lake Balboa.[56]
As of 2012 the population of the San Fernando Valley was 1.77 million, of which 41.8 percent were Hispanic or Latino, 41.0 percent were non-Hispanic white, 12.7 percent were Asian and 4.6 percent were African Americans.[57] The largest city located entirely in the valley is Burbank, with over 107,000 residents. The most populous districts of Los Angeles in the Valley are Van Nuys and Pacoima, which like the city of Burbank have more than 100,000 residents each. Despite the San Fernando Valley's reputation for sprawling, low-density development, the valley communities of Panorama City, North Hollywood, Van Nuys, Reseda, Canoga Park, and Northridge, all in Los Angeles, have numerous apartment complexes and contain some of the densest census tracts in Los Angeles.
The San Fernando Valley has a significant population below the poverty level. About 30 percent of Valley households in 2009 earned less than $35,000 a year, including 10 percent who made less than $15,000 a year.[58]
The Pacoima district, once considered the hub of suburban blight and of having the highest poverty rate, is no longer such. Other San Fernando Valley neighborhoods such as North Hollywood, Panorama City, and Arleta now have poverty rates which are higher.[59]
In general, the areas with lower poverty rates have become fewer and more scattered, while many of the now affluent communities have become compartmented, having their own private, planned and gated communities. Many of these tend to be on or near the borders of the Valley in the foothill regions.[60]
In 1997, the median price of an average one-family home in the San Fernando Valley was only $155,000. In the summer of 2003, it reached $400,000 and by July 2005, it had reached $578,500. In August 2005, it rose to $600,000. A cooling off was noted in 2006, when between November 2005 and November 2006, median prices rose by the smallest amount of any 12-month period since mid-1997. Indeed, November prices were lower than October prices, and sales for November had fallen 19.1% compared to a year earlier.[61] The United States housing market correction affected the San Fernando Valley in 2007–2009, making housing significantly more affordable in the area: the median sales price fell from $660,000 at the peak in May 2007, to $500,000 by March 2008,[62] stabilizing in 2009 at around $330,000–$340,000.[63] The San Fernando Valley is home to one of the most expensive housing markets in the country. The median home value as of July 2014 is $536,000, the highest in the region in 8 years.[64] As of 2017, the price of an average single family house in the San Fernando Valley was over $800,000, making the valley one of the most expensive places to live in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
^San Fernando Valley. Britannica Online Encyclopedia. [2009-08-31]. （原始内容存档于2015-06-02）.
^ 2.02.1McLaughlin, Katy. Living in 'the Valley' Is, Like, Cool Now. The Wall Street Journal. March 29, 2018 [September 15, 2018]. （原始内容存档于2020-11-24）. The majority of the San Fernando Valley lies within the city of Los Angeles, but locals nonetheless tend to refer to it as 'the Valley' and to the rest of Los Angeles as 'the city'.
^Barrymore, Drew. Wildflower. New York: Dutton. 2015: 2; 7. ISBN 9781101983799. OCLC 904421431. As if I had been lobotomized, we packed our things and moved into our new home, indeed in Sherman Oaks, in 1983. It's why I still talk like a valley girl. That cadence snuck into my life at that spongelike age of eight and never left.
^Johnstone, Mark; Holzman, Leslie Aboud. Epicenter: San Francisco Bay Area Art Now. Chronicle Books. 2002: 234 [2022-02-27]. ISBN 0811835413. （原始内容存档于2020-10-01）. [...] the San Fernando Valley, also known as The Valley [...] Although San Fernando Valley in this context is snidely referred to as Silicone Valley and the Valley of Sin [...]
^Pilkington, Ed. US porn industry thrown into crisis after actor tests positive for HIV. The Guardian. 13 October 2010 [2022-02-27]. （原始内容存档于2017-05-25）. The San Fernando valley has become the focal point of the porn industry since the 1970s. It has been dubbed the San Pornando valley and Silicone Valley, a play on the prevalence on artificially enhanced breasts.
^Derudder, Ben. International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities. Edward Elgar Publishing. 2012: 301 [2022-02-27]. ISBN 9781781001011. （原始内容存档于2022-04-06）. [...] the acknowledged centre of porn has, since the 1970s, been San Fernando (or Silicone Valley, as it is sometimes dubbed), which currently accounts for around two thirds of listed adult entertainment production studios [...]
^Altman, Dennis. Global Sex. University of Chicago Press. 2010: 117 [2022-02-27]. ISBN 9780226016047. （原始内容存档于2016-05-06）. Most of the U.S. pornography industry is centered in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley north of Hollywood, so much so that one area is known locally as Silicone Valley.
^Sauerwein, Kristina. Champion of Valley Secession Passes Control to New Leader. Los Angeles Times. March 18, 2003.
^It's Right on the Tip of Their Tongues; Secession: Residents of Valley and harbor area narrow list of possible names. Los Angeles Times. April 3, 2002.
