Wind and Wireless
Issue 02
Understanding Scale: Why LA Matters
"LA is burning!" screams the headline. But pause—what does that actually mean?
One square mile of Los Angeles is under curfew. The city is 502 square miles wide. That means: 99.8% of Los Angeles is NOT under curfew.
What may come from halting operations in 0.2% of Los Angeles?
📊 Visualizing the Scale
Source: City of Los Angeles Curfew Guidance – also archived locally in PDF format.
🚗 Greater LA: A Mega-Region
- Los Angeles City: 3.77 million residents
- Los Angeles County: 9.55 million
- Greater Metro (LA + Orange + Riverside + San Bernardino): ~17.4 million
That’s more than the population of many U.S. states combined. These are not distant, abstract numbers—these are American citizens, neighbors, workers, and families.
🏛️ Bigger Than Most State Capitals
Los Angeles City alone is more populous than nearly every U.S. state capital. Only Phoenix is close. Everyone else—Austin, Nashville, Denver—lags behind.
📈 State-Sized Impact
- LA City > 34 entire states
- LA County > 25 states
- Greater LA > 35 states
🌄 California’s National Weight
To match California’s population (~39.5M), you’d have to combine the populations of the 21 least populous states. From Wyoming to Utah. That’s how massive California—and by extension, LA’s reach—really is.
🏟️ Stadium Perspective
Michigan Stadium (“The Big House”), the largest sports stadium in the U.S., holds 107,601 seats.
LA County alone could fill it nearly 89 times. That’s every seat filled, again and again, with American citizens.
🗳️ Don't Get Lost in the Colors
It's easy to see a political map and think red vs. blue. But that misses the point. People aren’t colors—they’re numbers. And where those numbers cluster, the stakes rise.
Source: Luminocity3D World Population Density Map
📌 Final Thought
What happens in LA matters—not because it’s coastal, not because it’s glamorous—but because it’s gigantic. It's filled with American citizens who drive the economy, the culture, the future.
This is not just a city—it’s states' worth of people, living and breathing and deserving the full attention and respect of the nation.
- Xero, Wind & Wireless