When residents and business owners began talking about creating a city in the Santa Clarita Valley nearly three decades ago, few could have imagined the demographic juggernaut the region would become.
Back then, it was a far-flung collection of four distinct communities: The very suburban Valencia, the historic towns of Saugus and Newhall and the more rural Canyon Country.
Developers knew the valley 45 miles north of downtown Los Angeles was ripe for subdivisions and office parks. But Santa Clarita’s growth has been so dramatic that it now ranks as the third largest city in Los Angeles County behind L.A. and Long Beach.
Santa Clarita’s growth is all the more remarkable given the sluggish population expansion in other parts of Los Angeles County in the last few years. Data show L.A. County as a whole grew by 0.5% from 2010 to 2024, from 9.76 million to 9.81 million. Growth has often been stymied by a shortage of vacant land on which to build new housing.
Santa Clarita, meanwhile, has been L.A. County’s growth champion of the last 25 years, according to a Times analysis of U.S. census data.
It is followed by the Antelope Valley, another exurb known for inexpensive tract housing — if you can deal with the commute.
The data have identified some other unexpected boomtowns, as well.
Years of high-rise residential development in downtown Los Angeles have made it a big winner within the city of Los Angeles.
Behind downtown is Chinatown, another old-line neighborhood that has experienced a major expansion of lower-rise residential apartments and condos.
But L.A.’s biggest growth area, Playa Vista, is actually miles to the west in a community with a vibe that is a lot different from the rest of the city.
The booming North County
The growth of Santa Clarita was made possible by access to available land for development and the annexation of nearby unincorporated territory. As a result, the footprint of the city expanded as its population grew.
Data show that the Newhall census county division that contains Santa Clarita grew only 9% over the 14-year span, suggesting that while the region did grow significantly, the majority of the city’s growth was accomplished by absorbing residents of nearby unincorporated areas where open space quickly turned into residential development.
“We don’t encourage growth, people have babies,” said Santa Clarita Mayor Laurene Weste.
The city has built 43 parks and acquired 16,000 acres of open space to try to keep up with the population growth, she said.
With explosive growth come some growing pains, especially around infrastructure, and the city feels pressure from the state to add even more housing, Weste said.
The mayor isn’t surprised about her city’s growth: “Shocker,” she joked. “Where else are you gonna find a place [like this]? It’s a lot of fun to live here.”
Many distant suburbs suffer because homes are far from job centers, making for excessively long commutes. But Santa Clarita has managed to lure some companies north, especially in the entertainment industry. The region was long used as a backdrop for movies and TV shows. But more than a decade ago, Disney opened an 800-acre movie ranch and production facility near Placerita Canyon.
Still, long commutes are a fact of life for many North County residents, despite the availability of commuter buses and Metrolink rail services.
Antelope Valley, home to Lancaster and Palmdale, is even farther from Los Angeles. But the ability to buy single-family homes at relatively reasonable prices has been a powerful draw.
The area’s population growth was more than 10% over the 14-year span, from 383,000 to 423,000 people.
Overall, these cities had more room to grow than most urban areas in Los Angeles County, said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former L.A. city councilmember and county supervisor and the current director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
Unlike more built-out parts of the county, the Antelope Valley has been able to add housing without creating pushback from crowded neighbors.
“You’re starting from scratch,” Yaroslavsky said.
Affordability is still a top priority for those who move to the boom cities in the northern reaches of the county, he said.
“They’re cheaper than homes in the Westside of Los Angeles or Sherman Oaks or Encino, but they’re still expensive.”
Yaroslavsky cited a UCLA study that found that nearly half of Los Angeles County households earn less than $90,000 annually, too low to afford many of the new units under construction. “These units are not being built for that demographic,” he said. “Rents are very high.”
And the North L.A. County boom might not be over. Developers for years have wanted to build a whole new city in the Tejon Pass along the L.A.-Kern County line, though the Centennial project has been mired in regulatory and legal challenges for years.
L.A.’s growth all-stars
All you need to do to understand the growth of downtown Los Angeles is look up at the skyline.
The last 15 years have seen a boom in high-rise construction, mostly in the South Park area around Crypto.com Arena, but also on Bunker Hill, the Historic Core and the Arts District.
Despite downtown’s much chronicled struggles with crime and homeless encampments, it is becoming more of a residential community and less of a traditional business hub.
Expect to see more people move in as more residential buildings are completed, including the 40-story Oceanwide Plaza, infamously known as the “Graffiti Tower.”
Downtown L.A.‘s population increased, from 57,000 in 2010 to 82,000 in 2024 — a 44% gain — as apartments sprung up, per data from the Department of City Planning and the census.
“We have represented 25% of all multifamily growth in L.A. County over that period,” Nick Griffin, executive vice president of the DTLA Alliance, a group of some 2,000 property owners in the area, said of the 2010 to 2024 span. In that period, downtown L.A. added some 29,000 new units. “It’s a pretty significant proportion.”
And though the neighborhood has seen a jump in office vacancy rates since the COVID-19 pandemic, residential growth has been a buoy. If Griffin had a magic wand, he said he would “convert as much office space to residential as [he] possibly could.”
“In most parts of the city, it is very hard to develop housing at any scale,” Griffin said.
He described the mindset among the residents who have flocked to DTLA as pro growth. They “self-selected to live in a dense, dynamic urban environment,” and they want more neighbors to join them, he said.
But even L.A.’s downtown did not see as much growth as Playa Vista, the planned community on the Westside between Culver City and Marina del Rey.
Playa Vista doubled its population in 10 years by acquiring unused land — including property used by the former Hughes aircraft facility — to build thousands of housing units.
Yaroslavsky noted that within the city of Los Angeles, there are few opportunities to build housing at that scale.
Playa Vista also offers something else rare in the city of Los Angeles: New development. The community is famous for its manicured streets, tidy townhouses and apartments, parks and general planned community vibes more often associated with Irvine than Los Angeles.
It’s a unique feel that has drawn residents.
Before it was home to the Hughes facility, Playa Vista was mostly undeveloped, home to some of L.A.’s only remaining wetlands. “The place was a swamp,” The Times wrote in 1993.
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