The data floodgates were opened today as The City of Los Angeles released its Open Data Portal. The seemingly never ending list of data can show you the location of fire hazard areas, sports venues, trees, wineries, volunteer opportunities, public internet access, and what every else you can possibly imagine.
But for our sake, they drafted a special visual presentation detailing the tech community in Los Angeles. Using the North American Industry Classification System, they narrowed down all businesses registered in the city since 1933 to only show the former, and current, state of LA tech. Feel free to check out the full site, but for those seeking a quick rundown, we have you covered:
All images courtesy of The City of Los Angeles
The city's percentage growth matches the tech boom of the late 90s, as seen by its 179.9 percent increase. However, the trend is arguably more impressive in the last decade as the city exceeded 17,000 tech businesses.
As for the breakdown by industry, the ratio has remained somewhat consistent over the past 30 years except for the Film and Sound industry's huge leaps in the 2000s.
Mapping Concentration
Since 1981, the significant tech growth can be seen around Westwood, Hollywood, and Downtown LA. Within those areas, movies and consulting/IT services have been the major players. This map also provides the best view of the tech ecosystem's magnetic draw to the Wilshire Corridor.
Mapping today's industries
Industries shown on the map include Medical Technology (Orange), Consulting and IT Services (Blue), Internet and Data Services (Red), Consumer Technology (Green), and B2B Technology (Grey).
The current map of LA's tech businesses shows a consolidation around Wilshire Corridor, Silicon Beach, and Downtown LA. The City of Los Angeles points to the areas' accessible transportation, network bandwidth, and creative workforce as potential reasons for the concentrated growth.
The website also shows a image of national investments made into Los Angeles tech companies. The results are as expected: a high number of San Francisco and New York investments with a wide variety of other cities chipping in. The site mentions the data set is not yet complete and they are continuing to collect more information.
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