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Academically speaking, the above title (a quote from one of our commenters) is correct and it only took 15 comments to get there! Not every part of the valley is within city limits (haha, Wiki left out West Toluca Lake!) of the City of Los Angeles (as pointed out: there is Bizarrebank, Glendale, City of San Fernando, the occasional unincorporated Los Angeles County, etc).
Should New York City be our example? If you live in Manhattan, you say you live in New York. If you live in one of the other Burroughs, say Queens, you say you live in Queens, but you are legally in the City of New York City. No wonder New Yorkers rag on us. It isn’t our award winning public transportation system; it’s that we can’t get this fucking right!
Will this linguistic debate ever be solved? Is it vernacular, colloquial, or both? Is “The Valley” only understood in context of a conversation?
What say you? Go ahead, take a stab, and make your official declaration of the proper use of “The Valley.” The best comment wins and City Hall will declare it (uh…sure).
One rule: Leave Camelot out of it.
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Aren't Burbank and Glendale in the San Gabriel Valley? "The Valley" refers to the San Fernando Valley, which is most assuredly part of Los Angeles. If I live in Encino, I tell other Angelenos that I live in Encino (just as they may live in Santa Monica, Venice, Ladera Heights, etc.) but to anyone outside the city I just would say "Los Angeles" because... that's where we are!!!
I don't know the Valley well, but I do know the South Bay, and down here in San Pedro we definitely think of ourselves as in Los Angeles. There's an obvious difference between the areas of the 15th District in the South Bay and the non City of Los Angeles areas.
Even though I write San Pedro as my city on anything related to my address, I definitely am aware "every day and in every way" that I'm in Los Angeles, and I'm more concerned with what's going on within the other districts than I am in many of the neighboring cities of the South Bay.
Part of Glendale is definitely in the San Fernando Valley.
Other parts, it depends on exactly where you draw the eastern boundary of the Valley.
Still other parts are definitely NOT in the San Fernando Valley, like the parts that are in the Verdugo Mountains and in La Cañada, a narrow valley between the Verdugos and the San Gabriels.
Burbank is almost entirely in the San Fernando Valley, except possibly for the part that's in the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains, which form the northeastern border of the Valley.
Neither of them is in the San Gabriel Valley at all. It's farther to the east, past Eagle Rock.
Simple: "Friends don't let friends live in The Valley."
In re San Gabriel Valley geography:
Take a look at a topographic/relief map sometime. Most of we think of as "East L.A." sits atop the Monterey Hills, which start at the foot of the San Gabriels on the east flank of the Arroyo Seco and then turn eastward until they end at the Whittier Narrows. (They're barely noticeable in places, as when you're driving east on the 10 from the East L.A. Interchange and all of the sudden a little sign appears that says "San Gabriel Valley.") The San Gabriel Valley is the area lying to the east of that, the north of the Puente Hills south of Industry (think: Rowland Heights, Hacienda Heights), the west of the San Juan/Jose Hills (I can't remember which) that separate the Pomona Valley from the San Gabriel, and the south of the San Gabes.
The San Fernando Valley is a fantasyland for people who want to pretend that they've escaped the "crime, blight, and pollution" on the other side of the hill, and that they're in no way dependent upon Los Angeles. Hogwash. Suburbs don't exist without city centers; the San Fernando Valley and Orange County, no matter how independent they say they are, are still subsidiary areas to Los Angeles in economic and cultural importance. (OC at least can say that it's in a completely different county, but saying that's the basis for a complete separation from Los Angeles is like saying that Alameda County is a completely different entity from San Francisco.) The Wilshire Boulevard corridor, with Santa Monica on one end and Bunker Hill on the other, is the nerve center of the five-county Greater Los Angeles region, and everything else is subsidiary to it in importance.
Here's an exercise for "The Valley is not L.A." types: if a neutron bomb went off near Pico and La Brea and killed everyone in the City of Los Angeles south of Mulholland Drive and west of the river (plus the inhabitants of Beverly Hills, Culver City, Santa Monica, and WeHo), how would you be affected?
A neutron bomb KOs everybody south of Mulholland?
Does that mean no more KCRW fund drives?
Yeah, you know, if it took out Nic Harcourt, I think we'd all be better off. I think the words of musician Michael Manring (ironically, a New Age stalwart) put Harcourt's aesthetic in the proper light:
There are times when taste is no longer tasteful.
In the end, you can't really answer the question "Is the San Fernando Valley part of LA?" without first asking, "What exactly do you mean by 'LA'?"
If you mean "the City of Los Angeles", then, yes, the Valley is part of it.
If you mean "the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area", then, yes, the Valley is part of it (as are other cities like Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Pasadena, and Long Beach).
If you mean "the area where the US entertainment industry's major film studios, sometimes collectively called 'Hollywood,' are located", then, yes, the Valley is part of it (as is Culver City).
If you mean "what someone from, say, Kentucky might think of as LA", then, yes, the Valley is part of it (as are the urbanized areas of nearby counties like Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, and Ventura).
But if you mean "where image-conscious LA-area hipsters can live without feeling embarrassed by their address or their area code", then, no, it isn't.
It all depends on what you mean by 'LA'. :-)
Glen:
You nailed it.
Ditto what Liz T. said. Glen gets it perfectly right.