Westwood Neighborhood Guide

Westwood occupies a distinctive stretch of the west side, bounded by Sunset to the north, Olympic to the south, Beverly Hills to the east, and the 405 to the west, anchored by UCLA's sprawling campus and shaped by two communities that treat the neighborhood as their own. The university gives Westwood its rhythm, filling Westwood Village with students on foot, keeping Diddy Riese perpetually busy, and turning move-in weekend and graduation into full civic events. Away from the campus edges, the neighborhood holds one of the densest concentrations of Persian restaurants, bakeries, and markets outside of Tehran, a presence that reflects decades of Iranian-American settlement across the west side and gives Westwood a cultural depth that outlasts any academic calendar. The result is a neighborhood that functions simultaneously as a college town and a genuinely cosmopolitan residential district, where a lunch that starts at a chelo kabob counter can feel like a considered occasion.