Tiny West Hollywood could become a leader in smart city technologies. The two-square-mile city in Los Angeles County, nestled at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains and home to more than 34,000 residents is, perhaps by design, the perfect size for trying out smart city ideas.  

“We’re kind of like an ideal test bed for a lot of these smart city technologies, because of our size, because of our density,” said Francisco Contreras, innovation manager for West Hollywood.  

“Because we have the mobility challenges that the entire L.A. region has, you could really test out some of these smart city technologies in West Hollywood, and then be able to scale it maybe across L.A. County or the L.A. region,” he said. “We deal with a lot of the same issues as, say, Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, which are neighboring cities.”