Neighborhoods

Conquest Student Housing, a firm accused of using intimidation and fraud against rival developers of off-campus student housing near USC, has agreed to stop challenging any competitors' projects within two miles of the school. USC and allied developers described the settlement, which was announced Friday, as a victory over a potential monopoly in the off-campus apartment business and as a step to provide more much-needed housing.

One young mother from Tillamook gathers her five children and drives two scenic miles to go beachcombing at a quaint hideaway off U.S. Highway 101. Another young Tillamook mother slips into a skimpy, form-fitting black gown and steers to the same town to dance for tips at the only exotic club on the northern Oregon coast. They, along with strip-club patrons, visiting families, longtime residents and retirees, mix it up in this quiet community.

Neighborhood activists in the northeast San Fernando Valley thought they scored a major victory in 1995, when they persuaded Los Angeles officials to approve zoning rules to keep new buildings on Foothill Boulevard from blocking their hillside views.

Paola Montufar was well-known in her tight-knit, working-class neighborhood just off a busy thoroughfare leading to Pechanga Casino in Temecula. In the California Sunset subdivision, an area teeming with kids, neighbors got used to seeing the 15-year-old palling around with friends and her little brother, Rogelio, who was always by her side. "She was a very sweet, energetic, pretty girl. She was nice to everybody," said Irene Gonzalez, a neighbor and mother of some of Paola's friends.

A drive-by attack followed by a wild shootout between gang members and police shut down dozens of blocks of Northeast Los Angeles for nearly six hours Thursday afternoon, stranding thousands of residents, keeping students locked in their classrooms and leaving two people dead. Veteran L.A. Police Department officials described the bizarre midday shootings -- and the widespread disruption they caused -- as highly unusual even in an area known for gang activity.

The loft-and-latte crowd is setting up house in the trendy Del Rey Arts District -- also known as the Marina Arts District. The tiny but flourishing neighborhood in Marina del Rey's old commercial hub is a hot spot for those with an artistic bent and is within walking distance of the beach and close to Venice's Abbot Kinney Boulevard.

Third-grader Monic Santana has stopped playing in the yard at Aragon Avenue Elementary since a man was gunned down late last week at the edge of her school's front lawn. She's scared, she said. And she has to watch out for her younger brother, Salvador, 7, who said he worries "that they're going to get me and kill me."

A four-mile stretch of the southeast San Fernando Valley has emerged as one of the premier battlegrounds in the fight over urbanization that has roiled neighborhoods across Los Angeles in a manner reminiscent of the growth wars of the mid-1980s. Developers' plans for the area, which stretches from Universal City to the upper reaches of North Hollywood, include roughly 5,500 new residences and millions of square feet of commercial and office space.

The roar of cars and trucks drowned out conversation Saturday morning as a group walked toward the 210 Freeway ramp on North Lake Avenue in Pasadena. The sidewalk narrowed and the street widened. Along the way, tree roots had heaved the sidewalk upward. It was hardly a welcoming route to the Gold Line light rail station, built in the median of the 210, said Marsha Rood, a Pasadena resident.

An unfamiliar sound echoed Saturday on the streets of Sadr City, where gunshots and bomb blasts had rung out for weeks: cars honking their horns. Traffic clogged the Baghdad district's Mudafer Square, which in recent days had been devoid of life except for Iraqi and American Humvees, rooftop snipers and a giant mural of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's late father staring down from a burned-out building.