Today, the campus comprises some 163 buildings across 419 acres (1.7 km²) in the western part of Los Angeles, north of the Westwood shopping district and
just south of Sunset Boulevard. The campus is quite close, but not
actually adjacent to the San Diego Freeway, an oversight avoided
in the planning of newer campuses like Irvine (next to Highway 73) and San Diego (which is
split by Interstate 5).The campus is informally divided into North Campus and South Campus, which are both on the eastern half of the university's
land. North Campus is the original campus core and its buildings tend to be more old-fashioned in appearance and are usually
completely sheathed in brick. North Campus is home to the arts, humanities, social sciences, law, and business programs. North
Campus is centered around tree-lined Dickson Plaza, which has appeared in many movies such as
The Nutty Professor.South Campus is newer, with many of the main buildings having been constructed in the 1960s and 1970s. The resulting architectural difference is obvious to anyone
entering the Court of Sciences, the main quad area of South Campus. South Campus is home to the sciences, including all physical
sciences, life sciences, mathematical sciences, engineering. The Center for Health Sciences and its surrounding health- and
health-care related buildings are technically on South Campus, but as the area is only for graduate and professional health
sciences students, it is often not considered to be an integral part of the North/South Campus divide.Undergraduate housing for nearly 8,000 residents is spread across multiple buildings on a ridge on the western side of the
campus, which is called "the Hill." Residential life on the hill is under the care of the Office of Residential Life, which is
often considered to be a leading residential life department. Housing facilities also include four residential restaurants and
three boutique-style eateries. UCLA's dining services are often praised as the best in the nation, with several concepts having
been originated from within. While students are currently guaranteed only three years of on-campus housing, the Housing Master
Plan aims to guarantee housing to all undergraduates for four years by 2010.In 2002, the university began building a new graduate housing complex, Weyburn Terrace,
in order to recruit top graduate students from around the world; there has been no university-operated graduate housing on or
near the main campus since 2001. The new complex is located on the western edge of
Westwood, several blocks from the main UCLA campus, and remains under construction as of 2005. When completed, Weyburn Terrace will enable UCLA to provide dwellings for fifty percent of incoming graduate and
professional students.Ackerman Union, the campus student center, the Arthur Ashe Health and Wellness Center, several student organization buildings,
and athletic facilities such as the famed Pauley Pavilion fill the
shallow valley in the middle of the campus. The Hill is linked to the remainder of campus by a heavily traveled pathway called
Bruin Walk, which bisects the campus. In order to accommodate UCLA's rapidly growing student population, multiple construction
and renovation projects are in progress, including expansions of the life sciences and engineering research complexes.The university also owns a high-rise office tower called UCLA Wilshire Center on Wilshire Boulevard in the Westwood area, one
mile (1.6 km) to the south. The majority of off-campus administrative functions are housed in UCLA Wilshire Center, including the
Office of the Chancellor.The campus has a large number of parking garages, both above-ground and
below-ground, and reportedly has the second-largest number of parking spaces of any university in the United States. Despite that
fact, the university continues to suffer from a severe parking shortage which is further compounded by Southern California's
regional housing shortage. The university has given priority in allocation of parking spaces to staff and students commuting from
distant locations like Santa Barbara and
Anaheim, while encouraging all students living within a 5
mile radius to use mass transit.