Small strip malls are abundant in the United States: they make up the majority of the country’s shopping centers (International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), 2017). Hart (1982) appraised the strip mall as “a place where every American can feel at home, no matter where he or she happens to be, because it is so familiar, so standardized, so universal—and so placeless!” (p. 219). For their significance in the American psyche, they remain broadly under-studied in academic literature, whether because of researchers’ fascination with forms with more grandeur and aesthetic appeal, or their plain negligence. The following research will spotlight the strip mall and its effects on communities that surround it. It will have a geographic focus in Los Angeles County, reputedly and historically the capital of car-centered, multi-centric strip mall-dom. First, it will develop a functional definition of the strip mall as it manifests in Los Angeles. Then, it will incorporate applicable datasets to produce an exhaustive GIS catalog and typology of strip malls in Los Angeles. It is expected that strip malls will exhibit considerable diversity in their function and structure, but that the term “strip mall” will still define a significant and meaningful type of Angeleno built form. Using the identified strip malls, the paper will elaborate the contributions of strip malls to the urban fabric in different parts of Los Angeles. Linovski (2012) suggests that strip malls tend to have low rent costs, making them accessible retail space for small businesses, in particular first-generation immigrants looking to found commercial enterprises. Ethnicity, language, and class will be among the primary factors considered in conversation with reliance on strip malls for lifestyle and community needs. While strip malls are not intrinsically cultural or ethnic, their form and economic characteristics have been appropriated in a way that imbues identity into them. Finally, these results will inform quantitatively-backed suggestions in light of strip mall redevelopment pressures. In particular, it will respond to California’s 2022 bill AB2011, which fast-tracks developments that upzone strip malls into multi-story affordable housing units instead. The resulting policy proposals will balance the eminent benefits of new dense, affordable housing with the potential harm of eliminating existing strip malls and the communities that rely on them and suggest which strip malls to protect, which to redevelop, and which to invest into further.