LOS ANGELES, Nov. 17 — This city thought O. J. Simpson had become Florida’s problem.

The house in Brentwood where the former football star once lived was long ago bought and flattened, replaced by a Mediterranean with a new address, sky-high hedges and a sign on the door warning, “Dog on Property.”

Mezzaluna, the restaurant where Nicole Brown Simpson, his former wife, had dinner before her violent demise, is also gone; a Peet’s Coffee and Tea shop now occupies the site...

So with Mr. Simpson ensconced in a suburb of Miami, where Florida laws regarding the payment of civil penalties allow him to keep his home and his multimillion-dollar National Football League pension, Los Angeles was almost able to pretend that the thing that Mr. Simpson said he never did never actually happened...

“Los Angeles is such a rapidly evolving city,” said Joel Kotkin, an urban historian who has lived here for 30 years. “There is an enormous turnover of people here,” Mr. Kotkin said. “You talk to people here about the ’80s here, and it’s like you are talking about the Conquistadors. It is a place where people go on with their lives. O. J. was part of the L.A. shtick, and now it is gone.”

Mr. Kotkin added: “Compare that to New York, where John Lennon was shot. Nobody is going to raze the Dakota because something horrible happened there...”

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