It always looks to me no so much as a city, but rather merely some buildings that are connected by freeways.
Just like London it is a collection of "villages". What were originally separate cities: Santa Monica, Hollywood, Pasadena etc have all been absorbed into the whole that is LA. I'm sure you can recognize the same process in london where Hampstead and Stratford have distinct personalities and yet are now both a small part of the whole that is London.
Now LA, unlike London is a city much easier to live in and less easy to experience as a tourist. Tourists try to travel from Malibu to Hollywood boulevard to the Broad museum all in the same day. This is a wonderful way to experience LA traffic. Any person who lives here would recommend you choose on area and spend most of your time experiencing it properly. If you want a walkable neighborhood go to Santa Monica, West Hollywood or Downtown. If you want nature, hiking and to feel like you are not in the city go to Malibu or the Hollywood Hills.
I would argue that all of the LA neighborhoods I mentioned are very familiar to most of us because we watch movies and television and LA is traditionally where those products are made. Maybe you don't watch tv or go to the movies - in that case go to the David Hockney exhibition in london and you will see that LA is one of the most distinctive cities in the world. It is good weather, easy living, good looking inhabitants and it is surrounded by a natural beauty few other cities possess. I could argue it makes London look like a giant rat hole in comparison but to each their own!
I think London has its historic sights and some pretty neighborhoods but the livability of the city is shockingly bad. From crappy housing stock to antiquated tube - I am much happier in LA. But that's just me.
There's also a much shorter, funnier one called "Vancouver Never Plays Itself" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojm74VGsZBU
http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/056/730/597...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Symphony_(song) (1987)
Big Daddy Kane’s famous line, “Put
a quarter in your ass 'cause you played
yourself,” pops up as a looped sample...
One thing I'd add is that the public spaces and monumental architecture of LA are indeed lacking compared to tourist destinations like London. To top it off, the OP has deliberately chosen to walk some of the widest, most commercial streets in the city -- that is his particular interest. Other walkers concentrate on stairways in the hilly neighborhoods, or the architecture of downtown.
I think it was Christopher Hawthorne, the excellent architecture critic of the LA Times, who said that some of the defining spaces in the city are the residential architecture, and the back yards. (The comment above already covered the larger outdoor spaces, like the beaches, the mountains, and Griffith Park.)
If you rent a car and get stuck in traffic driving on the 405, you will miss all of that, which is a pity. But that's ok, I get to live here, and read in my back yard, barefoot, eating oranges from my trees, in January.
Nit: some still are separate cities. E.g., Santa Monica, West Hollywood.
Although OP is right in that what most people think about is the city of Los Angeles generally encompasses most of what's in the county of Los Angeles. So his central point is still valid.
That's an indictment of post-war American residential design, not "LA" per se. Yes, The Suburbs are kind of boring. They were intended to be, really. But the urban cores of LA (and the rest of the world, frankly) remained interesting and innovative throughout.
On the ground, most parts of LA don't look like anywhere in particular because they're too low rise and you can't see the horizon either. But there are some tells in certain of the neighborhoods: besides highways and palm trees, many blocks have "courtyard apartment" construction. The landscape favors autos but not in the same way as a city like Atlanta, favoring a regular grid with sidewalks over cul-de-sac deadends. With so much of the development spanning a brief period in the 20th century(by the 70's laments for "old LA" were common) there isn't a great deal of history. San Francisco contrasts as a city that has had fires and reconstruction in its core, but if you go out to the western parts of town or a bit down the peninsula, it's all recognizable as being of the same generation as many of those LA suburbs.
Lots of people miss this distinction. (I did, too, before you articulated it.) It's why I find LA quite pleasant despite not being a car owner.
I vividly remember my first drive from LAX to campus when I started undergrad in the area. First time there in the flesh, but I recognized overpass after hillside mansion after chain link fence after palm tree boulevard... from GTA: San Andreas. Déjà vu is hardly a strong enough term.
I would have been more prepared to recognize things if it had been, say, Jerusalem or Rome and the game Assassin's Creed, since one thinks of those cities as exotic, iconic. But LA has made its particular brand of "lack of distinguishing features" the default in a huge swath of media, and that was when I realized it.
Hopefully the LA River revitalization goes according to plan and it can be better integrated with the neighborhoods it runs through[3].
[1]http://www.lanebarden.com/linear-city-wilshire-boulevard/
[2]http://www.michaellight.net/new-gallery-1/
[3]http://www.changkimphoto.com/where-the-water-once-flowed-la-...
I have lived in London, and I work there lots also, living about 1 hour outside it on the train.
Both have their pros and their cons. To say however that LA is lacking in urban identity comparing one to the other doesn't, for me, do either justice.
The Spanish inspired architecture of areas like the Hollywood Hills, juxtaposed with the small but very well formed downtown LA area, which both has amazing modern architecture and some amazing vintage art deco buildings like the Oviatt building and it's amazing penthouse mean LA has some fantastic places to see. But yes, if you drive down certain streets you'll come across endless rows of nondescript bungalows on boring looking streets, and vast industrial estates which offer nothing to see at all - connected by a network of freeways (which everyone knows you should just avoid at certain times of the day if at all possible).
Similarly, London, arguably a city many hundreds of years older than LA in the first place - also has some amazing culture and architecture - but wander up to the Wembley area and down some side streets and trust me, it's not exactly a world-class destination! Ever been to Staines?
Both have things to offer. And certain people won't like one over the other. I myself don't particularly like San Francisco, and New York, impressive as it is, is a bit too much like London for my own tastes.
Each to their own. But to say LA is featureless and lacking in urban identity makes me think you need to spend some serious time in that city, get to know the distinct neighbourhoods for a good week at a time, and really enjoy what the Angelinos take for granted.
edit: according to Google. "L.A. area" is 503 sq miles. "London area" is 607 sq miles. Interesting.
Terrible driving in general is still the same - no signals, double-parking without hesitation, general craziness. On big holidays, there are a lot of drunk driving checkpoints but, overall, very little to no traffic enforcement.
Hit-and-runs are a really big problem.
I think the city is going through some growing pains as there as there are more pedestrians and cyclists on the road. If you are in those categories, you have to be very, very aware.
As a comparison, I was much more worried about drunk drivers when living in a rural area. Also, a recent visit to Santa Fe I saw at least 2-3 clearly drunk drivers, which my friends said is a huge problem there.
I don't know enough about either region to make a useful comparison, but I think the area for L.A. has to include more than just the city of L.A. proper.
I would definitely include neighboring cities in the LA basin when discussing LA as a whole though. The cities in the SGV, south bay, and gateway cities are very much a part of LA even if they're not within city limits.
The second factor was tuberculosis. In the early 20th century, people moved to LA for the air (no, really.) In very large numbers. And given they were moving to a place where the air would extend their lives and let them live in a more dignified manner, they weren't too picky about esthetics.
A third factor was a very unfortunate thing about American tax policy. Municipalities fund themselves by taxing property value. And that gave people an incentive not to build up too much property value. That got particularly pronounced in the Depressions of 1893 and the Great Depression in the 1930s, when people and businesses would literally shave floors off a building to save on property tax. To this day, American franchise corporations build their stores to be crappy things that fall down as soon as maintenance halts, because building more valuable real estate means paying more in tax.
All these factors converged to make Los Angeles look like that.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Judge Doom's Plot to Destroy Public Transit [1]
My favorite thing about this movie is that the villain's evil plot is to bring about car culture in America. Watch and giggle/shiver. Read about Pacific City Lines, National City Lines, and the Great American Streetcar Scandal if you'd like to know more about its historical parallels.
General Motors streetcar conspiracy [2]
The 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, vectors the folktale about the decline of the Pacific Electric. Scriptwriters Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman explained: "the Red Car plot, suburb expansion, urban and political corruption really did happen. In Los Angeles, during the 1940s, car and tire companies teamed up against the Pacific Electric Railway system and bought them out of business. Where the freeway runs in Los Angeles is where the Red Car used to be." The story was told again in 1996 in Taken for a Ride and then in 2004 in the film The End of Suburbia.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OquSczOMkO4
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
https://www.amazon.com/This-Pacific-Electric-Stephanie-Edwar...
I've lived in LA for a number of years, and that's a pretty accurate statement. Also, there are a lot of people and cars.
It's not a livable city. It's basically a big mess.
I'm not convinced this is the reason. Indianapolis is a city confined by the county borders (Indianapolis consumes the whole of marion county in Indiana). Places such as Speedway have been included: Carmel and Fishers to the north are not, because they are in different counties - yet they are definitely part of the greater Indianapolis area. Indianapolis definitely feels different from LA or London - but it feels closer to LA than it would London.
I think some of the other replies hit the correct answer: London has history that LA, Indianapolis, New York, and many other American cities do not. Many sections of American cities remind me of the areas here in Trondheim that were built back up after WWII. It makes for little architectural variation, and there isn't even a history of war and strife behind them in the US.
As an example, you can find areas in Silver Lake that have staircases as streets. I'd hate to be the mail man for that area, but it's pretty interesting to see.
LA is huge, with a lot of different areas, ranging from terrible ghettos to Bel Air. Some areas are flat, some are steep. Korea Town and Beverly Hills has more and larger buildings than most city's downtowns, yet Griffith Park is the second largest park in California. Other areas are residential, others are rather rural. It's a huge mishmash of areas.
With all that said, you are sort of right. Los Angeles is a wide area divided into many smaller sections, each with it's own identity, but I'd hardly call it featureless.
It's a young city, relatively speaking, and it grew up with the automobile - leading to the infamous sprawl you see today.
It's a city that's meant to be experienced by car (historically), meaning that many things are primarily accessible by car, to the extent that without a car you were basically of another class, kept out of the various "fortresses" (shopping malls, etc.)
Hence the famous song, "nobody walks in LA."
That's why I would never expat outside Europe. It feels like a downgrade.
Despite this, and contrary to the stereotypes, the LA Metro is actually dead last in the US in freeway lane miles per resident. See http://freakonomics.com/2009/02/24/los-angeles-transportatio...
[edit: redlining didn't necessarily cause auto-dependence but it is an example of planning]
After all, if every structure has to have 2 parking spots per apartment, you'll get far, far fewer apartments in the same space, forcing things to sprawl.
https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/420062
I think they might finally be learning though. The Expo line goes to the beach now. And they spent $1 billion+ to widen Sepulveda pass and now it's slower than it was before. Perhaps next time they'll put rail in instead.