[dima55]

Your interpretation is based on a slice that's 80 miles long, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you don't have a good sense of even that slice. LA is fantastic. There's plenty of suburbia to be sure, but living there is a choice some people make. Others make a different choice.

[joey-bob]

I suppose you are correct. Similar to the original comment, who was shocked coming from a European perspective to US, I was a bit shocked coming from an East Coast perspective, and have made too broad a generalization. What areas would you suggest I visit in the future?

[dima55]

Depends on what you want to see; the city is incredibly diverse. The denser, more urban areas are the ones developed before the car was the dominant form of transportation. Downtown, Macarthur park, koreatown, hollywood, etc are very dense. Some parts of the westside are too. The trains generally go through the denser areas. Much of it is gritty, but the architecture is cool, there's lots of fantastic food everywhere, and it's generally interesting. Go explore :)