Los Angeles has always intrigued me. For a city it's size, it's downtown skyline is definitely underwhelming, but for some reason, it still has this aura about it when you're driving up on it.
As another posted mentioned, judging the city by its downtown skyline isn't an accurate representation of its corporate head office base or bustling "centre", as LA has multiple CBD's and its density (even though it's a largely car oriented metropolis), is still very high.
This HUGE picture really shows how monster LA is.