A whole lot of factors involving LA's history. The first one is earthquakes. We have a lot of good technology now, that lets us build tall and beautiful structu

A whole lot of factors involving LA's history. The first one is earthquakes. We have a lot of good technology now, that lets us build tall and beautiful structures in earthquake zones, But 100 years ago, that was not the case. Los Angeles sprawled out because it had to, and people built featurelessly because you don't invest so much in something when an earthquake will destroy it at any minute. 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.