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Of course, I think the greater LA area defies categorization of cities and suburbs. A lot of what is considered suburban in character, such as the San Fernando Valley (which actually is much more densely populated and culturally diverse than suburban areas of other cities) is actually part of the city of Los Angeles.
And some of the liveliest nightlife hotspots (IE: the Sunset strip of West Hollywood) is a separate municipality.
But I LOVE that about LA.
But I do understand what you are saying, while downtown LA does have a lot of awesome stuff there and is getting even better, its rather underwhelming considering the size of LA.
I'm confused about what would be so much better about the suburbs in Fort Worth and Austin as opposed to the San Francisco Bay Area?
Not even counting everything to do in Oakland and Berkeley (which aren't even really suburban but the center of the East Bay)--San Francisco has some nice suburbs just down the peninsula:
San Mateo, Burlingame, and Redwood City all have fairly nice downtown areas(for their size). Palo Alto is a classic college town and nearby Menlo Park has nice tree-lined neighborhoods and streets. You've got places like Pacifica and Half Moon Bay further south that are right on the Pacific Coast beaches. Across the bridge in Marin you have a mix of upscale little villages along the bay like Sausalito and Tiburon and small towns like Mill Valley at the edge of the redwoods on the slope of Mt. Tamalpais. That's just what's close to San Francisco. You can look at the rest of the Bay Area and find other nice suburbs---I'd say in general the Bay has one of the more varied and interesting mixes of suburbs along US metros.
New Orleans is an example of a city with a great downtown but lacklustre suburbs, while Detroit is the opposite. What other examples can you think of?
Even with Detroit, I'd be somewhat careful of that assessment. Almost all suburbs are safer than Detroit city proper, but they do run the gamut from really nice to lackluster. Also, unless you're into shopping malls and high-end grocery chains, I'd say that downtown Detroit has as much to do as a comparable built-up area in the suburbs.
For their sizes both Austin & Fort Worth have much better cores than LA. Forgot to mention San Antonio.
LA's core is just a step above Houston & Dallas IMO.
Well maybe we can agree to disagree, LA has a top ten core IMHO, none of the TX cities play in this space from my perspective, some great metros but FT Worth and Austin are not top 10 DTs in the US
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