Ok lets stick to facts LA Metro area is 4 times bigger than SD with a pre War Fabric maybe 4 to 5 times the size of ours. Our "urban older hoods" have a pretty small footprint. Downtown to Mission Hills out to La Mesa then SW to Sherman/Logan and National City is actually quite old on the West side. That's it! What would you guys say LA's Pre War footprint is at least 3 times that size.
So.... Of course LA and the Bay Area are going to have a lot more going on they are much bigger AND have more of a grided out Pre War footprint that has been established for 80 years and willing to add density. They will be building more infill, transit, and vertical buildings than SD just out of sheer size. Plus their traffic has been horrendous for 30 years while ours is just starting to get bad. The citizenry of LA said "DO SOMETHING" when they passed Measure R 12 years ago because the traffic was such a nightmare.
I think for our size we are doing a decent amount of urbanizing of course it could be better and it would be nice if we were constructing 2 light rail lines right now instead of just one.
Now comparing to Seattle
Why are we lagging? Lack of corporate presence and our big industries don't locate Downtown. Seattle is the king of its region while San Diego is just the little buddy to the two Kings up North. Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon for SEA.... Qualcomm and tons of medium sized tech and biotech for us... In Seattle for some reason a bunch of their stuff gets located downtown. Could you imagine if just 40% of Qualcomm and 10% of SD County's biotech was downtown? We would have 70,000 more middle class workers downtown in about 12 million more square feet of office space...
This would mean more vibrant core and a badass skyline. So there you go guys that is why we are what we are. Overall our food scene is good, you have vibrant Tijuana just to the south and its so easy just park at Las Americas and walk across PedWest. People from all over the world love Little Italy, meet LA people there all the time and they sing its praises. Mobility is still great here its such a manageable city compared to Bay/Los Scandalous.