LA in 1950 had pretty much the same land area as today with only about half the population, so yeah it did have bloated city limits at the time after going on an annexation spree. The San Fernando Valley was mostly farmland and ranches with a majority of the housing development taking place in the 50s, as you can see in
this building age map. But LA did/does have a dense urban core that is comparable to the other legacy cities that is not captured in the above chart. I also think it's a flawed methodology to add on connected suburbs that meet a certain density threshold, because you are basically penalizing a city for having denser suburbs (adding "dozens and dozens" of random suburbs for LA which pulls down the average), while cities that have a lower density fringe (that do not meet the density threshold) get to "preserve" their higher density numbers.
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