Wildlife on Holiday - Los Angeles

To what extent do geology, wildlife and climate help create culture and a sense of place? Over the last few weeks I've had the chance to explore this question in four cities with very different climates: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver.
In LA, the climate is hot and dry, with the city built within a bowl of mountains between the ocean on one side and desert on the other. Some places like Arizona and Texas embrace the desert as part of who they are, creating gardens of succulents like the Tequila cactus (which I'm told produces a sweet drinkable sap) and hardy arbuto trees with amazing bark which eventually strips off entirely and locust trees. These plants are in evidence on the hillsides next to the freeways, but hardly visible in the city at all. Instead, Los Angeles seems to be a city of dreams: green grass, palm trees and eucalyptus sustained only by sprinkler systems.I had heard that California and Texas are currently suffering their worst drought in years, with nearly 3 years of low rainfall, which most people would regard as a crisis. In the UK, the first thing we do in a drought is impose a hosepipe ban to reduce discretionary water use for washing cars or watering the garden. Imagine my surprise at LA's equivalent: in a city which is far more water stressed than Britain and where the state has declared a state of emergency since January 2014, all the local authority dares to do is restrict use of sprinklers to "only" 3 times a week. This feels like a deep disconnect with reality.
But perhaps this is not surprising when you consider the city as a whole, where the car is king and the urban sprawl extends for miles and miles. I was surprised to discover how far away everything is: from Megan's house to the wedding venue was 20 miles, and only halfway across the city. If I travel 20 miles from the middle of York, I'd be almost in Leeds!
I have never been anywhere with so much concrete and tarmac (even small roads have 3 or 4 lanes in each direction) or so few parks, and the parks which did exist are dominated by drunks and homeless which means others stay away. So no wonder that many people don't feel connected to nature or realise the way that having green grass in the desert might be drastically living beyond our means. Overall, this is a city where living sustainably is made difficult by significant cultural and physical barriers, from serious air pollution due to the traffic to the many freeways and huge roads which divide one street from another. This was a big contrast with the next place we visited: San Francisco, in the same state further north but a completely different attitude.