Eric Spiegelman runs throughs some key differences between LA and NYC:
In your car-slash-environmental travel pod in Los Angeles, you are alone. Other pods are abstractions, "a thing causing me irritation" most of the time. You vent your id at people in their pods in ways you would never vent to a person on a Los Angeles street. New Yorkers vent their ids far less often. People are more often people than an abstraction. In this way, New York is friendlier than Los Angeles.
The Dish 