Los Angeles, the "New" New York

From another LA Weekly Article, this one about Michael Govan's attempts to build up the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (laweekly.com/general/features/the-encyclopedic-city/16642/?page=3):

It’s not so easy here.
It’s not so easy here.

Why is that?
I don’t know. In New York, they’ll tell me, “Oh, L.A. can never be a New York and can never be a great cultural capital because it’s not like New York and it’s all spread out.” How many times do you hear that?

Once a day.
Once a day. Well, as far as I can see, cities have often changed their compositions over many ancient centuries to the present. And there’s always been culture and great cities, and it’s taken different forms depending on the kind of shape the city took. So let’s say all the future cities look like L.A. New York looks like Europe, but [what] was the last city you saw that was like New York? Shanghai, Beijing, Mexico City, Seoul — they all look like L.A. And so there’s going to be a different model. We’re just going to be part of that.