As many Angelenos will tell you, Los Angeles can be a pretty great place to live. But 2015 might have been the year that everyone else got wise to it too.

There was the New York Times article that declared L.A.'s "burgeoning art, fashion and food scene" had made it "irresistible to the culturally attuned."

The Guardian proclaimed that L.A. had "thrummed with art in 2015" and "marked its resurgence as a cultural capital."And The Washington Post ranked Los Angeles number three on its list of the 10 best food cities in America.

That's a whole lot of East Coast (and UK) love for the City of Angels in 2015—a far cry from the sentiment expressed by committed New Yorker Woody Allen in his 1977 film, "Annie Hall."

So did 2015 really mark a turning point for L.A.? 

Some KPCC listeners weighed in on the pros and cons of life in Los Angeles on KPCC's Facebook page. Paul Roughley said,  "It's not as superficial as bad reality TV portrays it to be." And Glen Habas noted that almost everything out-of-towners have heard about L.A. is a "dated cliche."

Well, maybe not the traffic. 

Kellen McGuire says, "I'd tell anyone who wants to move here: Come for the weather, stay for the traffic; because once you're in it you're not going anywhere."

Others didn't mind the gridlock as much. Jen Kanter said, "Yes, we have terrible traffic and maybe some television stereotypes actually exist, but the good far outweighs the negatives."

We also called up Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne to explore the idea of why perceptions of L.A. seem to be changing.

"I think in general, L.A. just accelerated this transition that's been going on for at least the decade that I've been in Los Angeles," Hawthorne says. L.A. is "becoming less suburban, more urban, getting denser, really expanding its transit network, and it's become enough of a transition that even The New York Times is beginning to notice." 

What may be happening, Hawthorne says, is that the changes that Los Angeles has been undergoing for a while now are making the city more accessible and recognizable to people from places like New York, Chicago or San Francisco.

"That means that some of the cultural sophistication that's always been here is becoming easier to spot, easier to discover," Hawthorne says.

So while Los Angeles can still be a tough place to understand, outsiders may finally be realizing that putting in the time and effort to make sense of L.A. does pay off. 

As KPCC listener Chez Stock puts it, "There are so many different people, neighborhoods, businesses and events happening that if you can't find somewhere that feels like home here, you're not trying hard enough."

To hear the full interview with Christopher Hawthorne, click the link above.