I've always been struck by the barrenness often apparent in scenes of early development in any city. In L.A., for instance, there is the site of stubby young palms, seen in later shots of the same location growing ever taller through the years, dotting the former barley fields. (It seems that every subdivision south and east of downtown was once a barley field.) What strikes me nowadays, when comparing shots of mid-20th-century L.A. to today, is not only the ever-more-lush (and often obscuring) vegetation, but the ever-increasing urbanization of L.A.--to-the-lot-line development is now the norm. I've posted then-and-now shots of Wilshire near the Fremont Place gates to demonstrate this; here is another set of pictures as evidence, these taken from Vine west toward the old RCA Building at 6363 Sunset (now the home of the Los Angeles Film School):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7117270...494236/?page=2 and
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpo...&postcount=345
Google Street View
All that said, in some cases, camera angles can preserve the old--I once posted then-and-nows of the Cinerama dome across the street from the RCA Building, looking east, which showed the urbanization big-time. Well, here are shots from 1965 and today at a diffeda90027's photostream on flickr/rent angle that seem to show little change:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7117270...494236/?page=2 and
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpo...&postcount=345
Google Street View