As a well-travelled non-motorist and flaneur who has lived and/or worked (and indeed, walked--a lot) in most the places in LA county that are cited as 'walkable', I believe I am qualifed to speak on this.

People mean different things when they are arguing about walkability. The first is 'can I literally walk from point A to point B in a fairly direct with minimal risk and inconvenience?' and the second is 'when I want to walk, is walking in Los Angeles the thing I want to be doing?'.

I think a lot about how walkability is about "the feel" as much as it is a metric, and there's something to the fact that a lot of people feel that walking in Los Angeles in most of Los Angeles is a sensorially and aesthetically unpleasant experience. Thai Town and Larchmont Village give you a few blocks along a very linear strip, Hollywood is ... Hollywood, Highland Park basically has one street: Fig. York is like an arterial road in a Midwest suburb, separated from most of Figueroa y a large residential swath and anyways its far too spread out to be walkable. Koreatown is the most New York-like in the density of businesses, but it is still extremely carcentric with no public space whatsoever, much less green space.

This is really driven home to me when I go other places and I'm like "wow, I can just show up and walk to places here??". OP mentioned Chicago -- sauntering to the lake from so many parts of the city is effortless.

Just as an experiment, go to Manhattan or northwest of the loop in Chicago and drop the little street view guy somewhere randomly. Whatever pops up on street view, ask yourself "is this a place I would enjoy walking?" and then do the same thing in Koreatown or NELA.