Responding to a statement about "for most of human history" with a reference to a very recent event isn't something you should begin with "actually" since it's not a reply to what I was saying, it's just your own tangent. Also, actually, even in the early modern period people were still looking to the past for inspiration even when they were reusing land - there's far more to the past than mere buildings.
You mean the cities that are most expensive and worst to live in, because they didn't have relics of the past putting brakes on the greed of real estate owners and developers?
Let me simplify then: modern cities suck. They're soul-crushing, sad places to live in. A lot of that has to do with modern construction and economic philosophy which you so praise.
(or the ones where the "old city" was destroyed in brutal urban warfare)