Time will tell how it all shakes out, but the reshaping of New York, at least Manhattan, over the past 25 years or so is notable for the sheer scale and amount of demolition, as well as construction. No previous era had that much destroying to do to impose its will, and obviously no previous era built so much so high.
And the corporate ethos that drove all that business was also about getting the most from the least, so the gaudiness of the recent past was matched by its shoddiness—whatever the failings of the late 19th-/early 20th-century robber barons, at least they built to last.
The ’80s/’90s/2000s will leave really lousy ruins.