Is Public Architecture Dysfunctional?

Always been curious how that architectonic style and weird abstract statues got so common in most cities around the whole world, while never met a person who actually liked them. In theory we live in a free society, so there's no reason different cities and countries should have the same style, specially when the general public doesn't seem engaged with it at all?

The only things that come to mind is that maybe it's very cheap to produce, or maybe the inside culture of the architecture world / art world really likes those things, and has a much higher influence than mainstream culture on how those things are produced.