Not everyone who owns property is a landlord, so that alone blows a giant hole in your thesis. The older a city is, the more people want it to stay the same because they bought their property based on a certain set of assumptions, like a place being a quiet neighborhood or so.
Property owners do have an interest in the use and enjoyment of their property, and it is they, rather than government itself, that tend to raise a fuss when new construction is proposed. After all, local government makes quite a lot of money from new construction - permit fees, increased spending by construction workers, increased tax revenue on the newly developed property, and so forth. Likewise, politicians get donations from developers, and often larger ones than from residents since developers have deeper pockets. On the other hand, developers only have one vote each and tend to be outnumbered by residents, whose interests often prevail for this reason.
If you own your own home, you would probably not be thrilled if the lot next door was suddenly the site of a ten-story apartment building without you being consulted or compensated. If you don't like it, it's not like you can just move, and selling your property might involve a rather steep loss, depending on the quality and configuration of the new development. If you rent, it's easy to be indifferent to those considerations because you don't have any assets at risk.