The article feels like it was written by someone with conservative views, someone who resents change, and believes in a nostalgic view of the past. It becomes anti-intellectual when it points out the divergence between the opinion of experts and the laypeople on what constitutes a building fit for purpose, and takes those two opinions as equivalent.

It's kind of similar to the general "two-sides" thing where, if you talk to, say, a climatologist who talks about a community consensus on global warming, there will be someone who has never studied the climate, exposes a completely different opinion, sometimes in opposition to observed facts.

In this case, in architecture, the thing to measure is not the opinion of people, but how they use the architectural object - how their relationship with the environment changes in that space and why. I brought to this discussion three examples of architectural landmarks that turned a somewhat degraded space into vibrant community spaces.

Architects don't design buildings - they design the interaction of the building users with their environment.