alt Hacker NewsTo me, the public seems to prefer a design that integrates, or fit in, with the rest of the street/location it's in.
Modern buildings often are their own idiosyncratic isolate in the middle of the city.
When looking at movies, cities tend to have a uniform feel and look (like the elvish Rivendell), and I think people enjoy that.
Like Mont-Saint-Michel in France, or the Chuxi Tulou village in Fujian, China.
When we moved to the bay area in 2015 (south bay), I was absolutely stunned at the variety of residential architecture, having come from the mid-Atlantic where everything tended to be uniform based roughly on construction date/period. Since land is exorbitantly costly, homeowners tend to build what they like, no matter whether it fits the neighborhood aesthetic or not.