Do you think urban planning made Amsterdam worse in the last 40 years? That it made Paris worse? Or Barcelona? All these cities have been greatly improved because they planned it (after some terrible decisions too, especially all the decisions related to making more cars enter the cities).
All great cities have had several planning phases, over centuries
The good parts of Amsterdam and Paris come from undoing previous bad ideas, and Paris is still too expensive because of height limits, so I don't think it's an impressive showing yet.
Good Asian cities' planning efforts are mostly making illegal to let NIMBYs have input on anything.
