> It'd be like the ancient Romans speculating that cars will make us less fit and therefore cities will be less impressive because we can't lift as much. That isn't at all how it played out
No, obviously not. Modern construction is leagues outside what the Romans could ever hope to achieve. Something like the Burj Khalifa would be the subject of myth and legend to them.
We move orders of magnitude more cargo and material than them because fitness isn't the limiting factor on how much work gets done. They didn't understand that having humans doing all that labour is a mistake and the correct approach is to use machines.
I don't know, Dubai is...bigger, but I'd say it's vastly more mediocre city than Rome. To your original point, making things easier to make probably does exert downward pressure on quality in the aesthetic/artistic sense. Dubai might have taller buildings and better sewage system[0], but it will never have the soul of a place like Rome.
[0] Given the floods I saw recently, I'm not even sure this is even true.
Isn’t this exactly how it played out?