And I suspect most of this isn't anything new. What is at least somewhat different is that, in general, a Robert Moses [1] can't come into a city and remake it to his vision while largely ignoring those who think differently. This change is not entirely a bad thing. On the other hand, it often makes things like large-scale transportation projects much more difficult to accomplish than in the past.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses