Rarely I see a paragraph where I either disagree with the statements in or find the conclusion to each flat up unsatisfactory. The paragraph you quoted is one such.

Freudian is bad. Somehow, phallic is also bad, despite a good portion of the populace toting one around and a non-trivial portion of the rest enjoying the company of one every so often. And of course there is space to spread out horizontally, which we call urban sprawl; people complain about that as well. I ... do not understand how buildings may or may not be democratic, or of a republic, or anything else.

And I go backward through the paragraph just wondering what it is I am missing.

I don't think this statement is inherently wrong, but perhaps misguided. Skyscrapers in there current state should be abolished, but I don't disagree with vertical expansion. The article makes what I think to be a very good case for garden space, and if we are to continue to build vertically we need to think about how we incorporate some nature and greenery into our high rise structures.

Singapore tries this and, in my opinion, does it better than most at least in examples (the oasia hotel being a prime one). Unfortunately, looking out across the CBD right now is still a glass & concrete smear that could be any city in the world. A few good examples do not a skyline make

Skyscrapers can be done well, like the art deco ones in New York, and the Smith Tower in Seattle.

What is the problem with the quoted statement?

There are two kinds of cities.

One of these cities is ideal for the automobile. It is spread out, to avoid creating traffic bottlenecks. This sprawl is further exaggerated to make room for parking. Unfortunately, personal cars are exclusionary because of cost and necessary license restrictions.

What's worse, sprawled, car-friendly cities are unfriendly to pedestrians and public transit. You get bus stops that are simultaneously too few and too many (a bunch of stops with only one passenger). A city full of skyscrapers is terrible for cars, because your roads clog up whenever the drivers try to enter or leave (welcome to LA!) but it's great to pedestrians, because you get so much available in a short walking distance.

The point about spreading out horizontally is factually incorrect. Much like the natural limit to building height is floor plate dedicated to elevator shafts, the natural limit to sprawl is roads and traffic. In general we have a lot of unused vertical space, but not a whole lot of spare roadway.

The word “only”. The article argues well that efficiency should not be absolutely important - but the remark about Freud missteps by treating efficiency (in this instance, of vertical building) as absolutely unimportant, as opposed to merely unabsolutely important - a factor to be balanced against others.

A particularly egregious example of overhorizontalization would be Robert Moses’ drive to have people commute into NYC by car from Long Island. While, yes, there tends to be more greenery out there, I would contend this clashes with the author’s “harmony with nature” principle by driving an extreme increase in the reliance on fossil fuels, as well as the “make people happy” principle by lengthening commutes as compared to the higher population density permitted with vertical building.

Spreading horizontally doesn't scale. What our society needs is more density, not less.

High density is bad for the soul. What we actually need is fewer people, but each doing more meaningful work.

That’s the statement that sold me on the article, actually.