I generally don’t think “people” should determine what a person decides to build on private property, no. The “traditional middle-density” architecture in those neighborhoods you like is insufficient to accommodate a growing and prosperous DC. If you want to bulldoze McLean to build rowhouses, that is great, but those same rowhouses are standing in the way of reduced housing costs in DC. Single-family rowhouses are less dense than a five-story building.

The democratic aesthetic preferences of a lot of people would be simply “whatever prevents new development in my neighborhood” and that is insufficient in my view.