it's better as long as everybody realizes how they got to the current situation, and is willing to continue to make experimental, ad-hoc adjustements to suit the current needs as they change.
the problem happens when somebody decides a design that was arrived upon by spontaneous growth is perfect as-is, and when needs change instead of just fixing it, you need a 6-month study and a planning commission to make a change to existing infrastructure that only had five minutes of thought put into the original design.
I don't favor arbitrary requirement for studies but I think it's fair to acknowledge that whatever has grown organically over the years does have legitimate reasons why it's the way that it is, even if it wasn't master planned (arguably it probably makes more sense if it evolved) and so you cant really assume that the status quo can be dismissed just because it's not consciously deliberate
It presumably had a good reason for being in each intermediate state before the one you became attached to, and people were presumably attached to those.
the problem happens when somebody decides a design that was arrived upon by spontaneous growth is perfect as-is, and when needs change instead of just fixing it, you need a 6-month study and a planning commission to make a change to existing infrastructure that only had five minutes of thought put into the original design.