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Notes -
Many fewer people than otherwise, because:
(1) ownership of land and the ability to build beautiful things in places where the internet will notice is stupendously expensive (if the construction is private), or locked behind layers of bureaucracy, procedure, and stultifying local politics that few people have the stomach for (if the construction is public).
(2) Many of these things (e.g. libraries, museums) have been rendered culturally obsolete as sites of mass access by the internet.
(3) Most of these other things (railroad stations, parks, apartment buildings) are not worth building beautifully because public administration is unwilling and/or unable to patrol and enforce order in public spaces, and the populace does not recognize public order as a goal worth pursuing and personally-enacting. If everything is just going to be defaced and graffiti'ed and have drug addicts sleeping and shitting on it, what's the point?
(4) Substitution of mass industrial production for individual skills has rendered the construction methods and skills necessary for classical ornamentation styles either extremely expensive or generally unknown.
[edits for format and readability]
That does not explain why European railway/bus stations are also ugly
Yes it's more of an architecture problem. Often modern buildings when designed by elite architects and using novel construction methods (which big railroad/airport commissions often do) are as expensive as building in traditional styles would be.
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