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There are plenty of places in the global south where labor is still comparable to mid century America cost-wise. Those places build the same kinds of gleaming glass towers that crowd North American downtowns.

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You could easily chalk that up to fashion. Glass and steel wireframe polygons are all the rage in the rich countries. Why would a poor country want to look poor?

Also, if it's comparably cheap and fast in the rich countries, it's still cheap and fast in poor countries.

The argument being made above is that it isn't fashion, it's the relative cost of labor that's the significant factor. Places like Columbo have extremely cheap skilled labor, and also face incredibly high material costs because the domestic supply chain simply doesn't produce the necessary materials. You could produce artistic decorative elements locally very easily. If you've been inside many of these places, that's often what's inside where the design is dictated by local cultural preferences rather than political vision and whatever the small number of skyscraper architecture firms want to design.

A gleaming metropolis of glass and steel is fashion though.

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