Personally I agree with East Edge, but that battle was lost long ago. It was hard enough just getting an allowance for ANY decent-sized buildings, and the compromise was this view corridor stuff with the higher buildings along the perimeter and lower down.
And while, again, I personally agree the Hill incumbents would likely be better off with a generally denser Lower Hill development, that's not how too many of them saw (and see) it. In their way of thinking, the prize is "re-connecting" the Hill to the Golden Triangle, and they see dense development of the Lower Hill as walling them off instead. I think that reflects a lack of imagination as to what would happen with a densely-developed Lower Hill, but it is always harder to sell people on something speculative (the benefits of proximity to a Lower Hill that doesn't yet exist) versus something more concrete (the benefits of connection to a Golden Triangle that already does exist).
And then there is the history--the story told over and over is how the Lower Hill was plowed down, and Crosstown was added, and it cut the Hill off from Downtown. Once again, there are different ways of telling a new ending to that story. But I think simply undoing that history has a certain natural appeal to many. Which, again, to them means developing the Lower Hill more along the lines of what it used to be, versus as something entirely new.
ETA:
So this is the sort of historic image I think many people who are very conscious of the history of the Lower Hill have in mind:
Compare that with this vintage 2012 rendering, and you can see where they are coming from at least:
OK, so now the 2019 plan looks something like this:
And yeah, I would go denser still. But that's a long way from the historic Lower Hill, and a long way from what a lot of people were thinking would happen circa 2012.