People always seem to miss the point. Superman has had a lot of fights like that in various versions of the character.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BJ1-trrgqc
That's pretty much the "mic drop" to the Zack Snyder criticisms, given that it's not even that unique a situation. If you take a look on youtube for Superman clips of brawls from the various cartoons you'll see tons of damage being done. The comics are nothing if not worse when you look at his entire continuity.
This is not to say that I don't understand the point, but super hero battles in general have a long history of being incredibly destructive and causing tons of collateral damage. Yes, heroes will save people if they can and happen to be right there, but that isn't always the case. This has been a big part of the underlying logic behind things like Marvel's "Mutant Menace" and the old "Damage Control Inc." (which existed specifically to repair the damage after block-leveling super hero fights). So pretty much you can't say Marvel has been more responsible. If anything the fact that they show post apocalyptic futures where supers got out of control (fighting norms or otherwise) says a lot. In DC-Wildstorm half the point of "Stormwatch" it seemed was to punkhammer super heroes that got out of line, that turned into "The Authority" which had super heroes dictating terms to the world which when written well was one of the more compelling titles I ever read.
I didn't like Zack Snyder's way of doing "Man Of Steel" either but for different reasons, I think trying to humanize Superman is a bad idea. If anything the big fight with Zod and the other Kryptonians are pretty much live action/CGI versions of what those brawls are actually supposed to be like in a lot of cases. If the bad guy doesn't care about colleraral damage, it's not like Superman is a moron who is going to say "Drrr, well go ahead then", he's probably going to cause tons of it himself, but in an effort to minimize damage. If he can save someone who is right there, he'll do so, but otherwise when fighting at that level, yes.. tall buildings are going to be demolished with people inside of them. The Justice League goes at it in downtown Metropolis with Darkseid it's going to cause a huge mess.
At any rate, one reason why I use that clip when it comes up is that Captain Marvel is roughly on par with Superman (when written correctly) as is General Zod (being the same thing Superman is).
Now in some works like "Superman Vs. The Elite" (another Cartoon) it's clever to see Superman working ahead of the game and bringing out the Super Robots to do damage control (most people forget he has those as well, but at the same time that's where he conceptually planned things out, and the bad guys weren't all *that* bad and agreed to have their little duel on the moon specifically to avoid this kind of damage. Things moved to Metropolis when they were pretty much running away from him.
As a side not the so called "Elite" were an analogy to "The Authority" albeit changed around a lot to be far less sympathetic. DC owned Wildstorm. Also The Authority/Wildstorm in general did terrible, terrible, things to characters that were designed to look well known DC or Marvel characters, oftentimes in great numbers, so it was time for some creative "payback". Manchester Black is basically a re-arranged version of Wildstorm's "Jenny Sparks". This has nothing to do with anything important though, other than the fact that I mentioned "The Authority" in part because that's another book where civilians die in collateral damage, we have entire cities getting leveled by armies of super humans. Though again to be fair at one time when they were expecting it The Authority did manage to evacuate planet earth (the whole planet) for a fight.
I think it's most appropriate to say that a super HERO will not always save civilians and minimize collateral damage, they will do so when they can, but the difference is they aren't as callous about it. At the end of the day if some bad guy shows up who will kill/enslave everyone, losing a few buildings dodging say Darkseid's Omega Beams (which will slice them in half) and the assorted people inside or around those buildings is simply the cost of doing business. It needs to be weighted against the threat. Even in the slap fight between Captain MArvel and Superman above, one has to understand that Superman is doing this because he believes there is a threat to the entire city (I mean it's Lex bloody Luthor up to something) a few thousand people and their buildings vs. millions of people, it's easy math for Superman.
How realistic the writer is being is also a factor to consider with comics, the more "realistic" the more collateral damage. In a kid's comic it's okay to gloss over everything and have Superman or another hero do their thing and save everyone in cheesy, ultra-4 color, style. That kind of thing can be fun. However when your writing above that, there is no way super heroes and villains cutting loose isn't going to hurt anyone when you get to a certain level.
Superman is an icon, he tries harder than anyone else, but at the end of the day, especially as comics have grown up (even cartoons) you just can't have a perfect resolution. Zack was a bit too grimdark overall, but his fight scenes did sort of show what a battle like the one in that cartoon above might look like in the "real world"... and as I said, heroes smashing through walls, getting thrown through buildings, buildings falling over, random cars being used as weapons (some comics have even referenced super-hero insurance existing for this), that's all pretty typical company by company.
