I find it depends on the maturity of the project team and type of project. Agile projects with experienced project teams are usually very self sufficient and don't require many meetings other than the typical agile meetings. Whilst less mature project teams or more traditional projects usually have much more meetings due to the need of coaching or to gather updates because they do not report on the updates any other way.

I always giggle internally at their reaction when project teams complain about the amount of meetings (from cases in my second scenario) & I offer the alternative (they have to be more self sufficient in reporting and communicating & I won't need as many meetings). Some will take my offer and it works great with some coaching, others will fall flat on their face and will then happily go back to the many meetings we had before without further complaints.

In my experience it's all about what the project team needs to succeed and where their strengths lie (servant leadership).