> adding more people to an area increases congestion, period

Yes, but so what? That's tautological. "Adding more people" isn't an independent variable, it's the economic ground truth over which we're trying to optimize.

The point is that if you need to build N units of housing to match your M added economic activity, building them denser leads to less congestion.

I mean, duh. This really isn't a complicated idea.

Again, you're imagining a single community divorced from inconvenient ideas like "population growth" or "economic development" (and even going so far as to conflate those with "destruction").

Well, sorry. It's desirable because it's developing. You don't get to change the minds of all the people that want to live there, all you can do is help them decide where to live.