People use up remarkably little space to actually live. In dense cities, multiple stories mean you can fit 3-10 times as many people as in single stories in the same area. But even with single stories, not much land is used.
What IS important is area used for agriculture. It's vastly more than land used for roads and houses and other buildings. Cut down on that (without sacrificing amount of food produced--possible using technology and policy together) and footprint on nature is reduced. In fact, less land is now used for agriculture than was used in the late 1940s, even though population has more than doubled: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2012/march/data-feature...
That is due to vastly higher yields. We can go further and eliminate much farmland altogether by growing most of our calories from single-celled organisms. Given the processed food of the current industrial food system, the end-quality would be unchanged for the most part and may even improve. Even if not used for human consumption, it can displace animal feed (and already is used to some extent). Meat substitutes can also help.