In 2049 the cities are somewhat sterile and you don't feel the masses of people living in it, but it's like that already today. In a city with 10+ million people you don't fall over each other when walking down the street. Usually the city is just big enough to compensate for high population. Sure you can have slums, but that wasn't explored in the movie, as far as I can remember.
And this likeness to today's cities is what left the biggest impression with me. That you can have the planet dead in some meaningful way and have a lifestyle so much like ours now. It reminds me of fact that most of our current ways of living in a metropolis are alredy geared towards being independent of non-city eco-systems.