I mean this is going to be hard to phrase without sounding like an old man shouting at the clouds, but it comes down to the fact that I don't want to live next door to dozens of people. It's one of the reasons I chose not to live in a denser area. People and their cars are loud. I don't want light pollution shining onto my property at night. I don't want a tall building next door with windows looming into my yard. I would be sad to see all the old growth trees cut down to make way for the construction or street widened for the traffic.

And you can say if I don't like those things then don't live somewhere where it's a thing. Which is exactly why I live where I do, and if that situation changed I'd leave. But it's not hard to empathize with people that want to preserve the kind of community they bought into.