In reply to Illimart.

I feel like you've missed my point.
At no point do I suggest population control. I simply question what target population sizes are. Generally, conversation is around how to get the population to grow, but I've never heard a conversation about how big we want to get before we stop growing.
Your points on the relative health of rural vs urban areas are not at all related to what I said. Your facts are true, but the correlation isn't necessarily there. Living in rural areas doesn't make you smoke. It also holds that in the case of an epidemic you're probably better off somewhere remote. Superbugs aren't coming from sparsely populated areas. But that's very much a tangent.
Activities: each to their own. There's very little I can't do here that I can in Vancouver that I have a real desire to. On the other hand, I can afford a place to live.
And I've lived in China. First, the "population control" practiced there is far more nuanced and far less draconian than most people would have you believe (not that there aren't issues, just that it's not as intense as you seem to think). If I'm not mistaken, the one-child policy is now gone.
Second, I'd challenge you to live in an intensely urbanized portion of China and continue to think that we should be doing everything we can to encourage even more population growth.
Also, you forgot to mention that high population densities have lower environmental impact. I'm aware of the upsides of cities. That doesn't make me think every city in the world should aim to be the size of Shanghai.
And to finish up: if the fact that smoking, obesity, and strokes occurs more in northern BC than in southern can be chalked up to population size, can we extend the same arguments to undernourishment in the slums of India's large cities?