gobbling up all the available street parking in the area and causing businesses to suffer as they can’t be accessed by a wider majority of people from the suburbs. It’s a cart before the horse kind of thing

On the contrary, building transit before density is what’s putting the cart before the horse. Transit cannot get the funding it needs to get built until after the congestion caused by density demonstrates that it’s necessary. Refusing to build density before transit just means you never get either.

Also, the notion that it’s wrong to build density that adds customers within walking distance for fear of losing customers driving in from the suburbs is pants-on-head nonsense.