I love the angle of comparing in numbers!

I wonder, how do they calculate the population density for Melbourne? Is it what's in EU cities would be defined as the "Metropolitan area" or the "inner-city Urban area"? From this picture I wouldn't actually exclude that they could mean a wider radius, = "the Metropolitan area". This would be somewhat close to Paris then, because Paris is at 698.976 pop / km2. Though still less densely populated, admittedly.

Honestly, after living in the Netherlands for long enough, also in cities that have only a fraction of Melbourne's density, I'm quite convinced that density is just an excuse pushed so hard by oil and car companies that we've grown to accept it without critical analysis. But it's hard to overcome this thinking, because as minimumchips puts it above, all these calculations feel like hippie/nonsense/unrealistic if you've never actually seen how an alternative can feel like. I especially like that gif specifically - shows it well :)

By the way, if you want to try and see if videos of the alternatives could corrupt your soul - I highly recommend @NotJustBikes on youtube. For example, his most-popular video about "stroads" (street + road).