Exactly.

We don't actually want big, vast cities.

Starfield proves that with New Atlantis. Its annoyingly huge, spread out pointlessly (for gameplay purposes, obviously a capital city is going to be huge lore/realistically), and is all around irritating to find stuff in.. As an example

We want cities that feel big and vast, while being manageable and navigable for players playing a game.

We want cities that feel that are full of life and bristling with NPCs, without actually having so many NPCs that that you'd need a cray supercomputer to process it all.