She's got a point..

It's a major metropolitan area, a hub for finance and commerce, and the streets are empty. There are people in the buildings, focused on work, but nobody loitering outside or even travelling on the streets. No street food vendors, not even any homeless people around here. The ground is even clean enough for someone to sit on without worry! It's almost as if this magic stuff is real...

Yes, this is a cop-out. Rendering crowds is *HARD* y'all. I render with an RTX 3090 and struggle with more than 6-7 people in a scene. I've learned some tricks to fix this in the future, but it's still a complicated task.