I’m a Berkeley alum and the counterpoint is that, while People’s Park is some (relatively) rare green space near downtown Berkeley, it has been, for the past 20 years, solely the domain of the homeless, drug-addicted, and mentally unwell. It’s not usable public space for most residents. You cannot have a peaceful picnic in People’s Park. The housing proposal included a facility to house and offer services for homeless people, to its credit.
I have mixed feelings about it being turned into housing, but it was unusable as a park and Berkeley has a severe housing shortage. Only freshmen* are guaranteed on-campus housing, a large fraction of the housing in town is owned and operated by a convicted human trafficker, and there was a highly-publicized story about a student who recently completed his degree by living in SoCal and flying to Berkeley a few times a week. The situation is quite dire and Berkeley is really doing quite well when it comes to not having surface parking. There are a couple of lots near the football stadium that are surface lots, but most everything else is a parking structure, usually with an activated roof of some sort.