Don't blame the economists - it is the Dismal Science after all. Economists just measure and model things. There is now more cross-fertilization with Social Science in trying to measure "intangibles" like happiness. Internet and social media are making it much more scientific to measure such things.

It is politicians and developers who put a value-judgement on growth - specifically GDP growth. And they are perfectly rational in doing so. In most jurisdictions the developers hire the politicians and so they adopt that value-judgement. The other 99.9% of the constituents are largely ignored on this topic.