Wow, great discussion. And so many valid points. Thanks Kalebxtentacion for the post. One thing you mentioned that I think is understated is that there is a lot of internal migration of Newarkers into these buildings so it's not all "outsiders" as many people believe. And there are a lot of people of color living in them as well (People have different definitions of POC; Indians and other Asians are not white; are we counting them or do we just mean black and brown people?) But there are also a lot of new people moving in, many not of color, and that's fine. It's a city and cities tend to be transient and should be a melting pot of cultures and ideas.

I've grown to like the design although I agree it should be more contextual. But design is subjective and not everyone is going to be happy. From an esthetic and symbolic standpoint, skyscrapers are great for the city. They show modernity and growth. Personally, I care more about streetscape so I feel infill developments have a greater impact (which I've expressed before on this thread.) Change you can see from the ground and not the sky is what impacts those who live and interact in the city day to day. In terms of jobs, residential bldgs don't employ that many people, so the true job gains are from construction which are temporary. I'm not sure how many of those are going to Newarkers. Some data would help here.

The reason I'm not going out of my way to support this project is because, the developer has to show some good faith of working with the community, and I don't get that sense from them at this point. It's an annoying process but current residents are stakeholders and should have their concerns acknowledged; especially if they own in the area.

Personally, as I stated before, these residential projects cause displacement even if they're being built on a vacant lot. It effects the overall rental price for the neighborhood and those have escalated sharply downtown in the past few years without any measure of mitigating it. As someone who's lived downtown for years and see myself being priced out, its hard for me to advocate for the mechanism driving my own displacement. Selfish, I know. If it were being mitigated, I'd be on board as I'm generally, pro development. At the end of the day, these developers will still get it built and make tons of money that none of us will see...