You don't grow the city population by moving people from one block of the city to another. Development is meant to increase the population. The city used to have close to half a million residents. The city fathers built an infrastructure to support 1 million people because the expected to expand Newark into all of Essex County. But lo and behold racist anti Italian and anti Irish bigotry dominating the 19th century NJ legislature passed laws to prohibit Newark, Camden & JC from growing further and introduced the dead end obstacle & referendum process to annexations. Newark has the same square mileage as Manhattan. Obviously Newark is not going to get manhattanized, but it can easily support half a million.