Go to public hearings. Their demands are almost never reasonable. New housing should never add any traffic ever, and it should look fantastic (with different people differing on what this means) and it shouldn't have children because there's no way the schools could cope with the "massive increase", and it should have enough parking to handle the entire extended family at Thanksgiving (in a severely land-constrained area) and by the way it should also be actually "affordable" (far below market rates).

They really don't generally argue in good faith.

I've been to plenty of neighborhood meetings. The "issue" most of the time is a personal anxiety over change. Why should society cater to that?