I would say the first step is to stop calling each other assholes. CodeNext has winners and losers and people are fighting for their best interests.
The people who mostly do not live in the affected neighborhoods want it passed. Developers want it passed because they can buy an older house in central Austin, knock it down, and build 2-4 small houses on that lot and sell them at downtown condo level prices and make money. Affordable housing advocates like it because they have studies that say that these smaller houses will be less expensive, or they are trying to get language into CodeNext so that developers would be required to build some cheaper units along with the more expensive ones. People that want to live central in a smaller home but currently can't afford what is on the market (think young single folks or a couple without kids) are in favor of it because they want to live central.
The people who mostly do live in the affected neighborhoods do not want it passed. They moved into the neighborhood because they liked it, some a long time ago, and they do not want the family house next to them replaced with 2-4 houses with 4-10 adults living on the property. The new code requires only one parking space per unit and it's likely that this new form of living would put more cars on the street. Existing residents do not the area in front of their houses turned into perpetual parking by their neighbors. There are concerns that doing this will increase the cost of land for those that choose not to redevelop their lots, which may mean higher property taxes. Many of the existing residents worked on neighborhood plans at the urging of the city just a few years ago and they want the neighborhood plans enforced.
If you tried this in any neighborhood in the region, you would get push-back from the people already living there and support from those that will profit from the change. In my opinion, the people that want this change did not work at all with the people affected by the change to see what they would support. Both sides are now entrenched. The process of creating the maps was not transparent and did not involve the people living in the affected areas. Many people felt that some unseen committee was redrawing their neighborhood without their consent.
If I was in charge, I would stop the current proposal and see if we can create more communities like the West Campus overlay. Find areas of town that would welcome high rise density and then densify the heck out of that. The Domain area development could be redeveloped into a West Campus like neighborhood all the way from Mopac to Metric, with existing rail service. The Dell campus area around Parmer and IH-35 is about the size of downtown and it could be redeveloped into a high density area, with bus service to connect it to downtown. Most of the Robinson Ranch area is undeveloped and it already has a rail line running through it, it could be a "ribbon" shaped downtown with 3-4 frequent rail stops connecting West Campus like neighborhoods. Highland Mall is being redeveloped on the same rail line and the Texas DPS owns a large property nearby that could be a mid-rise or high-rise neighborhood, with bus service on Lamar and a short walk to rail service.
I think we should focus on development like West Campus and downtown, and not try to disrupt our single family neighborhoods. We can create dense, connected neighborhoods without CodeNext. But doing that has different winners and losers than CodeNext, so you will find people opposed to my ideas. They are not assholes, just people with an interest in the outcome.