There are also a lot of people on the ground that don't want it to work, or will protest it, and that's where state power seems to work well to cut through opposition and just build things. Certainly a lot of tradeoffs are made to allow that but the Chinese government seems very good at building.
I'm not sure if it's the model or the particular culture working though - aren't there also a lot of party bureaucrats over there? So the core is authority or agency directed at the center of it, I think.
So get government out of the space here. Keep essential regulations for ensuring safety and so that insurance companies can cover liabilities. Let the free market play it out.
If the profit incentives are there(which there are as higher EROI = lowest cost per kWh), then it is a race to who can provide the product(energy) at the lowest cost more reliably.
Government unfortunately has a monopoly here as traditional reactors had proliferations concerns, needed much large capital, and political will. But if reactors can be modular and costs low that a city could afford it, then you can also have decentralized reactors just like you have with solar.
Like I said, if you have some pathway to a functional government (either to cut regulations sufficiently or to build it, I don't think either is much simpler) then you should get on that part first. But I'm not holding out much hope. We can barely reduce regulations to build houses, and voters like houses. You'll have environmental protests a plenty for city scale small reactors if they're in anyone's "backyard" at all