>keeping neighborhoods unchanged for generations, making sure everyone up-and-down society gets veto power over any project

You're giving government too much benefit of the doubt. It's not even private stakeholders vetoing these things. Often times is even opposed to these small projects in ways that the most tiny cheap concessions couldn't mitigate. A great many of these projects are dying because the government and its bureaucracy can't/won't approve them, not because anyone doesn't want them.