I recommend checking out the Vital City NYC link i shared. It articulates some of the “specific dynamics” you’re thoughtfully, if turgidly requesting.

no more turgid than the much of the boner for building boosterism, just more notes, which may not be a bad thing if some of the scope of consideration could stand to be inflated.

before I check vital city, should I anticipate that they go beyond articulating “here’s a series of public institutions that took a long time to do things“ and perhaps even into “here’s our theory of the incentives and other motivations that underlie the sociology of this behavior”? or mostly the former?

Put down the thesaurus, my dude. And yes.

Thank you for using "turgidly" as such. You've given me a new appreciation for the term.