This field note is intentionally structured as an ongoing research project. The objective is not to collect compliments from city leaders. It is to document what prevents a simpler city experience from being implemented: procurement, ordinances, department boundaries, budgets, liability, existing vendors, politics, staffing, data or something else entirely.
The pattern across those objections may ultimately be more valuable than any single product assumption. The obstacle that repeats becomes the implementation problem worth solving.
What comes next
This note will be expanded with interviews, source material, field observations and direct evidence as the work develops. The point is to make the thinking public enough to be challenged — and structured enough to become useful.