Also, in some/all places the elevator union got basically all manufacturing processes banned so they have to be assembled on site by union workers.

And in the US, nobody in the relevant unions or regulators cares about cities - elevator workers and firefighters are all suburbanite pickup-truck-Americans. So they're rarely personally interested in anything that isn't about driving a big car around really fast. This has a big impact on road layouts and the outside of buildings, because of course everyone listens to firefighters, but all they want to is drive a big red truck everywhere with nothing stopping them.