Most of it is just the need to conform to CDOT design standards. Some things like lane widths and streetlights are heavily standardized. Impossible to deviate if you want to dedicate your street as a public street. Other things like street furniture, curb bumpouts, crosswalks, landscaping, bike facilities etc can be customized, especially if the ongoing maintenance is paid for by a developer or by multiple landowners via an SSA.
CDOT has two streetlight designs, one is the oldtimey Victorian black iron one (aka the Dick Daley special), the other is this brushed aluminum "davit" design. They standardized on these two designs so that a streetlight can be quickly replaced from a stockpile when a car plows into it. There are other designs in the city, like the lightoliers on Michigan Ave or the sharp-elbow design at O'Hare and S. Lake Shore Drive, but replacing these is difficult and takes a long time so CDOT doesn't usually allow them.
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la forme d'une ville change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel...
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