The origin story for the Union Jack-inspired sidewalks on my university’s quad was the president looking out his window on a snowy day and seeing all of the footprints in the snow and asking the facilities to put diagonals in.
Guess some schools have wiser faculty than others.
The city and the school are different management structures. The issue is the mayor of the city isn’t focused solely on the school nor should he be. But this means change takes longer.