I feel like your last sentence fails to acknowledge the conditions that a lot of UI designers are often just one in a line of cooks. A great deal of UI designe

I feel like your last sentence fails to acknowledge the conditions that a lot of UI designers are often just one in a line of cooks. A great deal of UI designers aren't given the leeway or opportunity to make profound impacts on their particular projects for reasons including limitations of: engineering manpower, data, time, budget, or corporate willingness. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the time, the majority of UI designers are given project criteria LONG after a lot of things about the project have been set in stone, including if the solution for a particular problem should even be a UI in a device! The city planner you are thinking of is often a Director/Chief of Product (if an organization even has one) or CCO, not strictly a UI Designer.