I work at Insomniac, and can confirm that the "architectural copyright" laws are indeed a limiting factor on getting specific landmark buildings into the game.

I work at Insomniac, and can confirm that the "architectural copyright" laws are indeed a limiting factor on getting specific landmark buildings into the game. Further, the agreements we signed to license buildings for the first game do not necessarily hold true for sequels, so getting all of the cool buildings in New York City into the game is always, always going to be a hurdle, popularity of the first game be damned.