Each circle is one application the city is currently processing. Turn a stage off to see the rest more clearly.
The file you picked
Biggest first ·
That answer is not in any single file — it is in the shape of all 112 of them together: which stage actually holds things up, which months the filings cluster in, which kinds of application stall and which sail through. Nobody publishes that, because reading 112 files by hand to find it is not work a person can reasonably do.
It is, however, exactly what a machine is for. We read the whole register every fortnight, put each file on the process, and look at what the pile says. Some of it confirms what people in the city already suspect. Some of it does not.
See what the register says →For example
The slow part of San Jose is not the decision. Files that have been approved sit waiting on legal clearance longer than they ever waited to be judged — which means an approval date is a much weaker signal than most people treat it as.
That is one reading of one column. There are a dozen more.