The following passage is adapted from an essay on urban design:

The planners who redrew the city's downtown in the 1960s prized efficiency above all, and they measured efficiency in the speed with which a car could pass through. Wide one-way arterials were carved through old neighborhoods; sidewalks narrowed; the small irregular squares where people had once lingered were paved into turning lanes. The result was a downtown that could be crossed in minutes and inhabited by no one. What the planners failed to see is that a street is not merely a conduit but a room, and that the value of a room lies precisely in the reasons it gives a person to stop.