Here is a bird's eye view of the Don Mills streetscape at the intersection of Don Mills Road and Lawrence Avenue on a Toronto street map. Notice how the meandering streets and cul sacs make any sort of direct travel difficult and time consuming. Buses and cars burn up time and fuel trying to penetrate the maze. Pedestrian travel to meet your neighbour or walk to school becomes a major hike. The major arteries, Lawrence and Don Mills, became choked with traffic because they must funnel all the east west traffic.
Neighbours can meet, kids can walk to school, and the traffic is more evenly distributed.
This people friendly pattern is what the new urbanism of Oakville's Oak Park hopes to emulate. Industrialist E.P. Taylor owned the North York property and nearly named it Eptown. He still had his horse farm in the middle of the development when my family moved there in 1965, a dozen years after the first houses had appeared. Doing things on foot was intended as a defining principle. We were all able to reach our neighbourhood schools almost entirely through parkland.