As a planner and a person with a quantitative orientation, I think you've just illustrated some of the wickedness of many problems in planning. You've talked about stress, which will be dependent on the user--one user's stress is another user's expedient route. Then there's the hyper-local urban form characteristics that you allude to.
That isn't to say we shouldn't apply quantitative analysis to such problems. It just should illustrate how easy it can be to oversimply problems involving highly stochastic human behavior and preferences. And, since there is no complete theory of Urban planning, we should be prepared to exist in an uncomfortable state where neither the ends or means are universally agreed on.
That isn't to say we shouldn't apply quantitative analysis to such problems. It just should illustrate how easy it can be to oversimply problems involving highly stochastic human behavior and preferences. And, since there is no complete theory of Urban planning, we should be prepared to exist in an uncomfortable state where neither the ends or means are universally agreed on.