This is not quite a spherical cow and there is something to be learned here, but really, I'd like to see this with

- non-square-grid cities with highways, public transport, …

- realistic synthetic populations doing non-random destination selection (nobody randomly goes to a supermarket at the other end of a city, after all)

- actual traffic simulation with jams (or at least using real traffic data)

and then evaluate both the energy use and travel times. That being said, doing this kind of thing, e.g. with ActivitySim, even for one real city, is quite a bit of work.

Here's a preprint from 2025: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00100v1

Surprisingly it’s not a line

I think an unplanned city or town that isnt a grid is the best. Grid lines become boring very quickly because they are repetitive without any interesting parks or places that are different to stop and look at. If everything is the same its probably has the same busy roads with little or no trees or shade for a hot day.

This was an interesting tangential read. Fascinating to read about the first Sim City games and the assumptions/calculations it made in scoring. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49476193