The Cult of the Fantasy Pedestrian

Strong Towns has a post by Daniel Herriges talking about what he calls the Fantasy Pedestrian.

Designing streets for the Fantasy Pedestrian is really, really easy, because their behavior is 100 percent predictable in every circumstance. Just lay out the rules. But designing streets for real people, who take shortcuts and do spontaneous and expedient and sometimes even foolhardy things, requires more critical thought.

Of course, since cities preference the car, the designs really disadvantage the pedestrians who cross where and when it is inconvenient. Their justification of not being more accommodating, he argues, requires pretending to believe in fictional orderly pedestrians.