I hate to tell Josn this, but that image was created by central planners. Urban planners decided how to zone that area and, most likely created an incentive for a gas station to sprout up right around there, from which they expected something like this to develop.
The urban planners just thought such a development was a good idea, as compared to the planners of Moscow, who thought greenspace and housing was pretty cool.
Both types of planner thought their type was the most "efficient". They just had different parameters for what efficiency meant.
Actually it's not central planning because any fast food shithole or gas station conglomerate could open a location on the lots allocated specifically to those types of businesses :smuglord:
there are a lot of places in America that lack central planning. Houston for instance is the largest area on earth without formal central planning, and that's why it's horrifying sprawl with highway access roads right in front of people's houses, or elementary schools built next to sulfur refineries
Houston has no formal zoning or planning. The closest thing is a list development ordinances that says how roads are supposed to be built, but nothing about where roads need to go.