Quick, list the top few things North Americans like to complain about! Politics, the weather, questionable pro sports officiating... did traffic make your list? It made mine.

People like to blame traffic on one simple, but logical, cause: there are "too many cars" on the road. Opponents of new development, in particular, cite traffic more often than any other issue as a reason for their opposition. And in most places you’ll find a widespread consensus that traffic on residential streets is particularly objectionable. It introduces noise and pollution, and most importantly, it poses a safety hazard. Keep through traffic to major thoroughfares and off side streets, goes the logic. Development approvals, especially for retail businesses, often even come with stipulations about closing access points to ensure that neighborhood streets aren’t affected by those coming and going.

And we’ve gotten quite good at meeting those stipulations. Visit almost any American city or suburb at the peak moment of weekday rush hour, and you’ll find that most neighborhood streets in that city are so empty you could safely lie down in the middle of them and take a decent nap. Congestion is a problem confined to a handful of choke points: busy, limited-access highways and arterial roads. Most of the pavement we've built and committed to maintain sees only sparse use.

The motivation is understandable. And yet, this approach—keeping the cars on a handful of major routes and out of our neighborhoods—carries with it some troublesome trade-offs. In fact, it’s one crucial reason that traffic (and griping about traffic) is such a fixture of life in the modern American city.

That reason is simple: a hierarchical street network, in which most vehicle trips are funneled onto a small number of major routes, is a perfect recipe for congestion. A well-connected grid, on the other hand, is as good an antidote to congestion as will ever exist.

Want to solve traffic problems, make better use of existing infrastructure (and thus save your city serious money in maintenance costs), and protect neighborhood quality of life? Then we’re likely going to have to be open to seeing a few more cars on our neighborhood streets. The good news: the negative impacts of this have been greatly exaggerated—if (big “if”) we get some key things right about street design.

Why City Streets Should Work More Like a Wetland and Less Like a Shipping Lane