>> The urban planning doesn't create hundreds of cul-de-sacs.
>
>I don't know. When Tore came to pick us up in Oslo to go out into the surrounding area, he had trouble getting to us because of one-way streets, and getting out of Oslo was quite the trick as well.

That's because Oslo, like probably most of the other European cities, wasn't really planned for this much of traffic. One way streets are only a half measure (pardon the poor pun). I've had the same experience driving through Budapest, Novi Sad and Belgrade, where I'm supposed to be more or less at home - the traffic patterns change on a whim, because locals complain of unbearable noise, fumes and whatnot, so this or that street becomes one-way, which will supposedly ease the traffic, though it mostly just gets more cars circling around, or the same number of cars circling for a longer time. I once measured, one wrong turn in Budapest took me 5km to get back to where I needed to go. In Belgrade, it was only 3km, because I knew the place better ;).

>I agree with you about cul-de-sacs. FWIW, it's the local governments who tend to require the developments to be built that way. Supposedly, good traffic planning calls for dumping everyone onto the major roads and keeping them off the neighborhood streets, unless they live there.

Nice but now seems quite counterproductive. You get only local traffic, only the people who live here and their visitors, driving down the street - but then they do have to drive a lot, because there's nothing for a few miles, nothing but more houses (which are never sold - they sell homes only... is "house" politically incorrect now?), so whatever anyone wants, they have to drive to it. So you don't get a neighborhood, people walking by and saying hello, you get a long dormitory with just as long a parking line. And if you get to live close to the only entrance to it, you get all of the traffic, but still nothing much nearby - you too have to drive.

I've heard that this single entrance policy is for security reasons. So any burglar or whatever on a motorbike could just run any other way, and would need to be chased around. Also, what happens with emergency response if the only entrance to the place gets blocked?

It may be bad if your street is the only shortcut between two neighborhoods - but if there are several, you get only your share. And that's still locals only; most people won't know about it and would drive where the signs show.

Within 300m of where I am, I can point at at least three places where you'd have to drive between 500m and 1km or so, to cover a distance of 3m. Which is the highest praise to cul-de-sacs one can imagine ;).