Cities are like a chocolate chip cookie. Most of it is cookie. The good stuff is the chips.
The walkable areas are the best, yummiest parts. Those are the chocolate chips. The cookie wouldn't be the same without them. This is what we're talking about when we describe a "place". It's the areas that make your community the money it needs to function. They're the places you meet and make memories. They're the thing that makes your city unique and uniquely irreplaceable.
The cookie part is what holds them together. Those are the network and roadways that connect up the good parts. We call those links. Sometimes they have land uses like farms or factories, but they're more for the going than the being or doing. Personally, I like the going, but you can't build connections from a dashboard.
The problem in suburbia is that we haven't made a good distinction between the two. That leads to a messy, muddled cookie. It gets too crunchy in some places and slimy gooey in others. If the ingredients are good, then it can still taste good, but a cookie that's greasy in the middle and too crunchy on the edges is not the delight it should be--and the raw cookie dough could make you sick (at least in theory). If nothing else, it will give you a tummy ache. In the same way, when a piece of pavement doesn't know if it's a street or a road, people take chances they shouldn't and some end up getting hurt.
What's even worse is the oversaturated, store-bought mess of a cookie that comes cheap and tastes just as cheap. It will do in a pinch, but it's no way to live. This is what our suburban stroads have created. Consistent, reliably mediocre mindlessness. It's munchies that you chew on to satisfy your boredom but doesn't have enough life in them to do that.