The useful shortcut through a block can save more time than the grand entrance ever impresses.

Utility and display serve different purposes and only one of them gets a budget. A grand frontage is admired for a few seconds by people arriving; a passage through the middle of a block saves four minutes a day for everyone who knows about it, twice a day, for years. The arithmetic is not close. It simply happens where nobody is looking.

Look for the unglamorous parts of things you use and value them accordingly: a good back staircase, a plain form that works, a boring reliable train. And when you spend, ask what is buying admiration and what is buying minutes.