Years ago, I played Materia Magica, which is similar with its streets, travel, and quests. There were very few streets that didn't serve some purpose for a particular quest or particular vendor or supply or transport hub not easily found elsewhere. I think the travel would be more interesting in Glitch, regardless of subway or teleport, if there were "reasons" to have to visit some of the streets. More streets are being added, yet there are quite a lot of streets already developed that don't have a "purpose" other than travel. Grant it I am only lvl 14, but I can complete most quests so far within Groddle & Groddle Heights & Shimla. There are quite a lot of shrines and vendors as well on pretty much every other street....so no need to really travel to certain areas...and when you have to it can be repetitive. Perhaps this is what the OP meant and perhaps there are adjustments planned down the road as well by the devs.
Dag has a good point, though. I haven't really gone to the bottom half of the region since I moved from Tii Street's Quarter to Doon Way's. I've also been to only a handful of streets in the West and barely outside of the Subway streets in the other regions. I've gone into the Caverns a couple of times. Mainly I've been to the newest areas for streetworks and the Tower.
The problem of "all these streets look kinda different but aren't really that different" is one we take very seriously!
There are several features in development now or starting soon which will allow for "densification" of locations so they can develop in different ways which increase the unique aspects of any given public street (a new and different system of vendors, group halls, the return of market places, and more). We'll try lots of things and figure it out in time :)
I was actually going to suggest that we can build the streets more. The original regions just aren't growing any longer. I also want to make my street "better" than all the other streets. It's something to consider.
I agree, Johnny. We were starting to build Tii Quarter neighborhood sense of community but that went away after the last test. It would be great if the devs could think of a way to let the players continue to improve their neighborhoods, to make them enticing to others to want to move or visit there and be part of the improvements. :) Maybe we could work together to "earn" the right to build vendors or shrines in our neighborhood or subways, machine rooms, community gardens, etc.
Being a bit of a traveler myself (having been on every street accessible to a non-dev), I must say that most streets in a region feel about the same. The main streets in a region are always very unique, but the side streets I would be lost on if it weren't for the map.
I think that allowing players to customize existing streets as Dagnabbit proposed would be a good idea and would allow for some more unique streets that will make players wish to go to some of these side streets all of you developers spent so much time designing.