I live in Phoenix, a city built entirely on a mile-demarked grid. It's useful to be able to approximate how far everything is in whole units based on the grid,

I live in Phoenix, a city built entirely on a mile-demarked grid. It's useful to be able to approximate how far everything is in whole units based on the grid, and I reckon it would take a very long time before people just referred to them as "blocks" or something similar.