Huh, ever since moving away, I've greatly enjoyed not having access roads. I feel like they greatly encourage a particularly walking-unfriendly sort of suburban sprawl in which there are long rows of large chain stores and restaurants directly facing highways and no opportunity for any sort of neighborhood to exist around them.
They are also very dangerous: they combine people getting off the highway with people accelerating to get on with people entering and leaving those shopping centers and restaurants. It really creates for messy traffic.
