I don't know how this compares to URL routing previously in ASP.NET, but compared to something like Django's URL dispatcher it just looks...ugly.

Django:

 urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^articles/2003/$', 'news.views.special_case_2003'),
    (r'^articles/(\d{4})/$', 'news.views.year_archive'),
    (r'^articles/(\d{4})/(\d{2})/$', 'news.views.month_archive'),
    (r'^articles/(\d{4})/(\d{2})/(\d+)/$', 'news.views.article_detail'),
 )

I could see this being yet another situation where someone writes a utility to produce these URL routes for ASP.NET, and makes me wonder why they took such an approach.

Just skimming over the article, it seems to me that the framework authors are trying to do something similar to Routes in Rails or Pylons (http://routes.groovie.org/).

Actually, I find Routes' much clearer and easier to use (regular expressions and readability don't go very well together, IMO) than Django's URL-scheme. The url-generation feature of Routes comes in handy, too... don't know if Django has something equivalent. Granted, regular expressions may be more powerful, but I am willing to sacrifice some expressiveness in exchange for ease of use and improved readability. So, I can see why the framework authors ported that functionality (sort of).

You find those routes easier to read than a list of regexs?

Interesting, I assumed the django list would make sense what it was doing at a glance to anyone.

I am just picturing a list of ~25 routes, and it being impossible to get an idea of the sitemap.

looks really simple just the way I like it...

also you can plugin your own routing if you want to do it your own way I think. I watched the video from part1 and it was mentioned that most of the mvc stuff can be swapped out.

I am really looking forward to getting my hands on this.