Our apps don't use routing (as in the route config) at all. we only have one :any route to our front controller, which assembles the page using different sections via a database lookup.
So it is a view driven design, the lookup sets up a theme instance, and the different sections in the theme view (like header, footer, sidebar, body, etc) are callbacks to controller actions.
Not something I would advise for small and/or simple apps...