This distance measure calculates the city block distance between two vectors. This distance metric also known as the Manhattan distance or L
1 distance.
Wikipedia calls it
"Taxicab geometry":
Taxicab geometry, considered by Hermann Minkowski in the 19th
century, is a form of geometry in which the usual distance function or metric
of Euclidean geometry is replaced by a new metric in which the distance
between two points is the sum of the absolute differences of their
coordinates. The taxicab metric is also known as rectilinear distance, L1
distance or norm (see Lp space), city block distance, Manhattan distance, or
Manhattan length, with corresponding variations in the name of the
geometry. The latter names allude to the grid layout of most streets on
the island of Manhattan, which causes the shortest path a car could take
between two intersections in the borough to have length equal to the
intersections' distance in taxicab geometry.