The desire path is the perhaps the single most elegant example of the kind of bottom-up feedback our cities should listen to when we're thinking about what to build next. Right now, your neighbors are literally voting with their feet. Listen to them.
Conversation
There’s a whole lot more to sustainable trail design than, “Where are people walking?” For instance, after a rain, since the trail in that pic is through a low area, it will be mud which people will walk around—slowly making the trail wider and wider.
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I was thinking about this subject the other day when walking home through my local park and noticing a #desirepath
Take a look at the work of White & Kent at Project for Public Spaces... they were very good at simply observing how people wanted to use public spaces
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However, if there is something I’ve learned, people also like walking on grass in park-like settings. Concrete is hard on feet and joints to walk and stand on all day. There is nothing wrong with a “game trail” or two.
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