tunashei:
teathattast:
I love desire paths. Thereβs something so wonderous about seeing an echo of humanity. Depending on itβs location, a desire path can mean so many different things.
In a city, like the pic above, they represent rebellion, and efficiency. The messiness of humanity. We like to imagine weβre oh so logical and neat so we design our cities to be logical and neat an then real humans literally trample on that idea. The ego required to think you can design something perfect that checks every box. Life is all about compromise and patching stuff when some new problem arises. Though people have certainly tried! Ohio state univeristy let students carve their desire paths, and then paved them over. It looks pretty artsy.
Some people will try to discourage desire paths, but this is almost always going to fail.
Eventually, people just have to accept them. Humans are too dang stubborn.
Certain desire paths are just adorable. A 0.5 second time saver. You just canβt design for maximum efficiency, humans will always find shortcuts!
Though on occasion a desire path can actually be the least efficient wayβ¦especially if youβre superstitious.
In a wilder area, such as below, they show us the curiosity of humans. A desire path somewhere natural often tells you thereβs something interesting just ahead. (Though remember some ecosystems are fragile and will suffer if trampled! Stick to paths in these sorts of areas)
And how about desire stairs? I always think these look so cool. We get see humans determination to climb, to traverse every kind of terrain.
And for something really crazyβ¦a desire path used for centuries will create a βhollowayβ
All of these pics are off the Desirepath subreddit, check them out for more examples! And many thanks to the users who submitted these photos.
(via ylwoe)