Ah the ol' desire path strikes again!
I enjoy the Desire Paths community here on Lemmy. It's so interesting to see what paths people take contrary to what paths are laid out for them.
I didn't know I needed this in my life but this strikes a chord in me
I created a desire path by biking to school every day in high school. After I left a sidewalk popped up covering it inch for inch. Mission accomplished
I've heard a story about a college campus that didn't install any paths, waited for natural dirt paths to form in the grass, then installed paths there. Neat idea.
Makes sense for a college campus where everyone has a different schedule. Just draw a line between every building and there's your pathways.
I heard the same story, but for a Disneyland.
I heard that's what they did for your mom's house.
In my junior high days (mid 80s) My friends and I found a machete in one of their dad’s stuff. We spent a weekend bushwhacking paths around some city-owned but undeveloped land near a lake. We ended up wearing them down pretty good into bike paths with some jumps and cool whoops. A few years later, the city turned it into a park and paved our paths.
I have a hobby of doing the opposite: making undesirepaths.
During large snowfalls, I often need to bring out the shovel and make a path, both from my house and in front of it towards the main road. I like to add turns and bends, just enough to confuse and lightly annoy, but not enough for people to consider stepping into deep snow or making their own path.
My gosh this is such a funny premise.
I like how the path curves behind the bench after the bench goes up like people are choosing not to walk in front of people sitting on the bench.
Until the fuckers added another 2m/6ft to the walk by putting in the trashcan...
A full bench!? I miss benches that made sense instead of the hostile architecture ones popping up.
I heard Finnish municipalities do studies when it's newly snowed to check where the desired footpath goes by looking at tracks in the snow. It avoids that issue in the image
That certainly speeds up the process so they can Finnish early.
They don’t wanna be Russian around.
University of Maryland did this with their walkways for a while. They let the kids beat down paths for the year to make the sidewalks.
Makes heaps of sense, when you can. Still need something for people in wheelchairs and stuff early on though.
I've often thought painting lines across paths and then observing the paint wear off could tell you a lot about which paths could be removed, or where corners could be rounded off better.
They had regular sidewalks that the campus planners made. But they took a year to see what the students walking paths looked like.
not the content we deserve, but the content we desire
My takeaway from this is that I can spawn park benches and greenery by walking on the grass.
That's why there are all those "keep off the grass" signs. If people just walked all over the grass willy-nilly we'd soon be knee deep in benches and bins, and nobody wants that.
we’d soon be knee deep in benches and bins

This is a visual I didn't know I needed
All I see here is people tricking the government into putting in a nice little micropark.
Local discounter had something like this, they just installed a hedge AND a fence. Really disenchanting. Not going there anymore.
Well I moved. But they cheated.
a bit of an extreme reaction to a hedge AND a fence, but I'll allow it.
We were looking after someones dog for a week and we have a big yard for our dogs. This dog and one of ours got on so well they would chase each around the yard for hours, so much that after a week there was a desire path race track formed with noticeable banks around the corners and everything.
Least resistance or classic human defiance?
The last path doesn't match the prior paths.
No, but that's the joke.
Humans will always take the perceived shortcut, regardless of whatever proper path is available.
That hedge could actually be a gods windbreak behind the bench
This is great!
Apparently when they were building the death star, they couldn't figure out where to put the vents, so they just turned off the gravity and threw a bunch of womp rats in the center and built out pipes along the vectors of where they died.
social trails
Desire paths
it's almost like humans don't move like a rook (car)
This is the way TikToker shows how he keeps people from walking across his lawn
I especially like when people do this in the snow and make big holes that I can easily step into
For the life of me, I can't figure out what changes between panel 10 and 11.
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