Eh?
Thursday, 13 Mar 2025
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Civics Peter here — some people make their own paths. The city at first is adding things to the park to try and discourage people from cutting across from the corner, but it doesn’t work. Then, they give in and put in a path reflecting what people were doing originally. People still cut the (new) corner, because people are like that.
This happened at my college. Over the course of less than two years, it went from new sod and newly paved sidewalks, to the school eventually turning the foot path through the grass into a sidewalk as well
[desire path](https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1870310-tumblr)
People started taking shortcut, the bench was put there to stop them, but people walked around it, so a trash can was put there but no effect. Bush wall failed too, so there was normal path placed on the shortcut. But people decided to make one more at the end
That’s called a desire path I believe. When a lot of people want to cut a little bit of walking time by crossing diagonally rather than following the corners, the ground gets flattened by their movement over time and forms a natural path. This meme shows that even when obstructions are placed in the way of the desire path, people will still form desire paths to get the quickest pathway. Eventually a road is placed where the desire path keeps going, and for a second this looks like it’s the final solution, but then people start cutting the corner of the diagonal path, too, forming another little desire path.
There was this really large desire path in the park next to my house that ended up being so overused that it created this massive mud puddle that people would still walk through. The city ended up paving all of it and creating a huge new path and added some benches. A new tiny desire path just showed up at the edge that doesn’t even lead anywhere. People are so weird, I love it.
The human condition
City builders actually hate city dwellers, thats the punchline
r/desirepath would like this
I love how the second to last panel is just no change as if saying: ‘we good now?’
This is a case of the civil engineers / architects completely ignoring human nature in favor of some random secondary goal (like cost or aesthetics).
Real life humans, of course, couldn’t care less about the planner’s “vision”, and just want to take the shortest path (“desire path”, aka “elephant path”) between points A and B.
This comic shows the various countermeasures and concessions made by each side, with the very last one showing us the planner has completely given in and people *still* cut the remaining corners.
Are you stupid by chance?
people tend to be lazy
The perfect cover for any urban planning textbook
The 12 panel picture is the explanation…
How dense do you have to be to not get this?
Do you ever was outside your own Hause?
r/DesirePath
Path of least resistance
unrelated to this this entirely, I’m thinking of becoming a peter, but this has led me to realize that I have no specialties…..and basically no interests….
well that’s not fun at all.
those are called “desire paths” iirc, when people walk a certain path so much that it kills the grass.
People are lazy and cities are controlling and dumb. There is actually a building technique used in some countries that specifically leaves out permanent pathways until they watch wear humans make pathways first. Then they build the permanent paths where humans showed them to.
I recall reading about a colllege that built a new facility, and rather than predefining paths, they waited a semester after the facility had opened to see what paths the students made. Those paths became the sidewalks. Smart civil engineering.
People make shortcuts in life and in walkways. Here it is walkways
[An University paved the way which was created by the students naturally ](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/R2boB1Pbw2)
There’s actually a subreddit for this, I forget what it’s called tho
People will often take the most direct path even if it isn’t paved.
Reminds me of my old college campus
Why not just use slime molds as a model in planning paths? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05439-w
Path of least resistance
In hiking, we call it Social Trail
That last picture made my blood boil
Meanderthals
The more things change, the more they stay the same.