They're everywhere!
Once you know what they are, you’ll see them too!
You almost certainly use them.
They are desire lines. Most of the time they are a little corner cut off to save seconds off someone's route. They are the little informal paths created by people choosing a slightly shorter route.
They could be seen as a failure of the landscape architect to be able to foresee the way people will use a space, or sometimes they reflect, for example, safety restrictions which the landscape architect must adhere to, but people using the space will not necessarily consider.
In this small example near my home, it's obvious that people will want to walk directly from the footpath to the Co-op entrance, straight through the car park. However, the pedestrian access is officially round the car park edge, crossing at the entrance to the car park. The desire line has, nevertheless, been created through the planting bed and, as can be seen, is well used. At this stage, no amount of replanting will deter people from using this shortcut.
A friend of mine recounts a tale about desire lines. He was working for the local parks department and someone decided to create a new shrub bed in a park. What they didn't know at the time was that the shrub bed was directly in a dog walker's route and the dog walker was very determined. Despite the creation of the shrub bed, the dog walker continued using the same route, straight through the shrub bed: When the bed was first dug over, when the shrubs were planted and even when the bed was dug over and deliberately left very uneven. Dog walker 3 - Parks Department nil.
The final attempt to stop the dog walker was to add a mulch of horse manure to the bed, to help the establishment of the shrubs. The dog walker's secret weapon - wellies, won the day, they just walked through it. As far as we know, they may still be following their own personal desire line. I do sometimes wonder if it was the dog walker who was so determined, or their dog?
I came across the final example this summer at a conference centre where I was able to talk with the facilities manager and found out that the path up to the sports hall had been “sacrificed “to make space for a wider corner for the delivery vehicles bringing goods to the kitchen. A number of people have created their own path, through the shrub bed and up a steep bank to the sports hall, getting in some extra exercise on the way to the sports hall.
So, desire lines are created by people who can see and negotiate a shorter way to get from A to B. Once a few people use the short cut, others follow. Sometimes these short cuts are made “official “with surfacing, but often they have to be left as unofficial paths. When time, money and sometimes the weather allow, spaces can be left without official routes, and the desire lines people use become the basis for paved paths in the future. These desire lines can be logged in snowy areas or in simply grassed areas. If you were planning a project, which approach would you take?
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