Desired Paths

Desired Paths are trails that show up when humans ignore the official path in a way that actually makes sense. They show up in a lot of funny places, a true expression of humans' autonomy, because instead of that authorities set up for them, they just take the path that's actually the easiest and most convenient instead. But when done correctly, this isn't just a rebellion against authority, it's actually informing good design choices. Because for example, at Ohio State University's quad, you might think these are just random lines going from building to building. But in fact, the design for the quad was inspired directly from desired paths that actually showed up on campus. Every winter there, it would snow, and people would walk to classes, exactly the paths that people were actually taking from building to building. So instead of trying to design it from scratch, the paths that you think people will walk on, they just decided to look at where people actually walked and design the paths based on that. When you design just following human behavior, you get way better outcomes. But some institutions still think it's best to try to use their authority to force human behavior in a way that's not natural.