design the paths and that he should come back in a few months to see the results. Intrigued to see what the architect meant, the mayor returned a few months later and found that the students had literally voted with their feet and worn away the grass as they moved between the buildings, creating natural paths exactly where they were required - the architect then intended to replace the worn earth paths with paving. A great example of people creating an environment that exactly matches their needs. It would be fantastic if more planners took this approach or applied it retrospectively. You can see these desire lines everywhere but one of my favourites appears each year on Town Fields. Obviously many residents of Intake and Town Moor paid attention during trigonometry classes and have worked Photography ©Steve Bates, 2014
out that the length of the hypotenuse is less that the sum of the other two sides of the triangle. So they ignore the paths kindly provided by DMBC and cut straight across the Fields.
Search for “desire line” or “desire path” on Instagram, Flickr, Google for more images...hell, there’s even Facebook groups devoted to them!
End
The desire line runs for a couple of hundred yards and crosses rugby and football pitches. The thing that caught my eye was that, although the line is relatively straight, as it heads past the goalposts it takes a small but unnecessary diversion and suddenly kinks to take the path between the posts in what I can only think is some subconscious urge shared by hundreds of people to score that winning goal in the cup final!
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