Meerkat Prompts: Desire Paths
Have you ever been walking in a city, perhaps at a park, or some other open, grassy area, and noticed that there’s a well-trodden passage through the field? You might have availed yourself of this path, noting it is a shorter, or more pleasant journey from A to B. If so, you won’t be alone. Many would have walked the off-track path you walked, creating a new route to wherever it is you are going.
Desire paths (also known as social trails, pirate paths, and many more) tend to emerge anywhere you find human activity. City planners can devote hundreds of hours into designing and building pavements from one location to the next, but if an opportunity emerges to take another, shorter trip, people tend to take it. Over time, a new path is worn into the soil, skipping whatever intended voyage city planners had in store for us. This Guardian article does a lovely job of explaining why people tend to make their own routes, and is worth a read for more detail.
Around my old stomping grounds in Stevenage, there used to be such a path, which crossed a field near a stream. There was a road with a pavement, and when my mum walked my brother and I to and from school, we’d usually use the pavement, as the desire path, as occasionally useful as it was, could be unpleasant, especially in wet conditions. There were a lot of bugs! Still, sometimes you’d save a little time off the journey, and sometimes it felt nicer to walk among a little plot of nature.
Where I live now, I can think of one close-by example, made possible due to a hole in a fence. People have steadily walked across some grass, carving out a path that spares a longer walk. This is a very short desire path, a path that exists purely to save time, and it certainly does. There are probably other examples, but I can’t immediately think of them.
What about you, dear ‘kats? Any desire paths near you? Is there are story behind them?
