Desire paths: When cutting corners is the natural course

The desire path is one of my favourite concepts of the human condition, describing a confluence of efficiency, laziness, and stubborn resistance.

Look at it. Look at it! It’s literally a cut corner, created in what wiki calls “an unplanned small trail formed by erosion caused by human or animal traffic”.

In one way, it’s just pure efficiency, taking the fastest and most sensible route from one point to another. I mean, what is with this designed path telling me to go around when it’s just logical to go through?

Of course, you’d be just as likely to find people who see this as unnecessary laziness, or rushing when the gain is maybe 30 seconds on using the planned infrastructure and leaving the grass unmolested.

If the planned infrastructure ignores the desire path, isn’t it bad infrastructure?

It absolutely can be. Especially in the case above, at a university, where a beautiful garden is a valid desire, but it’s also a busy place full of people rushing from one lecture to the next.

The example below, however, is perhaps a little more debateable… a more direct path through what looks to be mostly dedicated park and recreational space? 🤔

Probably my favourite aspect of this concept, though, is the clash that can result between people and plans. It starts with a path that doesn’t meet the needs of pedestrians, so the city moves to coercing people back onto the path by literally blocking the natural option.

Then it’s war, with the path shifting around the bench, and then a bin, and then through a hedge rather than be bullied back to the plan.

At long last, the city surrenders and formalises the desire path – only for human nature to resist further despite itself! I love it so much.

A little comic about desire paths.

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— Chaz Hutton (@chazhutton.bsky.social) January 15, 2025 at 8:18 PM

If there were another panel, with a widened path to fully accommodate the zebra crossing, it would probably look something like this… just because.

I badly need a 99% Invisible piece on desire paths.

Wait, it exists. Of course it bloody exists. Bless you, Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt!

Least Resistance: How Desire Paths Can Lead to Better Design – 99% Invisible

Informal ‘desire paths‘ can form with as few as fifteen traversals of an unpaved route, creating spontaneous new trails shaped by pedestrians effectively voting with their feet. These paths frequently become self-reinforcing: others intuit the potential advantages of a newly-forming route and follow it, thus eroding it further and enhancing its visibility. Such unstructured routes can develop for