Desire Paths

Our Vocab word(s) o’th’Week was new to me.

I found a cool new thing, you guys! Well, I mean, it’s not a new thing in the world, but it’s new to me, and I’m nerding out about it, almost as much as I nerd out about Third Places! I read an article about it and I was floored—I didn’t know these existed, or actually I did, but I didn’t know they have a name, and are a major presence in the work of civil planners.

They’re called “desire paths.” What desire paths are, are eroded trails made by human (and sometimes animal) movement, that aren’t planned by the designers of parks or cities, or wherever they appear. People needing to take certain ways to get certain places just wear these tracks into the land naturally, because of their desire. In this same article, I actually read about a college campus (Michigan State) that was erected in full, but no footpaths or bike trails were cut or paved, not until the desire paths appeared. The paved walkways were then built on those desire paths as part of the organic design of the area. 

It’s also said that Broadway (the Broadway, in NYC) is actually a very old indigenous desire path, that dates back to the area before it was colonized. THAT was a surprising tidbit to find out—that street is not only one of the most storied and iconic roads in America, but in the world. Ranks right up there with the Champs-Elysees and maybe Route 66? Hm, that makes me veer onto an interesting sort-of tangent: what other streets or roads or routes around the world have a rich history and profound place in civilization and culture? Does the Silk Road count? The road to Mecca? Would a river or canal count, if it’s heavily used for transportation? How about Baker Street? Bourbon Street? Or the rocky road to Dub-a-lin 1-2-3-4-5…

Michigan State desire path view. Isn’t that so cool?

But! back to desire paths: I find this whole concept fascinating, as both a way of shouldering against urban planning and an opportunity to align places with the people that use them. I used to see desire paths all the time in Boulder, before I knew what they were called. Since Boulder is such a pedestrian-heavy and serious bicycling town, nearly every corner lined with sod will have a neat line carved through it, from all the bikes cutting a corner. There’s desire paths along the creek and across all parks and campuses. Fences and gates, too—there’s one desire path that I remember well from my childhood in a trailer park, that kept getting “fixed” over and over again until the builders finally gave in to the desire of those making it, years later. 

See, our trailer park was fenced all around with a tall chain-link contraption, enclosed all around but for the two entrances. Thing is, to get from my house, through an entrance, and then back up the block to the bus stop to get to school was about a 15-20 minute walk. But through that fence? It was less than 5 minutes to get from my front door to the bus stop. So what did we kids in the trailer park do? We climbed the fence. Every day, till its top bowed under our collective daily weight and we could get a divot made in it. One time, some enterprising young engineer took some wire cutters to it and we had a good sized hole we could walk through for a while. Holes, divots, and collapsed top bars all were fixed periodically by city maintenance—we’d no sooner have a much easier path through the fence than it’d be fixed again. This was a cycle that persisted for several years—all through junior high and high school (and even part of college) whenever we’d need to walk a trail from that home to that bus stop. We’d break it, make a hole, it’d get fixed. Over and over. 

Many years later, I went back to visit my parents, and there was a well-built gap in that fence, right where we used to jump it or break it. The gap was wide enough for a bike to go through, obviously built up and reinforced and finished professionally by an urban planner. The bus kids won. You can’t keep a good desire path down.

I have taken this lesson today not only as a delightful new thing to have learned about urban planning and design, but as a metaphor, too. I’ve been striving and trying and attempting to build my life through its major current changes, only to have some sadistic architect put a brick wall up across my way. So. Right now, I’m slowly eroding my own desire path through it, to take me where I need to go next. It doesn’t look like much now, and isn’t paved, but eventually it’ll be a clear track, visible to everyone, connecting me to where I need to go, and maybe others can find it easier and follow it, too, someday.

I just need to keep walking it.