In parks and playing fields, gardens and wasteground, well-worn dusty paths are to be found stretching away in threadbare lines towards their triangulated destinations. Gaston Bachelard called these les chemins du desir: pathways of desire -paths that were not designed but instead were eroded organically away by individuals deciding where they wanted to go, rather than allowing street architecture to dictate to them where they should go.
Its interesting to speculate on the way that many of the thoroughfares of London must have begun their lives in Roman times as ‘desire lines‘, subconciously picked as the ‘correct route’ between destinations; over time they would have widened to become roads. The psychogeography of the city becomes more immediate when you imagine it like that.
That path explains, succinctly, why communism doesn’t work.
Or there again they could just be a bunch of lazy sods who can’t be bothered to walk on the pavement.
Desire lines are hazardous around here – they harbour hidden dog poos. At least they’re clearly visible on the pavements.
They possibly make the case for anarcho-communism, though 😉 No but seriously. Out of interest, do they appear on the quads in those universities where only the Dons and their wives are allowed to walk on the grass?
To me it shows how much we desire the great indoors. Had we been drawn to the great outdoors, that line wouldn’t exist.
Also the curvature of the beginning, running tangential to the path of authority, implies our first rebels had to think long and hard about it.
Doesn’t it also just show people’s essential caution about transgressing the rules? To be an efficient route, the turn off the path should have been done further back up the pavement, but that would have entailed spending too long on disallowed territory. To have turned off further up the pavement would have been pointless in the advantage given. So the point chosen is clearly, finely – and subconsciously calibrated – to give a time and convenience advantage, but not to appear too disobedient of what the planners have decreed the route should be.
Or maybe a 45 degree angle just looks correct.
Curiously fascinating stuff, worm. Would it not be cheaper for councils to adopt these desirable pathways and get rid of all the undesirable ones with wonky paving stones and kerbs that people keeping tripping up on? I’m curious to know what we could do in London with all that extra space – perhaps widen the roads to make more room for cyclists?
perhaps we could rent the redundant pathways out to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to grow mangolds on?
I cannot remember the name of the US architect of public buidings who fully grassed around his constructions. Once the desired pathways became prominent he then had these paved. The people decided the best routes and not the planners. Does anyone know his name or the “effect” which is named after him.