I love desire paths. There’s something so wonderous about seeing an echo of humanity. Depending on it’s location, a desire path can mean so many different things.
In a city, like the pic above, they represent rebellion, and efficiency. The messiness of humanity. We like to imagine we’re oh so logical and neat so we design our cities to be logical and neat an then real humans literally trample on that idea. The ego required to think you can design something perfect that checks every box. Life is all about compromise and patching stuff when some new problem arises. Though people have certainly tried! Ohio state univeristy let students carve their desire paths, and then paved them over. It looks pretty artsy.
Some people will try to discourage desire paths, but this is almost always going to fail.
Eventually, people just have to accept them. Humans are too dang stubborn.
Certain desire paths are just adorable. A 0.5 second time saver. You just can’t design for maximum efficiency, humans will always find shortcuts!
Though on occasion a desire path can actually be the least efficient way…especially if you’re superstitious.
In a wilder area, such as below, they show us the curiosity of humans. A desire path somewhere natural often tells you there’s something interesting just ahead. (Though remember some ecosystems are fragile and will suffer if trampled! Stick to paths in these sorts of areas)
And how about desire stairs? I always think these look so cool. We get see humans determination to climb, to traverse every kind of terrain.
And for something really crazy…a desire path used for centuries will create a ‘holloway’
All of these pics are off the Desirepath subreddit, check them out for more examples! And many thanks to the users who submitted these photos.
Fwiw while you can flood the abortion snitch internet hotline with lorem ipsum and memes, it is probably way more effective to make credible but vague claims that take time to sift through. Put in a valid county and zip code. The goal isn’t to scream “fuck you” even if it’s how you feel, the goal is to waste their time and make it as miserable and difficult as possible for anyone who has to go through these claims to act on them
I think it’s worth noting that if you ARE going to report something to the snitch line, yes you SHOULD use actual counties and zip codes, but…also try not to pick counties and places that are full of already marginalized people? I know it’s tempting not to do that extra research but sending EXTRA government/police attention to BIPOC neighborhoods even in the name of trolling won’t help.
So, here, let me help you with that pesky research. These are the ten most affluent neighborhoods in Texas. There are a LOT of politicians and celebrities that hail from these neighborhoods. Terrell Hills - Bexar County, 78209 Bellaire - Harris County, 77401 Highland Park - Dallas County, 75209 Melissa - Collin County, 75454 West University Place - Harris County, 77005 Trophy Club - Denton County, 76262 Willow Park - Parker County, 76087 Southlake - Tarrant County, 72096 Fair Oaks Ranch - Comal, Bexar, or Kendall Counties, 78015 Coppell - Dallas County, 75006
What a shame it would be if people were to report these places as hotbeds of flagrant law-breaking. Gosh.
Smart thinking!
This is great since I’ve been picking zip codes and hospitals at random around their biggest cities. This is much more effective.
