Desire paths to real paths... User-generated urbanism

Walkways and desire paths - a major player in urban design and safe walkability

by Mateja Mihinjac 

In our urban design work, we often confront the issue of pedestrian mobility, which is referred to as desire paths (or desire lines). We have previously discussed desire lines and their impact on crime in our blog on Happy Trails. We have also touched on the related CPTED concept of movement predictors in our blogs on laneways. All this comes down to the concept of walkability.

If we are serious about increasing walkability in our cities and towns – and if we listen to the CPTED message of increased safety through “eyes on the street” – then we must pay attention to the formal, and informal, paths that exist to get people from one place to another. 

Sidewalks, one-way or two-way streets, paths, gates, and trails are only one part of the movement picture. Desire lines are equally important since they predict how movement can trigger, or eliminate, crime opportunities. Leslie Malone’s urban design book Desire Lines calls them “the paths people create through simple usage.” It all depends on how we do them!

 

Ease of access, simple travel routes, or pathways to crime?
Desire lines are everywhere and offer CPTED clues to prevent crime

USER-GENERATED URBANISM

We tend to expend as little time and as little effort as possible to achieve our goal. This least effort principle also translates into our choice of routes traveled. This often results in the emergence of desire paths, what wiki calls the unplanned convenient shortcuts humans create on frequently navigated routes.  

Why don’t traffic engineers or landscape architects incorporate these desire paths into their designs and engineer the streets as people naturally use them? It turns out an approach termed user-generated urbanism might do just that.

John Bela, an urban designer and landscape architect, describes user-generated urbanism as: 

“the synthesis of top-down and bottom-up practices engaged synergistically to cultivate greater participation. This synthesis help us achieve the goals we outline with the adaptive metropolis of resilience and social justice.”

He suggests desire paths should inform the installation of permanent routes - but not before the users indicate their preferred pathways. This is similar to tactical urbanism, a community-driven style of permanent public infrastructure. However, while Bela refers to tactical urbanism as DIY urbanism, user-generated urbanism stresses the importance of combining bottom-up and top-down planning practices.

 

The  Ohio State University "Oval" today - a sophisticated network of user-generated walkways. It began in 1914 when urban designers paved the pathways on new laws that were created by users - Photo Google Earth 

One of the most famous successful examples of this strategy emerged in 1914 at Ohio State University. 

The University intentionally had no plan for the walkways between buildings across the campus and only paved them once the most eroded routes in the lawn – desire paths – clearly communicated to the architect where the routes should be installed. This resulted in an interesting intersection of routes across the large campus lawn, the Oval.

Listening to the principal users of streets may help us avoid the mistakes and unintended consequences, including potential issues such as vandalism and movement predictors, the concerns that Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) practitioners often deal with. 

 

Ad hoc attempt to block a natural desire path across public lawn

COLLABORATION DRIVES SUCCESS

In an ever-changing world user-generated urbanism teaches us the importance of adaptive designs and designs that serve the purpose of their users. This is why collaboration in designing our streets is as important as ever. In Second Generation CPTED and SafeGrowth we teach the concept of Connectivity, which ensures the neighbourhood is connected to outside actors including the government and agencies to realise their goals. 

Engineers, architects, planners and landscape architects should therefore strive for collaborative practices as much as possible – doing so might just give them the answers they’re looking for when designing the streets the users want.

We're Using Our Streets All Wrong 

- Dead Metal versus User-Generated Urbanism