Gradient descent - human version
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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It's just a few extra steps, you lazy fuckers!
"Get off my lawn!"
/s, but I'm getting there...
It's poor urban design. Put paths where people want to go
The whole point of the post is that it doesn't matter where they put the path, people will decide it's not "where they would have put it" and make their oun path.
I think it was a US uni campus, that redid the lawn and didn't put down any walking paths and waited for the desire paths to form and then paved those
Proof mankind in it's natural state is truly irredeemable
Nah, I like it. It clearly shows the intent of movement of people and it basically minimises trail around time.
It's kinda beautiful. Like an artwork perfectly depicting human nature.
I was coming here to say that! It's possibly apocryphal, but the way I heard it was that the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign did this when they did their main quad (I still remember them telling me this when I got a tour before applying there 30 years ago). And they didn't just look for where the plants were dead, but they also looked for broadleaf weeds, which sustain trampling better than grasses (it's a land grant university in the midwest. Of course there's an agriculture angle).
"desire paths" well and good, but who (above the age of 15) is jumping a hedge to save 3 second walk time? Must be next to a school.
Where there is a will, there's a way. I've seen a desire path form through 3m (10ft) tall pine bush on a steep hillside lmao
I'm 50 and in great shape. I'm squeezing between fences and leaping small barricades on my walk to get bananas at grocery. Walk life is so different than eating-while-sitting-and-driving-but-still-somehow-sweating life of cars.
Not at forst, but when that hedge is step-overable I would
I'm more concerned about the city planner who was so strongly against the idea that the path should be coming right out of that crosswalk. That's just insulting, like they WANT everyone to waste just 3 more seconds.
The problem is a lack of "Beware of Grass Ticks" signs.
Beware of ticks, land mines, and bear traps.
I love how the third and second to last panel are the same, as if nature paused briefly before it decided to open another path.
I was finally happy...too happy...
Had to double check when I read this. Zoomed in super close, and the second to last panel actually has a veeery faint outline of a new path
Human nature, not just nature.
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