Estate Living Magazine Develop - Issue 44 August 2019 | Page 53

C O M M U N I T Y
L I V I N G
‘Paths from everywhere crowd like children to the pond. Some
of them are ordinary paths, which have a rail on each side, and
are made by men with their coats off, but others are vagrants,
wide at one spot and at another so narrow that you can stand
astride them. They are called Paths that have Made Themselves,
and […] like all the most wonderful things that happen in the
Gardens, it is done, we concluded, at night after the gates are
closed.’
He later refers to them as Gypsy Paths.
These paths that ‘make themselves’ are the physical expression
of the will and/or desire of people. While ‘men with their coats
off’ may toil with spade, pickaxe and trowel at the behest of
pencil-wielding planners, ordinary people vote with their feet,
and create the paths they need. And planners ignore them at
their peril.
The principle is not confined to actual paths as eroded by
human feet. Sometimes the evidence of a desire path can be
less pleasant, like the body count on busy roads. It is in response
to a number of pedestrian deaths that the Western Cape
Department of Transport and Public Works has recently started
building a pedestrian bridge across the N2 where numerous
people – including learners at two primary schools – have been
killed or injured in the daily road-crossing gauntlet that forms
part of their everyday commute, because the alternative would
be a detour of a few kilometres.
But it’s not just the routes that people take – sometimes it takes
a creative thinker to identify desire paths where people daren’t
go, or don’t leave evidence when they do. In Philadelphia – a
city notorious for its narrow streets and lack of pedestrian
walkways – urban activist Jon Geeting photographed the city’s
snow-covered wintry streets documenting where vehicles
actually drove. He published the photos in 2014, showing areas
where roads could be narrowed down to give more room to
pedestrians and cyclists, thereby coining the phrase sneckdown
– a portmanteau of snow and neckdown (a neckdown is an area
of narrowed road). It was just one intersection in one city, but
it has earned this blogger a place in the annals of city planning
history, and a place in Philadelphia Magazine’s 2017 list of the
100 Most Influential People in Philadelphia.
Embracing desire
All residential estate developers know that, to be successful,
you have to give prospective buyers what their hearts desire.
But what only the savvy ones know is that – once those buyers
become residents – you have to pay attention to what their
feet desire. If they cut across your perfectly landscaped central
piazza, don’t fight it. Watch where their feet, and their desire,
create a – usually not entirely straight – route, and then cast it
in stone.
servest.co.za
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* Elephant paths are a common phenomenon in Africa – and
probably in Asia – but, in other parts of the world, they have cow
paths, donkey paths and game trails.
Sensible planners everywhere are recognising desire paths for
the valuable data they are, and utilising them in planning. Many
universities have, since the late 20th century, put off paving
pathways to new buildings. Rather, campus planners wait until
the students have shown the best path by the simple expedient
of walking it – and then they pave it. And – hey presto – almost
no-one strays off the paving. Why would they?