Talk:Desire path

Path
How is a desire path different from a path?Autarch (talk) 14:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Fro what I understand, a desire path is a subset of path where paths can be designed or naturally occurring. Desire paths are the latter. --Jason Yip (talk) 01:28, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the term desire path refers to the erosion caused by human feet. Hence, an indication that it is the most desirable path to pedestrians. - tSR - Nth Man (talk) 06:00, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Desire lines in 1959
There are a number of desire line images as part of the 1959 Chicago Area Transportation Study, such as this one showing personal transit trips. It may be the first implementation of desire lines, developed only a year after Bachelard's book was published.Graphictopography (talk) 22:58, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Gaston Bachelard as the originator of the "desire path" terminology
I am able to find no discussion of "desire paths," "desire lines," "social trails" or "chemins du désir" in Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space and therefore have removed the Bachelard reference in the wiki. Although it is common on the internet to find description of the "desire path" concept attributed to Bachelard, it is remarkable to note that a page number reference is never given (neither was there a page number given in the footnote in the wiki). The origins of this term may be in Civil Engineering, particularly train infrastructure development, and date from the 1920s. The origins of the attribution to Bachelard's Poetics of Space are unclear, but certainly seem to be in error. ˜˜˜˜ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Donflan (talk • contribs) 18:17, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It is interesting that the old version of this page has now become a kind of circular source. I think this needs some more digging to see if there is a connection with BachelardBilllion (talk) 22:06, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that the origins probably took place before Bachelard. In this 1949 Highway Research Board report, “desire paths” are mentioned in passing, as if they are standard industry jargon (top-left of page 364) 190.250.55.214 (talk) 15:17, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * This is a problem with secondary sources. It says what it says, but that doesn't mean that the original source says what it says it does. If Bechelard's work is in French, could it be difficult to find the reference because of translation issues? On the general point, the concept of desire paths is indeed very old, I would guess millennia, though that may be hard to show with citations. Paths, streets, roads, etc. simply weren't planned and paved. They were created by where people went. It is only this particular name that is relatively new, no matter who actually coined it. RoyLeban (talk) 06:49, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I added the word "apparently". In the 1949 report, it seems that the phrases "desire line" (10 occurrences) and "desire path" (1 occurrence) are used slightly differently. That's based on a cursory read, so I'm not sure. But that's enough for me to think we need (at leasta) "apparently" and it would be good to have another source, whether the term was coined (or perhaps adapted) by Bachelard or not. RoyLeban (talk) 22:07, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * A search of Google Books for "chemins du desir", limited to 1950 through 1960, turns up a couple of citations to Andre Breton's L'Amour Fou (1937). The quote they cite appears to be: "Il s'agit de ne pas, derrière soi, laisser s'embroussailler les chemins du désir."
 * https://www.google.com/search?q=%22chemins+du+desir%22&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1950%2Ccd_max%3A1961&tbm=bks Caseyroberson (talk) 20:03, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

When was the idea (rather than the terminology)

 * When was that, 1950's ? Seems long after General Sir John Moore, (1761–1809)'s "“Wait some months and see where the men walk, then put the paths there.”" ? - Rod57 (talk) 11:15, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Nice article idea but needs improving
The article covers a nice idea but references are required. Too many weasel words like "it is known". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.211.85 (talk) 10:10, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Eisenhower and desire paths
Probably the best example of desire paths was when Eisenhower was President of Columbia University. They were building new campuses for the GI Bill and wanted to figure out sidewalks he suggested planting grass and waiting a while...

http://designforwalking.com/the-path-to-hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions/

"A third wrong-headed notion, often repeated, is that a designer can just put paths where people walk. This idea has had at least one impressive supporter. When Dwight D. Eisenhower was asked in the late 1940s as president of Columbia University where to put sidewalks, he suggested planting grass, waiting to see where beaten tracks appeared, and paving those routes. "

Variants of this story are reported in numerous websites and reports....

It may make a nice little reference.

--Patbahn (talk) 07:20, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Cow Path?
A term I've seen to describe these paths - albeit in the IT context of paving them - is "cow path." E.g.: http://blog.consected.com/2009/08/pave-cowpath-good-and-bad.html. Could/should Cow Path be added to the list of synonyms/redirects to this article? Chuntuk (talk) 09:18, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Nerd Path
The famous desire line at MIT in the '80's known as the Nerd Path deserves a mention? http://museum.mit.edu/nom150/entries/1357 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joe Wiki (talk • contribs) 10:39, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Finland park planners
The article states "In Finland, planners are known to visit their parks immediately after the first snowfall, when the existing paths are not visible" with a citation to a British urban planning study. The study in turn flatly makes the exact same assertion in the exact same words, but with no more authoritative source of its own. Is that sort of dead end considered an adequate citation on Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Czetie (talk • contribs) 20:07, 23 July 2015‎ (UTC)
 * I agree, I'm pretty sure this is not standard practice and sounds something like some civil engineer somewhere in Finland tried once. It doesn't really sound like a very practical approach even. I'll add a tag to it. Snaip (talk) 11:10, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * per WP:RS, as it's an official government publication, why do you think it is not a reliable source? -- DeFacto (talk). 19:18, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Desire path or desire line?
I believe the correct technical term in US, UK and I think AUS, is desire line, and I'd never heard desire path used (though I am a building professional in the UK, so less likely to hear non-technical usage). But at some point, this article has been moved (or possibly merged) from desire line to desire path. Is that the phrase in general use in US? If so, fine. If not, perhaps it should be moved back. FWIW, a Google search gives >63,000 uses of the phrase "desire line" but only ~31,000 for "desire path". Restricting the search to books.google gives ~7,000 for the former and ~1,400 for the latter. We should not be ruled by Google searches, not least because the words might be used to mean something other than the subject of our article, but they do tend to suggest that the term desire line may be better known. Contrariwise, a slight majority of the What links here entries are for desire path, which is an argument for leaving it here. Enginear (talk) 23:42, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

It looks like it happened here: "08:47, 15 November 2008‎ Billlion‎ moved Desire line to Desire path: This was the translation of the original term coined by Bachelard", for a reason cast into doubt elsewhere on this talk page. 114.198.50.244 (talk) 01:09, 15 January 2017 (UTC) HuwG
 * Google Ngrams has never heard of "desire path" but has heard of "desire line", so that's another data point. OTOH, the entities are paths rather than lines, so there's the plain English of it. Herostratus (talk) 19:31, 15 January 2017 (UTC)