A “desire line” is the preferred path which one takes to get from one place to another, often referring to the worn path through grass, shrubs or any other location which was not designed or designated for pedestrian traffic. Chances are there is a sidewalk nearby but has been considered the less direct route and therefore is the least perferred option. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what the desire lines and active patterns might look on a city-wide scale.

While visiting MFO Park near Zürich, Switzerland there was a very interesting phenomenon, a desire line that quite literally glowed. Even though the park acts similar to a plaza in that there are no paths, the whole site is meant for walking, there was a very distinct path that many people took on a continual basis. This connection is between the public transit and a residential portion of the neighborhood which the park essentially was placed right in the middle of. So the people just cut through the park and slip past wall-like clipped hedges that border the edge of the site.

images via Lisa Town

The way people navigate through space is such a huge piece of the design puzzle, it shapes cities and forms experiences. I often thought it would be really interesting to be able to track people in a more visual way in how they go about their day. I wonder what kind of patterns would form as their lines crossed large spaces, cut corners and brought to light the eaiest way in the pedestrians mind to get from point A to point B. Especially now that there is a greater shift from the vehicular and more focus on those on foot or wheels. How do these people move through the urban fabric in a vehicular world? What could their paths tell us about how a city’s infrastructure could potentially be restructured to better fit the needs of the people now and in the future?

I wrote recently in reference to an article on Copenhagenize about the bike counter. This is a really interesting device but while it may explain the chapter about how many people use a specific path and the patterns of time and day usage, such a device wouldn’t explain the whole story of perhaps what other paths people would like to use. It would be really interesting if there was a way to be able to track people ithat was effortless and allowed them to go about their typical day while still furthering the experiment. How cool would it be to deploy such an experiment and, after say a week, have the city turned into a life size urban traffic diagram?

image via contrail

Pepin Gelardi has thought of this as well and came up with something called Contrail as part of Design21’s Power To The Pedal” design competition. From Contrail’s website: “Contrail is a tool for developing bicycle communities. As you ride, contrail leaves a faint chalk line behind your bike. The goal is to encourage a new cycle of biking participation by allowing the biking community to leave a unique mark on the road and to reclaim this crucial shared space.”

Contrail points out an interesting note in that by actively placing lines where cyclists go, cars become aware of the use and the hope is that they would then become more aware and cautious of the cyclists. In addition, this could spur on more cyclists to take to the road and follow the masses with the feeling of safety in numbers.

image via contrail

One interesting thought might be to tap into the power of gps devices and conduct an experiment that tracks people with these devices for a period of time, analyzing the patterns that emerge from the data. It would be really interesting to track not only bikes but pedestrians as well to get a sense of how the entire city operates and even more important, how it could potentially operate even better.