Talk:Desire path

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

text: 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)
thread_title:  Path 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Desire lines in 1959 

message: : 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)
thread_title:  When was the idea (rather than the terminology) 

message: 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)
thread_title: Nice article idea but needs improving

message: 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)
thread_title:  Eisenhower and desire paths 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Cow Path? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Nerd Path 

message: 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)
replies: text:  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)
thread_title:  Finland park planners 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Desire path or desire line?