Desire Path

Walking through the University of Canberra campus today I noticed these desire paths.

Formal and informal wayfinding.

Kate Bowles writes of a desire path:

it represents shared decision-making between separate users who don’t formally cooperate. So a desire path is both a coherent expression of collective effort, and completely unplanned — in fact, it’s the opposite of planning. Simply, each one puts her or his foot where it feels most sensible, and the result is a useful informal path that’s sensitive to gradient, destination, weather, terrain, and built through unspoken collaboration among strangers.