Strategy for making sidewalks — don’t

BoingBoing pointed me towards a post on the Sweet Juniper blog, called “Streets With No Name.” It’s a lyrical look at the paths that Detroit pedestrians have carved through fields and vacant lots, in the absence of real sidewalks or roads that go precisely where they want to walk.

But I was touched by a couple of comments at Boing Boing which went further into the concept of calling them “Pathways of Desire.”

The third comment, by Zadaz, says, “A very old rule about deciding where to build sidewalks is to plant grass the first year and the second year lay sidewalks where the grass has been worn down.”

That’s something I had never thought of before. But which sounds so wonderfully right in hindsight.

Oddly, I was just thinking about this yesterday, when I walked from Brandon University, where I teach a class, back to my car — several blocks away so that I didn’t have to pay for parking.

BU has a large open grassy area in front of its main buildings, and there were three separate strands of paths walking towards the same crosswalk I was headed to. There was also a sidewalk, but it looked oddly decorative, and it didn’t seem to be placed in the most advantageous position.

So it was serendipitous that I came across these posts. Now I’ll have a phrase for those paths. A pretty phrase, too, if it’s not too fey to say so.