But why is it human nature to put a bench right where people are walking. It's like people in charge get off on creating obstacles for the common man just to feel powerful.

To everybody acting like the desire path is the problem:

1. If the problem for you is that it's 'bad' or 'illegal', grow a spine so that when you need to break the law, for something that matters, you can do it with dry pants.
2. If the design doesn't take into account how people will interact with it, it's bad and lazy. Only time it would be acceptable to 'force' a way to interact with something is when there are safety concerns, and there are none here.
3. You are traped in a cage of your own making, break free or perish like the dog you are.

I think it was a US uni campus, that redid the lawn and didn't put down any walking paths and waited for the desire paths to form and then paved those

This specific case would be super predictable, notice how the desire path becomes wider at the end. Pedestrian path should always do that because that's how people walk.

I love how almost every comment talks as if the pedestrians were the problem, and not designers.

Just made the footpath in box 2 the actual path, and slap additional stuff anywhere not-on-top-of-where-peiople-walk.

I love how the third and second to last panel are the same, as if nature paused briefly before it decided to open another path.

Desire lines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path?wprov=sfla1

I like how upset people are in the comments. Even has random ass comments about capitalism. This is great lol

I wonder if the experience of 'shortcut' is part of the motivation, so that as soon as you've established a path, what constitutes 'shortcut' also changes. I'd be interested to know if curved paths were more desire path-resistant, because they appeal to an intuition about adjusting (and therefore optimizing) course.

My brain is so Death Stranding-coded right now that I tried to give the path a bunch of likes 👍👍👍

Sometimes it is just carelessness of the people. Being blind to your fellow people's needs. Dropping trash where they stand. Refusing to walk two extra steps on the pathway and kill the grass instead.

In this case the requirements analysis of the parks and recreations dept was just bad and they are the asshole.

You say this is human nature, but I see this comments section filled with good little doggies that follow master's rules.

The problem is a lack of "Beware of Grass Ticks" signs.

https://lemmyverse.link/sh.itjust.works/c/desire_paths

"desire paths" well and good, but who (above the age of 15) is jumping a hedge to save 3 second walk time? Must be next to a school.

This comment section is surprisingly spicy