
Let pedestrians define the walkways - sivers
http://sivers.org/walkways
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dhyasama
As an aside, here is a post about urban "pathways of desire" with some cool
photos:

[http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2009/06/streets-with-no-
name.ht...](http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2009/06/streets-with-no-name.html)

and a mathematical model for trail formation:

<http://www.jamesgriffioen.net/trailmode.png>

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CapitalistCartr
In every business I've been involved with, the execs made decisions that are
really the customers' to make. While the execs were usually pretty accurate,
they didn't see that they were predicting the customer (and unnecessarily so),
rather than "making executive decisions".

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jodrellblank
It must be mythical, it doesn't include anyone suing over access for disabled
people during the year of sludgy grass paths, or slipping and falling, or
being late for class because they didn't realise they could walk over the
grass.

Wait, anyway, that's not a decision made at the last minute as late as
possible, that's a decision made very quickly that no paths would be fine.

An unmade decision would be more like "where shall we put these paths?" "I
don't know", week one has arrows stuck to wooden stakes pointing over the
grass, week two has mowed paths in a different layout, month two has borrowed
festival queue tape things in yet another path, staff are bored of hearing
about it at meetings, students are annoyed that it keeps changing,
landscapists are annoyed that it's ugly, gardners are annoyed as it's
intrusive, it's wasting time, money, brainpower, cognitive space...

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quickpost
Prexy's Pasture at the University of Wyoming was designed like this.
<http://www.uwyo.edu/tour/Prexy.asp>

The only difference being, they used the trails in the snow across it to
decide where to put the walkways. :)

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tcarnell
Good. Finally. I realised this a long time ago, when I used to walk to school
and got told off for taking short-cuts over the grass/plants - the truth is I
wasn't taking a short-cut - the plants were just in the wrong place!

People will not be incovenienced by gardeners!

(BTW: the analogy did not allude me! :-)

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tcarnell
In fairness, you'd have to be fairly stupid not to know where would be a good
place to put paths - People tend to walk in straight lines from A-B (or door-
to-door on a campus)

~~~
teej
When you only have two buildings, only one door on each building, no other
points of interest, a completely flat landscape, and no worries about ADA
laws, it's a pretty easy problem. Then again, anything is easy when you
control the variables.

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smokinn
I'm pretty sure that whole "pedestrians defining the sidewalks" thing is
actually a myth. It may happen sometimes nowaways since the myth is now so
widespread but it's associated with so many schools now that I can't possibly
tell if any of them actually ever did it. (And I'm pretty sure the majority
didn't.)

My favourite example is when I hear that Berkley did it which doesn't seem at
a plausible given articles like this: <http://www.peterme.com/?p=18> that
point out how they went out of their way to break the natural flow of
pedestrians.

~~~
nostrademons
My elementary school was shaped like an L. And the path from the cafeteria to
the playground followed the edges of the building, with a 90 degree turn at
the inside corner of the L. The hypotenuse between ends of the L went through
a hilly, wooded area.

Every day, at lunchtime, there were repeated admonishments to stay on the path
and do not cut through the woods. And every day, immediately after lunch,
_someone_ (and oftentimes _everyone_ ) would run through the woods along the
hypotenuse to get to the playground.

They tried all sorts of tricks to get us to stay on the path. They threatened
instant detention for anyone caught cutting through the woods. They stationed
one of the teachers aides to physically catch people who were about to stray
from the path. It still didn't work, because there were so many people that
broke the rules that they couldn't catch all of them.

Finally, when I returned for 3rd grade, I found that a roughly 10-foot-wide
swath of the woods had been cut down, and a newly-paved asphalt path ran
through it. And nobody ever took the long way around again. I think it was
removed, long after I left, when the school building was enlarged.

Sometimes, it's easier to listen to your users (even if they are 5-10 year
olds) than keep fighting them.

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andreyf
_So when should you make [...] decisions? When you have the most information,
when you're at your smartest: as late as possible._

Within software architecture, I've heard this called "late binding", also the
Open Future Principle: "The best way to implement the future is to avoid
having to predict it" [1].

1\. <http://www.vpri.org/pdf/rn2006001a_colaswp.pdf>

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audionerd
I had heard this idea attributed to Christopher Alexander, from either "A
Pattern Language" or "The Oregon Experiment". Possibly it originated from the
University of Oregon?

Regardless of the original source, this is a great explanation of the
concept..

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amix
"So when should you make business decisions? When you have the most
information, when you're at your smartest: as late as possible."

I disagree. You should make decisions when you have enough data and enough
understanding to draw a conclusion. For example, gather data for 1 week to
figure out where the pedestrians walk (instead of waiting 1 year for the
conclusion to be apparent). Gathering data is more work, but for a business it
can be very valuable to decide quickly and correctly (first mover, customers
won't have to wait 1 year etc.)

~~~
CapitalistCartr
In the case of the school, pouring concrete during session won't work. As for
"waiting as late as possible', that darned "possible" is always a tricky
business.

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albertsun
I think that would lead to the second design, where there are diagonal paths
connecting every building. In the absence of paths people will walk the most
convenient (shortest) routes.

Wanting a large green space at the center is an argument against convenient
paths. So the decision wasn't about where to which paths are shortest and most
convenient for getting from building to building, but about whether or not the
paths should be shortest.

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hop
That picture is looking down from the Valley library at Oregon State
University. Spent many a Adderall fueled nights their.

The problem falls apart in Oregon though. Any paths made into grass would be
mud right now - so people would take other, less efficient routes.

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markbnine
Is this really a winning analogy? To let everybody bumble along until patterns
appear seems like a myspace strategy. Another option is to put up fences. And
set folks on a finite number of paths. And call it facebook.

~~~
potatolicious
I don't think Facebook has been immune to this at all - they've certainly put
up fences, but have knocked them down quickly as it became apparent that's not
what users wnat.

Leaving your app - using the trail analogy - as an open, untamed field may not
be the best way to go, but I don't think any app would survive by setting up
rigid fences and refusing to adapt them as they apparently become obsolete.

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bugs
You can't however do without walkways if the people have nothing to walk on,
to continue your analogy. (When thinking from a business or tech sense.)

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RyanMcGreal
Related: <http://raisethehammer.org/article/877/>

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sp332
It wouldn't work for me - I just prefer walking on the grass :)

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TrevorJ
I wonder if you could use AI pedestrians to predict the paths?

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araneae
You wouldn't happen to know this crazy dude named Ken Ludwig, would you?
Because he told me the exact same story, except it involved a lot more
rambling.

