When the pioneering urban sociologist William Whyte studied the movement of pedestrians in cities, David Epstein explains (in Inside the Box), he found that elements of public spaces that accommodated the very young, the very old, and people with disabilities led everyone to use a space more:
Through the 1970s and ’80s, Whyte persuaded New York City officials to alter public spaces to include ramps, flexible seating, shaded areas, numerous entrances, clear sight lines, and to be no more than a few feet above or below street level. “There must be access for the disabled,” he said. “In effect, better access for everyone.” His guidelines rejuvenated spaces like Manhattan’s Bryant Park, which transformed from an invisible-from-the-street haven for drug dealing into one of the busiest public spaces in the world, integrated with the surrounding streets in a seamless river of urban life.
I’ve mentioned Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces before. The video is worth watching:
Makes sense, ease of access and utilization is improved for everyone by lots of those changes, not just the young, old and disabled. Reminds me of this excerpt:
“The trail I walked lacked the geometric and artificial precision of the grand boulevards of the Städte I would later come to know so well. Here Nature did not bend to Man with such frequency or slavishness, but rather the two seemed to bend around one another at regular intervals, a grant of mutual dignity prevailing between the two. Here the paths wound around and through the hills, according to how the land pulled a man’s steps hither or thither. It was by this road, made by Man but drawn and surveyed by Nature, that I came through the settled and cultivated lands into wilder spaces beyond the borders of the Margravates, into a world untamed and resentful of a Humanity it had expelled some centuries earlier.”
Man naturally walks and moves along the path of least resistance, poor urban planning discourages use of valuable spaces by imposing barriers and discouragements to movement into those spaces.
Reminds me of a photo I once saw of a path on a college campus, with a worn dirt trail that cut across a bend, while the path itself was clearly unused. I think it was wrathofgnon.
Predators seek out dark, secluded spaces. Normal people avoid dark, secluded spaces. It really is that simple.
There’s a reason parking garage stairwells are now built with top to bottom windows. Public spaces are designed with clear sight lines, no obstructions above two feet or below six feet. Remove the places predators can wait in ambush, and crime drops substantially.
“The trail I walked lacked the geometric and artificial precision of the grand boulevards of the Städte I would later come to know so well. Here Nature did not bend to Man with such frequency or slavishness, but rather the two seemed to bend around one another at regular intervals, a grant of mutual dignity prevailing between the two. Here the paths wound around and through the hills, according to how the land pulled a man’s steps hither or thither. It was by this road, made by Man but drawn and surveyed by Nature, that I came through the settled and cultivated lands into wilder spaces beyond the borders of the Margravates, into a world untamed and resentful of a Humanity it had expelled some centuries earlier.”
I assume the source might be Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but maybe I’m missing an allusion.
It doesn’t appear to come from either Dracula or The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.
Gemini claims (and I haven’t confirmed) that it’s:
…a classic historical description written by the Scottish physician and traveler Dr. John Macculloch in his 1824 book, The Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland.He used this vivid phrase to describe the famous and treacherous pass of Glencroe…
After searching all three volumes as PDFs, I’m pretty sure Gemini is hallucinating. And substantial time spent searching keeps leading me back to this blog.
Cough up the source, Phileas. In return I’ll give you this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path
Thanks for putting in the work, George. Grok also kept pointing to this blog. Apparently AI struggles with comments repeated across multiple pages.