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Desirable streets: where do people prefer to walk?
- mrnzc 6y agoThis is super interesting! Also related: Desire Paths (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path). Desire Paths are often shortcuts (people often optimize for nearest path) but sometimes people prefer a more scenic view, a less frequented route etc.
- leetcrew 6y agoI discovered the concept of desire paths in college and found it very interesting at the time. it flips the narrative of "these inconsiderate kids keep walking on the grass!" to "these landscape architects failed to anticipate how students would use the space where they live and work".
- coreyisthename 6y agoIf you ever need to find a desire path, for whatever reason, the first place to go is any college campus/quad. Every corner is cut and all open spaces are crisscrossed with paths. I remember seeing photos of some university - I can't remember where - that actually ripped up the old paths and paved over the desire paths, to great success.
- mikepurvis 6y agoOhio State is one such example: https://www.reddit.com/r/DesirePath/comments/8nihbj/the_oval_walkways_at_ohio_state_university_were/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DesirePath/comments/8nihbj/the_oval...
- blindm 6y ago> I remember seeing photos of some university - I can't remember where - that actually ripped up the old paths and paved over the desire paths, to great success. And when people do this: it makes the path a bit jarring since you intuitively know it's been designed that way for maximum efficiency and you are being 'played' in this subtle way.
- bregma 6y agoWhen UC Davis was originally constructed they delayed paving until the desire paths appeared so they knew where to put them.
- sidpatil 6y agoLots of schools do this. You'll often hear college campus tour guides mention it to their groups.
- jelling 6y agoWalking in NYC is the art of picking the most pleasant path. 10st across the villages is more pleasant than one block south or north, Henry St allows twice the rate of speed of walking on Canal.
- netsharc 6y agoArgh, I wish the videos of the routes were pausable...
- deanebarker 6y agoJeff Speck has written a great book called "Walkable City." I have nothing to do with city planning, but I found it super-interesting. https://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp/0865477728 https://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/d...
- 19g 6y ago+1 for Walkable City! For everyone saying that the conclusions in the post are obvious, it apparently wasn't obvious enough that in the US, many cities are built for cars and not people. Another good book is 'Happy City' although I liked Walkable City more. https://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design-ebook/dp/B009LRWHPY https://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Desig...
- caturopath 6y agoSpeck has a somewhat contrarian take to urban design that's really fun, promoting things like street parking and 4-way stops. He has a couple talks he gives, one of which he's given at TED.
- viburnum 6y agoJan Gehl is all over this. "How to Study Public Life" is particularly good. People interested in a complex understanding of streets and public spaces will want to check him out.
- neom 6y agoSadly the Gehl institute shut down it's public life/how cities work initiatives with the departure of Shin-pei Tsay.
- neom 6y agoOne of the companies that graduated from the Urban-X accelerator (BMW+VC firm) in my cohort was numina, they create a technology/dev tools for understanding how people use streets. I think it's an awesome company. Their blog has some interesting stuff and is worth digging through if you're interested in urban ecology: https://numina.co/blog/ https://numina.co/blog/ (particularly interesting to the HN crew: https://numina.co/announcing-numina-api-sandbox/ https://numina.co/announcing-numina-api-sandbox/)
- Etheryte 6y agoI can't help but feel like this is overthinking the reasons behind the actions. Human beings need variety in their life, fresh stimulus. Walking to the store taking different paths every now and then is a great way to do this. If anything, I think it would be more useful to measure undesirable streets — places people avoid on purpose. In my personal opinion, those would be ones by busy roadways, bad infrastructure etc. As shown by car-free regions in Madrid and other cities, people like being out and about even in the city, so long as it isn't made too uncomfortable by the man-made nuisances.
- zdragnar 6y agoPersonally, if I am out on business, I have always preferred busier streets when living in the city- more people means less opportunity to get mugged, unless a less busy street or park both looked safe and were more direct routes. Safety, directness, and pleasant surroundings in that order. Since pleasure strolls / exercise don't really have a direction, I'm not really counting them here.
- ndiscussion 6y agoInteresting article... it does make me wonder if they're missing some key ingredient. One example for me personally is the level of aggression in the locals. There are certain streets I avoid due to this aggressive behavior, and something like that wasn't even mentioned. Perhaps there are other missing variables too. edit: in case anyone was wondering, no, I'm not implying some kind of racist undertone here. I've walked through many diverse neighborhoods in many cities without any problem whatsoever. By "aggression" I mean panhandling and other interruptions by people undergoing obvious psychosis with no sense of social norms. The reason I stated this oddly is because there's a large tangent of people on HN who will attack you for inferring that some homeless people (yes, these psychotic people are generally homeless) are psychotic and aggressive. Perhaps they live in gated communities? No matter what I do, these people are allowed to exist where I live, but I don't consider them part of my community at all.
- uoaei 6y ago> the level of aggression in the locals This is off-topic, but I can't help but notice how this is worded. I am having trouble articulating what bothers me about it. But it seems like you feel like you're "in the community, but not of it". There is an implicit distinction between you and your household, and the "locals". The "aggression" you reference is also a bit troubling because it is framed entirely with an external locus of control, which absolves you of any role. Just my thoughts. I know this is irrelevant but I feel like it needs to be heard.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- uoaei 6y agoSomeone replied with > If you beat up someone for being "not of your community", you're scum. but deleted it before I was able to reply. While I'm on this topic I would like to point out how this perpetuates the same issues by replying to it directly: "Scum" is an interesting word choice. (Yes, that use of 'interesting' is a very loaded one.) But OP didn't say anything about "beating up," just "aggression." And they also didn't claim it's solely because they're "not of the community." There is a lot of obscured context here, but the invariant to notice is that folks who are generally antagonistic against those they perceive as lower classes will use this kind of reductive, dehumanizing language to describe their interactions.
- lexicality 6y agoIs there a non-fancy version of this anywhere? My chromebook freezes whenever I try to scroll.
- germinalphrase 6y agoAgreed. Feels bloated.
- saalweachter 6y agoThis feels like the internet equivalent of increasing the line spacing and font size because you don't have that much to say. The point where I had to frantically scroll to have elements fade in horizontally is where I gave up. I thought the page was broken or I'd reached the end because I kept scrolling down with no vertical movement.
- germinalphrase 6y agoThere is no consistent presentation of progress or organization. Is my scrolling doing anything? How much content is there? Does the content have a logical structure? Is this the end?
- quirkot 6y agoPage is jumping all around on me and barely comprehensible and all I can think is "Desirable Websites: where do people prefer to browse?" and the answer is not this =/
- Karawebnetwork 6y agoI don't know if that particular website uses it, but you can usually turn on the "prefers-reduced-motion" flag to get rid of the animations in compatible websites.
- heikkilevanto 6y agoI had no technical problems with the site, but it really irritates me that I have to scroll down half a screen just to get to see the next bullet point. I closed it before reaching the end of the page.
- egypturnash 6y ago"Three main features characterize desirable streets: access to parks, nearby shops & businesses, and sidewalks & street furniture". Really. I never would have guessed. Especially that last one. Really? People prefer to walk down a street with a path explicitly designed for humans instead of one that's designed entirely for cars?
- elicash 6y agoI will also take a longer path if the street is heavily tree-lined. And in this pandemic, I usually avoid walking near shops and businesses because there are more people. (That said, it kinda proves the point that those streets are more desirable, in general.)
- tobr 6y agoWhile shops probably attract people, its even more the case that people attract shops. For example, many cities have areas close to the water with surprisingly few shops, even though people like being close to water. The water restricts how you can move in the area, so there are fewer ways that people can happen to pass by - meaning even if the location is beautiful, there won’t be a lot of people there. Adding more shops won’t bring more people, just more bankruptcies.
- powersnail 6y agoWhile it seems like a fatuous point, I think stating the obvious is a feature, not a bug, for research. Explicitly confirming common sense with data is a good thing.
- kortilla 6y agoDefinitely. Very often “common sense” is an after the fact explanation for some other underlying issue.
- poulsbohemian 6y agoSuper timely as I'm on day two of the National Association of Realtors Green certification course, where aspects of walkability is one of the key topics. This "article" is really nifty for giving consumers a "live" prospective on a topic we're hearing a lot of from buyers. Neat to see the world slowly turning away from car-dependent.
- s1mon 6y agoIn San Francisco, many people avoid walking in areas with higher crime - which is not mentioned on this site. Sometimes higher crime areas are not as well lit, don't have enough visibility, or don't have clear egress in the case where someone might hassle you. Also, while walking routes are not 1:1 with running routes, Strava has very good data on popularity of particular streets globally. Here's a link to the Boston area (you can navigate wherever from there) which has strong similarities to the map that the MIT site shows. https://www.strava.com/heatmap#13.00/-71.12481/42.34039/hot/run https://www.strava.com/heatmap#13.00/-71.12481/42.34039/hot/...
- leetcrew 6y agosadly I tend to avoid walking through parks at night for this reason, even though it ought to be a more pleasant (and often more direct) route. there's nothing good about crossing paths with a crowd after dusk where I live.
- monadic3 6y agoIf you're referring to the tenderloin, there's a larger issue there with obstruction of sidewalks. I'm certainly not arguing these should be 'cleaned' or 'swept', though, just pointing out that 'crime' is rather incidental to the reasons why someone might avoid the area.
- igorstellar 6y agoMy first day in SF downtown was "oh cool, here is a bunch of free parking spots along the street" when I got to Tenderloin. I didn't see any crime but at the same time I started to avoid this neighborhood since then.
- xapata 6y agoEgress goes both ways. Streets with no hiding places nor alleys to flee down tend to be safer. Also, a street lit well in some pockets but not others ruins night vision and creates hiding places. A residential street with lights on at every door might look nice at night but may also be worse for safety. Except for the psychological deterrence of "people live here, are home, and care enough to leave the light on."
- blindm 6y agoWould be interesting to see how may people inadvertently employ Dijkstra's Algorithm on their runs/walks https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/dijkstras-shortest-path-algorithm-visual-introduction/ https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/dijkstras-shortest-path-al...
- tuckerpo 6y agoPeople in cities optimize for safety when traveling on foot. America is an interesting place.
- bregma 6y agoI spent some time last century living in Toronto, a moderately large North American city. The main street of the neighbourhood in which I lived was a former streetcar route crowded with small human-scale shops on the north side, and a church with a parking lot and some large office blocks on the south side. The north side was always crowded, the south side was always empty. It was obvious where people preferred to walk. The same thing could be seen in the downtown core. Developers had torn down a quarter mile of the west side of the main shopping street and build a huge indoor shopping mall with virtually no street engagement except for a parking lot entrance midway. The east side of the street maintained its human-scale former streetcar-street landscape. Pedestrians would crowd both sides of the street above and below the mall, but only the east side in the stretch with the mall. It was obvious where people preferred to walk. It's about human scale and human engagement. If you want to attract people, make it for them. Not for cars, not for architect's egos, not for political idiology. It's really just that simple.
- LargeWu 6y agoThis sounds a lot like downtown Minneapolis. In the 70's they went all in on the skyway system - a series of enclosed walkways over streets that went through the second floor of many buildings. The result is that all of the retail and amenities got pushed to the interiors of these buildings, and the facades were reduced to featureless stretches, save for a few particular streets (Hennepin and Nicollet). I admit when I worked downtown that I enjoyed not having to go outside in the winter, but much of downtown lacks charm and utility.
- NaOH 6y agoThe 99% Invisible podcast discussed some of the effects of the skyway just last week. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/beneath-the-skyway https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/beneath-the-skyway
- LargeWu 6y agoNice find, I agree with a lot of it. I'm not sure I would be in favor of tearing them down; they are just soooooo nice in the winter, which is long. But the street level needs to be rehabilitated.
- whalesalad 6y agoThis would be so much cooler if it wasn't designed around the mousewheel.
- snappieT 6y agoThese results seem selective and flawed to me. For one, the videos keep stopping and pointing out trees/greenery on the "desired" path, but ignore trees on the "fastest" path. Also, the route along Marlborough Street shows walking on a street versus walking down an alleyway. The "detour" is a half block on either side of the route. I live in Boston and wouldn't even consider those alleys to be streets - they only exist for garbage trucks and parking for the people who live in those buildings.
- awillen 6y agoThe example routes they give don't seem like realistic comparisons - in most of them, the shortest route doesn't really have a safe sidewalk to walk on. They're just not practical options, and in some cases I doubt they're legal for pedestrians.