by aligning trail layout and user desire through physical design and persuasive outreach. Accommodation Landscapers sometimes accommodate desire paths by paving them, thereby integrating them into the official path network rather than blocking them. Sometimes, land planners have deliberately left land fully or partially unpathed, waiting to see what desire paths are created, and then paving those. In Finland, planners are known to visit parks immediately after the first snowfall, when the existing paths are not visible. The naturally chosen desire paths, marked by footprints, can then be used to guide the routing of new purpose-built paths. Other uses of the concept Images of desire paths have been employed as a metaphor for anarchism, intuitive design, individual creativity, and the wisdom of crowds. In urban planning, desire paths have been used to analyze traffic patterns for a given mode of travel. For example, the 1959 Chicago Area Transportation Study used desire paths to illustrate commuter choices regarding railroad and subway trips. In software design, the term is used to describe users' wide adoption of the same methods to overcome limitations in the software. For example, Twitter has "paved" a number of desire paths by integrating them into the service, including @ replies, hashtags, and group discussions. See also Wayfinding Sneckdown References External links Wordspy: Desire Line Desire Paths Desire Path subreddit Tom Hulme's TED Talk on using desire paths for better design and user experience Footpaths Cycling infrastructure Garden features Landscape architecture Parks Pedestrian infrastructure Psychogeography Trails Transportation planning Types of thoroughfares Urban design