desire path
An informal trail worn into the ground by repeated foot traffic, diverging from the designed or official route because people instinctively find a more direct or comfortable way. Desire paths appear across lawns, through parks, between buildings, and along hillsides wherever the official infrastructure doesn't match how people actually move. They are the landscape's record of collective preference.
Etymology
Translated from the French chemin de désir. The term was popularized by Gaston Bachelard's phenomenology of space and later adopted by urban planners and landscape architects. Some designers now let desire paths form first, then pave them.
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