Phil Gyford

Thanks for posting this Peter - I was planning on looking up this whole meme, and you’ve saved me some of the trouble!

At the end of the road where my parents live, and where I grew up, there’s a petrol/gas station, right on the corner. There are sidewalks around the edge, by the road, but many people have been cutting across the station forecourt for years - I always did on my way to school 25 years ago.

Over time the station has been changed and remodelled, with little attempt to either help or hinder those that walk across it. Except… to get into the forecourt, some people took an extra shortcut, walking across a flowerbed rather than entering where the sidewalk breaks to allow cars in. One day this little shortcut, worn into the earth, was semi-formalised with, IIRC, bricks being laid down across the flowerbed as a path.

Also, earlier this year I took this photo of some green space in Belgrade where a series of paths have been worn into the grass, criss-crossing the official paths: http://www.gyford.com/phil/photos/2004/04/serbia/?img=21_AdaptivePaths.jpg