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I don’t have my camera with me, and I wanted to capture this desire line I spotted in downtown Toronto. Apologies for the shaky-cam technology:

From Wikipedia:

A desire line is the abstract line that represents the shortest route between an origin and destination, and shows where people want to travel. The width of the line represents the amount of demand. Desire lines were used in early transportation planning, prior to the advent of computerized models.

They are manifested on the surface of the earth in certain cases, e.g. as dirt pathways created by people walking through a field, when the original movement by individuals helps clear a path, thereby encouraging more travel.

Here’s a much better view of the odd-looking Winston Churchill statue. And, though the grass looks pretty dead, you can make out a couple of desire lines in this satellite photo of the same view.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Science, Travel. Tag Testing Project: city hall, desire line, park, toronto, video. Photo by . You can skip to the end and leave a response, or trackback from your own site. If you don't see your comment within a day or so, drop me an email. Sometimes my comment spam filter gets overly zealous.