![\"New](\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/images\/philowalk2.jpg\" "\\"New")
<\/p>\nPedestrians will take the shortest available route where they need to go. And there’s really no reason why they shouldn’t be able to.\u00a0There’s a famous anecdote about a Harvard park. In order to decide where to put the paths, they waited for it to snow and looked at where people trod down the snow and made paths naturally. Then they paved where people walked. It’s a sensible philosophy — put paths where people want to go.<\/p>\n
You don’t really need to wait for snow — you can just watch what parts of the grass get worn down. In our own university in downtown Toronto, there is a lovely bit of green called Philosopher’s Walk that follows the bed of\u00a0a former\u00a0creek. It used to follow pedestrian philosophy — put the paths where people want to walk. But that wasn’t good enough for someone at the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n
The University\u00a0decided to re-locate two pillars from the site of the old greenhouses at College and University (demolished<\/strike> taken down to make way for the Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building) to Philosopher’s Walk. Fair enough, but they also decided the pillars needed some sort of grandiose entranceway with plantings and a semi-circular entrance, completely out of character with the park. The only way they could fit it in was to tear up the existing, logical paths. They decided the fancy design should trump the praticality of having paths where people go.<\/p>\n
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Observe the picture above. See how the natural path heading to the right, which used to go to the street for people heading west,\u00a0has been blocked by grass (so that the brick paving now leads nowhere). People heading west\u00a0are expected to take a detour to the left\u00a0through the\u00a0fancy new entrance in order to get where they need to go. It’s not\u00a0 huge detour, but\u00a0there’s still no good reason for it.\u00a0The university has actually put up a butt-ugly tall chain link fence to the right (not visible in the picture), because they know people will naturally walk across the grass the shortest route and create a new path. So much for making the entrance elegant. Why not just\u00a0leave the\u00a0path where people walk?<\/p>\n
![\"Trying](\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/images\/philowalk1.jpg\" "\\"Trying")
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And here’s another pointless exercise. From Philospher’s Walk, there’s a well-worn path leading to the entrance to the law school. It’s been there ever since the law school’s extension was built almost twenty years ago. You’d think that, logically, the thing to do would be to leave it, or pave it. But the fancy new lanscaping blocks the natural path people would take. So instead they turfed over the path half-way up. The absurdity of the exercise is evident in the picture to the right. Since this picture was taken, the path has already started to be worn back in.<\/p>\n
You’d think, of all places, that Philosopher’s Walk would follow the philosophy of walking.<\/p>\n
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