April 17, 2005

9:25 PM

Some time ago I saw something here on Metafilter about one or more University Campuses (in California?) that laid out their sidewalks to follow pedestrian traffic patterns, possibly after monitoring said patterns for awhile. This may or may not have been the main topic of the thread. Can you help me find this thread?
posted by mai to MetaFilter-related at 9:25 PM (5 comments total)

Tried searching for quite some time, using the site search and google, without any luck. Hopefully one of you has a better memory than I.
posted by mai at 9:27 PM on April 17, 2005

You're probably thinking of Kevin Fox's Berkeley Path Gallery, which was analyzed by Peter Merholz.
posted by dhartung at 9:44 PM on April 17, 2005

Wow. That's it. Thanks. Impressively quick too. Mefi scores again.
posted by mai at 9:50 PM on April 17, 2005

For the opposite to this phenomenon, see Duke's campus. They have pathways in oddest directions, and people still follow them. Amazing.
posted by fionab at 10:24 PM on April 17, 2005

My pop said that Rutgers used a similar technique: watch for the paths worn into grass and then use them as a template for sidewalks.

That distinctly did not happen at VA Tech, but the did have their own nice tweak: the original sidewalks all had steam tunnels under them so they never got icy.
posted by NortonDC at 5:38 PM on April 18, 2005