(HOST) There’s been a lot of repaving going on around the state this year, and one particular project reminds commentator Deborah Luskin of an architectural term that reflects an interesting aspect of human nature.
(LUSKIN) My part of the state has seen a great deal of road resurfacing this summer, which has required a certain amount of patience as traffic has had to wait for men and machines. So it is with some relief that this summer’s busy paving season is ending in the southeast. Two state highways leading into Brattleboro have been resurfaced and now give a smooth ride. But Main Street in downtown is not quite done. The roadway has been torn up curb to curb and the old sidewalks are next. There’s also a plan to eliminate the crosswalk on Main Street directly in front of Brooks Memorial Library. Currently, this crosswalk descends three steps from the elevated sidewalk to street level.
Motorists in the southbound lane stop while pedestrians cross to an island, where the walkers can pause for the northbound traffic to stop. For those who can’t negotiate the steps down to the street, there’s a ramp and grade-level crossing about thirty feet to the north. The street is wider at this point, and the crosswalks are longer. Visibility is probably better at this northern crossing, and it’s probably a safer place to cross, but that doesn’t mean that people in Brattleboro will use it. Brattleboro is a notoriously literary town, and my guess is that the people of Brattleboro are going to beat a ‘desire line’ to the library’s front door.
A desire line is an architectural term, and it almost always takes the form of the most direct and shortest route between two points. In human terms, a desire line is often the path beaten across the grass, cutting paved corners. A desire line shows urban planners where a path ought to be.
The Brattleboro library is a heavily used community resource that houses books and media, hosts lectures, exhibits art, and offers high speed internet and public access computers. Even though town-wide budget cuts have required the library to shorten its hours, library usage has not dwindled. In fact, library use typically increases in hard economic times. Given current economic circumstances, it seems likely that library use in Brattleboro will continue to be robust. Given human nature, it also seems likely that these patrons will thwart the urban planning aimed at rerouting pedestrians the long way across the street.
The long way will require people to walk about seventy-five feet further than simply crossing the street in front of the library. No doubt, the additional exercise will be good for us. Furthermore, the change is being made for the sake of safety and the common good.
But we’re just humans, and we don’t always do what’s best for us. I’m not sure public safety can trump the human bias towards economy of effort or the local habit of library use. I’m afraid that by interrupting the well-worn path to our library’s front door, our local urban planners may discover that their best-laid plans can’t cross the human lines of desire.