The question prompted a series of video and photograph surveys analyzing pedestrian traffic throughout the “historic oval” — what Troost and his colleagues call the area contained by West Circle Drive, one of the oldest sections of MSU’s campus.

The team’s research concluded that there was little point in changing the infrastructure that had served pedestrians for more than a century. 

“We were only able to find a very small amount of walkways that really weren't needed,” Troost said.

Troost, who graduated from MSU in 1982 in landscape architecture and has been the campus planner for 18 years, doesn’t attribute the historical success of MSU’s unusual sidewalk system to experienced designers such as himself. 

Pedestrians have themselves to thank for that, he said.

The history of MSU’s sidewalks 

When MSU’s campus was first being developed, architects had limited access to concrete and pavement. That left students to walk through grass to get between buildings. 

Students often took the same routes, gradually wearing down the grass until an informal walkway formed beneath their feet. 

These man-made trails go by a number of names: cow paths, social trails, desire lines, game trails and buffalo traces. 

Christopher Coutts, an environmental planning professor at Florida State University, wanted to refer to the concept as “deviant pedestrianism” in an academic paper he co-wrote on informal pedestrian infrastructure. Reviewers “didn’t like that terminology,” so Coutts instead opted for a variation on the more commonly used “desire paths.” 

Desire paths can be found virtually everywhere: on campuses, in cities, through lawns, even in the movie Monsters Inc. There is an entire subreddit dedicated to the phenomenon. 

They can occur after just 15 traversals of a route. Over centuries, desire paths can even turn into sunken trenches called holloways. 

Nowadays, they’re often seen as small rebellions against unfriendly or inconvenient urban design. But during MSU’s early years, desire paths were the closest thing students could get to formal sidewalks.

The strange latticework of MSU’s pedestrian-made pathways ended up being paved, resulting in the sidewalk system students still use today. Students changed routes as more buildings were added, and walkways followed suit. 

Campus maps from the MSU Map Library and aerial photography reviewed by The State News confirmed this practice. 

Coutts says desire paths can — and should — help landscape architects do their job. 

“Most of the time, paths are designed to be symmetrical, or to follow some type of grid, or head to a certain direction that the designer — whoever's installing those things — believes those sidewalks should go,” Coutts said. “But pedestrians, as we are arguing in the paper, are letting you know where they want to go based on the path that they're creating.” 

Coutts’ paper listed MSU as a good example of putting that into practice. While he described it as a “unique approach,” Troost said the practice was common among many campus and urban planners.

“It was something they could get away with back in the day,” Troost said. 

Current practices

Nowadays, planners take a more adaptive approach.

“Even if it's a new campus, the designers are gonna put in the sidewalks as they think the pathways go,” said Troost. “If they just waited for the ruts and the twisted ankles and all the other things to come about … it'd be a lawsuit waiting to happen.” 

Troost and his team have two choices when they see a desire path forming: fight or submit.

If a desire path presents safety or accessibility issues, Troost said they’ll opt for “landscape interventions” that “visually herd people to the safe place.” More friendly deterrents include flower beds, while sometimes a post and chain is necessary.

That was the case for the front of Erickson Hall along Farm Lane. Students would exit the building and head straight across the street to get to a nearby bus stop. 

“What we found is that students were just crossing anywhere in the street, which is a safety concern,” Troost said. “They weren't even getting over to the one crosswalk that's right there at the north end of the (Farm Lane) bridge.”

Adams field, west of the Music Building, was a different story. The MSU marching band uses the space to practice their positions, and white paint marks the edges of what is supposed to replicate a football field. But without anything fencing the area off, students took shortcuts straight through the grass. Eventually a desire path formed, creating uneven terrain for the marching band and potential for accidents. MSU decided to lay a sidewalk in its place, which is still there today.

It’s not an exact science. At one point, a desire path cut through the lawn area between Berkey Hall and the Olin Health Center. Prior landscape architects put up chain fencing to deter walkers and let the grass grow. But to Troost, that was the wrong decision. The post and chain came out, and this year a walkway went in. 

What drives desire?

Coutts says people have an innate need for convenience.

“If there’s not a barbed wire fence there making it difficult, we cut corners, we take shortcuts to get to places,” Coutts said. “Certainly pedestrians are constantly overcoming barriers planners create to taking the shortest route possible through places.”

Troost, who has spent much of his career working with or around the whims of pedestrians, suggests people learn to take life a little slower. 

“We need to be able to slow down and find our way without, you know, doing things too fast,” Troost said. “And I think in this society we like to do things fast, whether it's read an email, or headlines in a document, we don't sometimes want to get into the details of things.”