Desire Path:
Inbetweens of the Metro Stops

Community Sensing, 2011
Instructor: Sean Donahue

This project explores ways to redefine the use of mundane elements that exists in our daily route such as inbetweens of metro stops. Gaston Bachelard's definition of Desire Path manifests people's intrinsic desire to go outside of their pre-determined paths and creating their own. I found 13 seconds inbetweens of metro stops in pre-determined paths of metro lines as an opportunity to redefine Desire Path in the context of urban infrastructure. This exploratory design proposal finds ways to encourages metro riders to consider the chance in exploring cities of unfamiliar by utilizing the moment of metro stops. By creating a system that relies on the mobile technology to 'tweet' messages and display it on the existing metro ticker, one's experience in exploring the city can be shared and finds opportunity to further cause a chain reaction amongst metro rider community to explore the neighborhood they pass through.

 

A desire path is a path created by usage, not a pre-determined path. Normally these paths are created by people taking shortcuts across fields to get from Point A to Point B more quickly than the pre-determined paths (like sidewalks) that have been put in place.

- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space



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The beauty of allowing desire lines to emerge naturally is that it allows for human problem-solving and wayfinding to become physically manifest in the world around us. Urban planners are coming to respect this more and more, as they realize that their expert opinions cannot always predict how people will use and make sense of public spaces. They are also learning that neither barriers, incentives, nor punishments deter people from doing what they know instinctually to be a more efficient solution.

- Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Rebuilding Central Park





REFLECTIONS



There are many opportunities exists in momentary moments but they are easily forgotten in our daily lives. Especially in our fast paced society afforded by infrastructures and technologies that promotes instantaneous results and destinations, we are more prone to miss the opportunity to explore the momentary moments. I explored through putting 13 second ticker in the metro station to explore the idea of expanding moments passed by visually counting each seconds displayed for people inside the metro cabin to see.