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Pathways is an urban open problem that companies like GoodMaps are trying to solve, although in a convoluted way (more sensors = more accuracy, but walled-garden is meh).

That's fascinating that it already had a term! The YC founder I used to work for was adamant that he came up with the term "idealized path" for this phenomenon.

He may very well have been the first to coin that term!

> Landscapers sometimes accommodate desire paths by paving them, thereby integrating them into the official path network rather than blocking them.[…] Sometimes, land planners have deliberately left land fully or partially unpathed, waiting to see what desire paths are created, and then paving those.

from <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Desire_path&oldid...>