Why do people choose social trails? The simplest explanation is that they save time and energy. Quite often without even thinking they cut corners and go straight to their purpose. Sometimes the “saving” is only a step or two. It looks funny and even absurd, but it is not as simple as it seems on the first sight.

About a year ago the social network “VKontakte” renewed a video catalogue and to attract the users’ attention to the catalogue they made it so that it opened when you click on link «My Video». As a result to reach your list of videos became possible only through the video catalogue and one extra mouse click. One click only, it seems. But what started then!

There were tons of soured. I myself disliked that innovation a lot as it broke the logic of the interface: all other links led to where they were supposed to lead. «My Music» - to the music, «My Friends» gave access to the list of friends, and «My communities» - to the communities. And only way to videos became one step longer. It was impossible to avoid that step and that was very annoying too. Numerous complaints to the technical support made “VKontakte” meet the users halfway – to add a scroll bar with the users’ videos to the video catalogue, but it was just a half measure. In the end I stopped using this section and started to use another video hosting.

Something similar to this but on a bigger scale happens with the official trails: if they are placed in an uncomfortable way for the dwellers they can overgrow with the grass very quickly and become part of the nature landscape. As a stairway to the central entrance of one of the buildings of Irkutsk State University, for example.

Perhaps that decision is justified on a compositional level, but life dictates other rules: the students have chosen shorter way from the bus stop to the university.

A classic of the genre is trampled corners on the crossroads of official trails. It would be even strange if they were not there. And the matter here is not in the saving, but in the nature of the movement.

And what makes the dwellers to create new trails parallel to the official ones? You can feel quite conscious choice behind creation of such trails.

Maybe some people just don’t want to walk next to the road and breathe the exhaust gas, somebody avoids other pedestrians while walking a dog, and the same pedestrians hinder the jogging for someone else. In any case when the urban environment doesn’t meet the requests of the dwellers, they start to change it themselves asserting their right to choose.

As you can see the whole story, active attitude to the surroundings and at times quite hard decisions can hide behind one step just as behind one mouse click. And in this research I tried to understand what hides behind the directions people choose creating trails, how official trails interact with the social ones, what happens to the trails with the time and how the town reacts on them.

Right in the center of Irkutsk in the square named after Kirov there is not even a trail but a wide road stomped by the hundreds or maybe even thousands of the town dwellers’ feet leading from the pedestrian crosswalk to the fountain. It seems it existed forever. People always went from the bus stop “Inyaz” (Linguistic University) across the square to the direction of the circus and Karl Marx street. Nevertheless in 2007 when the square was reconstructed this road was “overlooked”. Perhaps they didn’t want to break the symmetry visible only from a birds eye view or hoped that the citizens would be more conscious about it. Nevertheless the road continues to exist and it seems that it keeps growing wider.

And after the reconstruction in the addition to the big path a new one appeared cutting a corner to the same direction.

There are lots of trails like that in the town. Let’s have a look at a small square on Chkalov Street or the area next to the circus. They were developed only recently but the dwellers already managed to amend their layout.

Orthographic planning inherited from the soviet architecture still prevails in Irkutsk’s squares and parks. The logic of such planning is so detached from the everyday reality of the dwellers that it gives an impression that it exists in a parallel universe. Should we be surprised that people refuse to walk as they are supposed to?

The town changes. And it changes the usual scenario of its dwellers’ life. The town space is developed, equipped, assigned or stays “wild”. The old routes disappear, new ones are created. The town dwellers adapt to the changes and adapt the changes to them themselves.

As far back as twenty years ago there was nothing between Akademgorodok and Studgorodok. However, the situation started to change rapidly in the end of the 90es with the beginning of the construction of a new bridge across the Angara River. Besides traffic intersection and the road connecting Akademichesky Bridge with Pervomaisky and Universitetsky districts a new building of a library n.a. I.I.Molchanov-Sibirsky and Ice Stadium appeared on yesterday’s open spaces. The dwellers of Akademgorodok used to walking home from Akademicheskaya railway station had to create a new route.

That route starts at the railway station, traverses the overpass above “Pervomaisky - Universitetsky” by-pass road, than goes further by the paved road and bumps into an old road connecting Lermontov and Starokuzmikhinskaya Streets. There is a metal fence along the road on the opposite side; a pedestrian walk is situated in thirty meters to the right. The uncompleted Ice Stadium towers a hill overgrown by weeds behind the road and the fence.

And the pedestrians have a choice: to walk around the Ice Stadium on the right, by the pedestrian crosswalk or to go to the left… Wait, there is a fence there! But nothing can stop a determined person.

In express desire to go by the chosen route the town dwellers can be very creative: as social trail became habitual for many people someone even put rocks from both sides of the fence to make the climb more comfortable.

But the ordeals continue — the territory around the Ice Stadium is developed only partially, the passengers of commuter rail (and other dwellers too) have to create new trails to the stairways on the Northern side of the stadium.

Of course sooner or later the trails to the stairways will be built, the old auto road will be closed perhaps and the fence will be demolished. We cannot but hope that the “wishes” of the dwellers will be taken into account and new environment will be friendlier to its dwellers.

A similar situation was in Ubileinyi district. At the beginning of the 90s of the last century a new piece of Zakharova Street connected Ubileinyi with Primorsky district. A new route of the trolleybus went there too. The dwellers of Ubileinyi started to use the new road too - it is easier to catch public transport at Mukhina and Zakharova bus stops, a sport school is located nearby, a bit further there is a Music school and Children Art Center, and a beach called Yakobi. Only a cement barrier was installed on both sides of the new portion of the road, it also stretched on several meters to the by-pass road around Ubileinyi. And just as in the case of Akademicheskaya the dwellers of the district had nothing left but to climb over the blocks. It continued for several years until someone finally had a bright idea to remove one of the barrier blocks. Several years later a new pedestrian crosswalk was installed next to the opening, and the path to Mukhina on the right side of the road was paved.

This is not the end of the story. At the beginning of 2015 at the entrance to the district, on the left side of Zakharov Street, mall “Ubileinyi” was opened. The builders took care of the comfort of the mall’s potential visitors beforehand: the bus stop and crosswalk were relocated. They slightly miscalculated the width of the pavement leading to the pedestrian walk— oh, well, it happens! But they redid it pretty quickly.

But life goes on. The situation develops further. At the beginning of November a new fitness center is to open in the mall, the entrance to the fitness center is located at the gable facade. Time will show if the visitors of the fitness center keep to the official route or try to shorten the way. We cannot but observe.

In the Western countries there is such a practice: first they lay down the lawn with grass and wait the paths to appear made by the dwellers of neighboring houses: from a house to a bus stop, from a drug store to a shop and so on. Then the “official” trails are installed over these paths. We slowly take up this practice: social trails were improved in Studgorodok and the alternative student trail next to the State University was turned into a stairway.

There is logic and esthetics in the pattern of social trails. They can tell a lot about the dwellers, about their everyday life. Perhaps we shouldn’t think of the trails as of a conflict that needs to be resolved. Of course the big “path” on Kirov Square should be improved, but I would keep a tiny one between the fence and the traffic light as a reminder for an observant pedestrian, as a part of the culture code of our town. The same can be said about other social trails. And maybe the decision about official status of a trail should be taken by the dwellers themselves. The only thing that we shouldn’t do in relation to social trails is to ignore them.