Mapping disobedient footwork: desire lines as co-producers of path meshworks and green surfaces in a modernist urban park in Stockholm

Urban parks are commonly crisscrossed by desire line paths; informal footpaths made by people wandering off-score from planned pathways. Despite their pervasiveness and potential to enrich debates concerning ‘urban walkability’ and informal-formal ‘co-production’, desire lines remain ‘off map’ in pedestrian planning and in studies elaborating the evolution of urban park design. We address this neglect by putting them ‘on the map’. Through a case study of Rålambshovsparken in Stockholm, we utilize field-mapping, aerial photography, archival studies and interviews with landscape architects to longitudinally map the emergence, transformation and governance of desire lines from the 1930s, when Rålambshovsparken was established as a modernist ‘Stockholm Style’ park, to the present day. We elaborate: (1) four eras evincing incrementally larger configurations of informal-formal path ‘meshworks’, (2) changing relations between informal desire lines and formal park governance, and (3) develop a typology of desire line types showing their functional complexity. The increased path-connectivity and walkability provided by desire lines demonstrates how vernacular footwork productively co-produces and thus co-designs park surfaces. However, our study also highlights planning dilemmas emergent from such co-production. The historically contingent informal-formal relations elaborated for this particular case emphasizes the need for comparative studies of different types of park spaces in different geographical contexts.