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Testing, testing Just west of Akers Hall is the IM East field which, like the Student Greenhouse Field, sports a well-trod brown scar along one diagonal. If our model is any good, we ought to be able to take the geographic "facts" of the IM East field -- its location on campus, path terrains and path outlooks -- and predict that this scar will be there. We'll need a better understanding of the specifics of this phenomenon first, though. Clearly, people don't always follow the sidewalks. That doesn't instantly translate into a mad web of packed earth, though, so there must be some traffic level below which renegade footsteps will be insufficient to maintain a dirt track. (There's probably a significant amount of grass biology at work here, but that's beyond the scope of this paper.) The threshold is probably relatively thin -- anecdotal evidence suggests that there aren't many "slightly grassy" or "mildly worn" paths around campus. A beaten track seems to be an all-or-nothing affair, and the theoretical framework might be something like this:  The demand curves D1 and D2 are expressions of path value -- higher value paths will be more desirable to more people. The cost of walking across grass, we assume, is fairly constant and doesn't rise with as more and more people do so. So, what traffic level Q* leads to the creation of a dirt path? Stated indirectly, what value must the path have to induce enough pedestrians to choose it over the sidewalk, forgoing the benefits of pavement, for their shoes to collectively beat the grass to death? How great must demand be? Tell me, tell me, I'm dying to know! >> |