Letter: Letting the people choose to walk their own path (3)

From David Hewitt, Little Marcle, Herefordshire, UK

I can confirm that the pedestrian method works. When I was an overseas volunteer at a school in the Pacific Islands in 1976, I was given the task of laying concrete footpaths between the buildings before the onset of the wet season.

I ignored the headmaster’s planned layout and waited for a few weeks to see where the pupils actually walked between buildings. Then I laid the footpaths along the clear tracks made in the grass.

These paths worked perfectly when the rains came.