This article talks about pointless opportunities -- sidewalks and bike paths so isolated that nobody uses them . There is a simple way to avoid this: desire paths . When a new development is created, don't pave paths immediately. Wait until people have worn down paths with use. Like ants or deer, humans are pretty good at finding the easiest, shortest, and/or most pleasant path between points. Once the paths firm up, just pave over those. It usually takes a few weeks to a few months, but for best results wait a year so you're covering all the seasons/weather. This is a common approach in intentional communities -- and also, interestingly, on college campuses where most people walk or bike everywhere. Hence the crazy-quilt of paths crisscrossing the quads. This way, you pave all the places people are traveling, and you don't waste money paving paths that nobody uses. Furthermore, if a new desire path emerges later, you can pave just that little bit at modest expense, because these usually connect parts of the existing system. If you want to use an incremental approach, use the dirt -> gravel -> pavement sequence common throughout human history. This minimizes the risk of putting expensive pavement on a path that falls out of use after a few months or years. You can substitute any other path-covering material that is locally available and affordable. People pave with bark mulch, recycled tires, boardwalks, all kinds of stuff. One drawback of the desire path approach is that it's hard on disabled people if there aren't paved paths as soon as an area opens for use. Options for coping with this include: * Start by paving a minimum of paths that will obviously be needed; for example, a sidewalk around a quad. You can figure out where people cross the middle later. * Pave desire paths in the order they appear. The highest-traffic paths can get beaten down in days, while other shortcuts may take months to discover. If you leave the grass longer than usual, it discourages random wandering so the paths will coalesce faster. * Talk with your disabled users, because in any group, some people are more rugged than others. Use the rugged folks as scouts to find paths agreeable to disabled users; paving the paths will allow more people to use them. * Think about what uses are accessible and what aren't. Disabled folks probably don't want to descend a steep slope to a sunken park, even if you put stairs and/or ramps down it; but they might really enjoy a lookout point from above. You can always put elevators at one or both ends, but those are expensive energy hogs, so you can't put too many. A high-shore boardwalk allows more people to enjoy the view and have somewhere to travel without breaking the budget. Also, if you stick to a few access points of various types, the area has more wildlife value because it doesn't have humans swarming everywhere all the time. * Since you'll save money not paving useless paths, set aside some of that to accommodate disabilities. You might offer free off-road wheels or wheelchairs, or free rides, during the time waiting for desire paths to appear. Bear in mind that you won't just save on pouring the pavement; you also won't have to maintain or replace unused paths, so you'll save over time too. That adds up, so share it. Other thoughts?