Locally Connected and Locally Path Connected Topological Spaces
Recall from the Connected and Disconnected Topological Spaces page that a topological space $X$ is said to be connected if it is not disconnected.
Also recall from the Path Connected Topological Spaces page that a topological space $X$ is said to be path connected if for every pair of distinct points $x, y \in X$ there exists a continuous function $\alpha : [0, 1] \to X$, called a path from $x$ to $y$, such that $\alpha(0) = x$ and $\alpha(1) = y$.
Sometimes a topological space may not be connected or path connected, but may be connected or path connected in a small open neighbourhood of each point in the space. We define these new types of connectedness and path connectedness below.
Definition: Let $X$ be a topological space and let $x \in X$. We say that $X$ is Locally Connected at $x$ if for every neighbourhood $U$ of $x$ there exists a connected neighbourhood $V$ of $x$ such that $x \in V \subseteq U$. $X$ is said to be Locally Connected on all of $X$ if $X$ is locally connected at every $x \in X$. |
Definition: Let $X$ be a topological space and let $x \in X$. We say that $X$ is Locally Path Connected at $x$ if for every neighbourhood $U$ of $x$ there exists a path connected neighbourhood $V$ of $x$ such that $x \in V \subseteq U$. $X$ is said to be Locally Path Connected on all of $X$ if $X$ is locally path connected at every $x \in X$. |
For example, consider the topological space $\mathbb{R}$ with the usual topology. Consider the following topological subspace of $\mathbb{R}$ which we denote by $N$:
(1)Clearly $N$ is disconnected. To see this, let $\displaystyle{A = \bigcup_{n \in \mathbb{Z}, n < 0} (n, n+1)}$ and let $\displaystyle{B = \bigcup_{n \in \mathbb{Z}, n \geq 0} (n, n+1)}$. Then it's not hard to verify that $\{ A, B \}$ is a separation of $N$.
However, $N$ is locally connected on all of $N$. To see this, let $x \in N$. Then $x \in (n, n+1)$ for some $n \in \mathbb{N}$. Let $\delta = \min \{ n - x, n + 1 - x \}$. Then $(x - \delta, x + \delta) \subseteq (n, n+1)$ is a connected neighbourhood of $x$.
Since $x$ was arbitrary, we see that $N$ is locally collected on all of $N$.
For another example, consider the following topological subspace of $\mathbb{R}$ which we denote by $X$:
(2)The following diagram illustrates this space:

It's not hard to see that $X$ is path connected. However, $X$ is not locally path connected everywhere. Take a point $\mathbf{a} = (a, 0) \in X$ where $a \neq 0$:

Then there will always exist an open neighbourhood of $\mathbf{a}$ that is not locally path connected as illustrated above. For an explicit open neighbourhood, $X \cap B(\mathbf{a}, \mid a \mid)$ will always be not locally path connected.