If you want to take down a fence, first learn why it was built. I can guess at reasons but it would be interesting to hear from a city planner on the reasons and history. My guesses:
* The sidewalk is public space. Does the public give away free real estate to the restaurant, to be used to generate revenue by the square foot? If the restaurant wants outdoor dining, they can build it on their own property. Perhaps the city should at least charge rent (in non-pandemic times).
* Cities don't want loud drunk people on sidewalks, i.e., a bar scene on the sidewalk. Public alcohol consumption is generally banned in most places in the US, afaik.
* It obstructs sidewalks, which have an important purpose and were built to a certain capacity. Analogously, should we allow dining in the street, blocking a lane of traffic (structures could be built that would shield patrons from the street). Possibly, there was less foot traffic during the pandemic so the problem wasn't as noticeable.
* Laws that apply to one person apply to every restaurant in the city. Maybe the temporary pandemic situation limited how many and how did it, and we don't want every restaurant building outdoor dining on the sidewalk.
The title is inflammatory: Assuming 'progressives' are bad, caused the issue, the issue is somehow bad. I expect more from the Atlantic than joining the lynch-the-progressives mob.
> Cities don't want loud drunk people on sidewalks, i.e., a bar scene on the sidewalk. Public alcohol consumption is generally banned in most places in the US, afaik.
Which is ironic, because if you sit down anywhere outside in SF for an hour, there's a rather high and predictable chance that a person suffering from severe mental illness and/or narcotics abuse will park themselves next to you, begin to scream unintelligible sentences, to hurl insults at the patrons and act in a generally threatening fashion. Everybody will try not to make eye contact or acknowledge their presence in any way, hoping they leave of their own accord in a few minutes. You do the usual dance of pretending that the screams aren't at all distracting to the conversation you're having, while also being barely able to pay attention to anything else, in the off chance you need to dodge something thrown in your general direction. Usually nobody gets hurt, but sometimes you get unlucky and lose the stab lottery. Life goes on.
Why is this common in SF but not European cities, where outdoor dining and beer gardens are even more common than SF? (In other words, there’s more opportunity but yet it’s still not common).
In my opinion its due lack of enforcement. In bigger cities (EU) where there is not enough police or security guards - homelessness negatively impacts everyone around too
Yes, the country that spends more money on police and incarcerates more people than anywhere else is having this problem worse than other countries because they don't have enough police and aren't incarcerating enough people. What?
You can't apply a blanket statement like that to a country of 330M people and half a dozen time zones. The US is not a homogeneous blob of identical humans, customs, cultures, and governance priorities. Even among "coastal elite" cities the difference in policing (and attitudes towards policing) you see between places like SF and Manhattan is stark to say the least.
I am not talking about incarceration, just simple policing. Not letting homeless build tents or sleep at entrances of business or buildings is a good start. Making sure people feel safe should be no. 1 priority of any government.
A key word is visible. Some places solve the problem by hiding the homeless, chasing them to poor neighborhoods or into shelters, etc. (It's the same solution suburbs and small towns use, in a way: Bus them to the city. Then they criticize cities for the homeless problem.)
You need more than that, you need legal basis and resources to be able to load up the crazy homeless person into a van and get them committed out of sight to an institution.
Homelessness isn't in itself a mental condition, although it can lead to or be caused by it. Public healthcare can help people who are homeless maintain their sanity and health, which can get them back on their feet. It may even stop them from becoming homeless in the first place. It also gives both the individual, care services, and authorities all a point of contact to try and make sure they're being taken care of.
European countries aren't dealing with these people by stuffing them in asylums; they have public housing programs, free healthcare, community support programs, health-workers and social-workers doing at-home visits, day-centres, and lots of other schemes to help.
What's the solution? 5'000$ per month tents for homeless residents. [0]
Care to venture a guess how much of that is salaries for government employees in charge of the program? Keep in mind government can only grow in size; never shrink.
> "If the United States still hospitalized its mentally ill at the same rate it did in 1955, its mental health institutions would house almost 1.1 million people any given day. Instead, they house fewer than 50,000 patients," - Michael Shellenberger.
> Does the public give away free real estate to the restaurant, to be used to generate revenue by the square foot?
I mean, basically yes. We just call them parking spaces. We decided most of the street should be a carve-out to vehicles and the people who can afford to drive and park them. Whenever a Rapid Transit bus lane is being proposed, shopkeepers oppose it because it "removes parking spaces", aka "the free real estate that the shop uses to generate revenue".
So that public subsidy exists, we're just debating whether we want to allocate it towards drivers or pedestrians.
Ok ok but what about parking meter revenue...
> If the restaurant wants outdoor dining, they can build it on their own property.
This I this we're on the same page, we're just haggling over price. Lets say a parking meter charges $2/hour (peak event meters in SF can go as high as $4, others can be less than $1, tweak your own napkin math). Let's assume full occupancy (x 8hr) for the full year (x 356) and we get $6,000 with these optimistic utilization-equivalency numbers. I'm not an expert on commercial real estate, but $6,000/yr or $500/mo doesn't feel unreasonable as an upper bound for an annual lease on a parking spot.
The road upkeep and maintenance almost certainly costs more, but we already agree this is a public subsidy, we're just trying to figure out who gets it.
I think you're treating these spaces as if the user is the business or the council parking meter, but in reality it's the person from the community. We've decided that the user of the space is the community, whether it's for parking, alfresco dining, or even just a little garden with a bench. As a member of the community sometimes I want to enjoy a coffee from Business A outside. Business A provides the tables and chairs, but ultimately I'm outside where I wanted to be, as the end user of the space.
I know we are interested in the economics of it right now, but I think we often get caught up in the money involved in what are ultimately community space management decisions. Surely someone should pay or be compensated for all this right? It doesn't have to be that way. Sometimes as a community we decide to put a little garden in a little spot, and that shouldn't need an arcane ritual of currency and bureaucracy.
> The road upkeep and maintenance almost certainly costs more, but we already agree this is a public subsidy, we're just trying to figure out who gets it.
B/c of the large amount of corruption that progressive cities tend to support.
Another important question you could ask about the fence is: how come those people over there manage to do just fine without the fence? (and going deeper, do they, in fact do just fine?)
The obvious point of comparison are most southern (and some northern) european countries that have lots of outdoor (often on-street) dining, apparently without much deleterious effect.
What would be so different in the USA as to create a different outcome?
Sometimes, that asshole Chesterton put up a fence without a good reason at all.
> The obvious point of comparison are most southern (and some northern) european countries that have lots of outdoor (often on-street) dining, apparently without much deleterious effect.
I love outdoor dining, but from my experiences walking in both SF and Paris, the sidewalks are typically much wider in Paris. They even have space for enormous newspaper kiosks [1]. Meanwhile, in the US, the structures typically encroach on an already crowded sidewalk [2].
Others have mentioned a car-centric culture, but there are plenty of cars in Paris too, it just seems bigger. I wonder if I can back this supposition up with actual street measurements.
Also, Paris for whatever reason seems to have way fewer visible problems with homelessness than SF. It's possible they are just keeping it away from the public eye though.
I do think the space issue is a good distinction. And not ceding huge parts of the city to street parking is another one.
But there are crowded 'us city sized' sidewalks in plenty of places in Paris where the space to walk between tables probably wouldn't make accessible code in the US; too narrow and uneven and busy.
Here is a hip area comes to mind in paris [1]. it has those built out wooden platforms onto what used to be parking spaces like in the eater article. narrow sidewalks. Odd there are no people in the satellite I wonder if the most recent one was early pandemic. It was packed last I went.
One big difference is car size & number of cars per person. It's a lot lower than most US cities save a couple. [2]
They are decades ahead in trying to reclaim cities from cars & invest in alternative infrastructure. That area for example is now a 'pedestrian street' and they are doing great things taking back the seine. there were major differences & amazing improvements from when I went pre and during covid.
In contrast my city Denver also closed a couple streets that ran through parks during coviv (shouldn't have been built in the first place).
They added some roundabouts and other things to encourage a more bike/ped friendly space on just a couple roads.
Only to take them right back out... So infuriating. Paris used COVID to speed up and we seem to be going backwards. [3]
> Also, Paris for whatever reason seems to have way fewer visible problems with homelessness than SF. It's possible they are just keeping it away from the public eye though.
While France isn't above trying to hide poverty, it's still not as prevalent an attitude as it is in Britain and the US.
I think the answer's pretty simple : the welfare and healthcare system is just better. It's harder to be homeless and addicted in France than the US. SF in particular seems to have a drug problem.
> Others have mentioned a car-centric culture, but there are plenty of cars in Paris too, it just seems bigger. I wonder if I can back this supposition up with actual street measurements.
I suspect you won't be able to back this up with actual street measurements and that they just make better use of the available space. We give a lot of space over to cars in the US.
Agreed. It would be interesting to see how those European cities do it. I don't recall feeling obstructed by it, the way I do in US cities recently (I don't mind it, but I notice it).
IME, in Europe, the outdoor dining is usually directly adjascent the restaurant (in the US, it's often on the curb side of the sidewalk), though that is really speculation based on limited experience. Perhaps that is actually on restaurant property, and they set back the indoor structure. Or perhaps European sidewalks were built with that capacity in mind.
Also, perhaps the US, usually more restrictive with alchohol, has been less accepting of drinking in public. It doesn't seem like a problem to me, but then I hardly ever see anyone drinking in public. A city block with lots of restaurants and drinkers?
> Sometimes, that asshole Chesterton put up a fence without a good reason at all.
I find that is very rarely the case, especially for rules widespread across the country. Usually 'no good reason' means 'no reason I know' or 'not a reason I care about'.
Something else to point out is that outdoor dining has positive externalities as well. Streets with lots of people on them sitting, watching, instagramming, are safer and better observed than empty streets or streets with just cars. The permitting process is so focused on preventing the negative that there is no advocate of the positive.
Why security again? Fresh air would do it. People being afraid constantly are in need of some serious punching, they can be afraid of that for all I care. Policies of the last decades were constantly focused to cater to schizophrenic needs.
Security isn't advocating something positive since it implies that you would need it.
Which would you rather walk down as a single woman, a street empty other than a single man or a street full of sidewalk cafes and people? While the safety could be argued to be more perceived than real, (though I doubt that, it’s city street smarts 101 not to walk down dark empty alleys in the middle of the night), that increase in people’s comfort leads to the positives, healthy vibrant street life, pleasant utilization of public space, and walkability.
Depends on location and country but I don't want to further the notion that it is unsafe for women to walk down a street alone because it is not the reality in most modern societies.
Trying to accommodate irrational fears is often not helpful, it can even be abusive because you validate these fears. This is even a common mechanism to isolate people in abusive relationships. Don't go outside, there is danger in every dark alley!
Some other women might just try emphasize their vulnerability to fish for a protector. How evil of them, but hard to be angry about that.
If you always accommodate people for their comfort, you refuse them growth. As I said, it depends on the location. The locations that don't have the problem did not solve it by arbitrary security mechanisms.
It works that way because we have encoded agreed upon negatives into law and/or regulations. By contrast, the positives are still highly subjective and not broadly agreed upon.
So the actual process is dominated by "Does the project avoid X?", "Does the project ensure that Y cannot happen?", "Will the project ever exceed limit Z?" rather than "Does the project bring <positive-good> to its location?", because people have not yet agreed upon a clear definition of <positive-good> things. In contrast, the stuff to avoid makes itself known, and the stuff we can mostly agree on becomes part of our civic codes.
Residents of San Francisco have not been in my experience shy about drinking in public, or, for that matter, shooting fentanyl or defecating. These are rather everyday occurrences in the city, so I imagine people can handle some outdoor dining in restaurants too.
Alas, they get worst of both worlds: the city government is doing little about those shooting heroin on the sidewalk, because it is too busy focusing on the scourge of urban life, that is, restaurants offering sidewalk dining.
This is true, because the restaurants and other businesses actually have something to lose when they defy the petty tyranny of the city planning bureau. The bureau knows this, and it doesn’t like the idea of losing the power it has, so it comes down hard to punish those who do not kowtow to it.
On the other hand, the heroin addicts don’t really have anything to lose, other than freedom to roam around the city. Since city is not interested in depriving them of that freedom (as jailing the homeless addicts for disorderly conduct would be inhumane, according to San Franciscans), it has no tools to actually incentivize different behavior — it has no punishments left, and so it’s left powerless.
As the article hints at alcohol is likely the distinction between the two. It specifically calls out that liquor licenses are the beaucratic hurdle that is hardest to overcome.
I'd be interested to see Northeast/New England cities compared to California as well. My first guess would be that cities designed in the automobile era suffer more when they have to sacrifice the already limited pedestrian space they've got.
> My first guess would be that cities designed in the automobile era suffer more when they have to sacrifice the already limited pedestrian space they've got.
I think you have the right idea, but maybe turned around: Pre-automobile cities can have narrow streets and cram in space for cars, including driving and parking. Newer cities are built with roads (and sometimes sidewalks) at such capacity that the distance to cross them becomes a pedestrian obstacle - 'pedestrian unfriendly'.
New England cities suffer, in this regard, from their Puritanical and Quaker roots. Public alcohol consumed in urban areas is generally a very bad idea because our forefathers were against it and codified it into law.
If you look at Europe in the '70s and '80s, it didn't look all that different from the US: just as car-centric, but just with fewer motorways running right through the centre of towns. The difference is that in much of Europe, people gradually started to wean themselves off of cars. These cities weren't "designed for foot traffic": people took actual steps to make them more pedestrian friendly after being very, very car-centric for a long time. The US and Canada can and should do the same.
You assume that there wasn't a period of several decades where many of those squares and plazas didn't have roads running though them, and needed to be reclaimed from cars, much as streets in general needed to be. That assumption would be wrong.
I wouldn't know about that. I have been in many Southern European cities and I have been annoyed often by dining spaces taking over the sidewalk or even the whole street. But I agree that most of the culprits are just some small areas of the city and the rest is mostly fine.
I don't know California enough to compare. From the comments it seems worse.
> The sidewalk is public space. Does the public give away free real estate to the restaurant, to be used to generate revenue by the square foot? If the restaurant wants outdoor dining, they can build it on their own property. Perhaps the city should at least charge rent (in non-pandemic times).
Sometimes. It depends on the city. Sometimes the landowner owns the sidewalk, or at least has responsibility for it. If you are responsible for cleaning the sidewalk and assume liability if someone slips and falls on it, why not also have the ability to use it? I'm not sure where SF lands on this.
> Cities don't want loud drunk people on sidewalks, i.e., a bar scene on the sidewalk. Public alcohol consumption is generally banned in most places in the US, afaik.
Sidewalk cafes are not nightclubs. There's a difference between people sitting at a table and having a bottle of wine with a meal vs. a frat party. I don't think anyone is proposing a nightclub or bar scene on the sidewalk. These are people sitting at tables eating dinner.
> It obstructs sidewalks, which have an important purpose and were built to a certain capacity. Analogously, should we allow dining in the street, blocking a lane of traffic (structures could be built that would shield patrons from the street). Possibly, there was less foot traffic during the pandemic so the problem wasn't as noticeable.
It sounds like they're built in parking spaces, which are obviously not on the sidewalk or in the street. It's a space that would otherwise be obstructed with a parked car.
> Laws that apply to one person apply to every restaurant in the city. Maybe the temporary pandemic situation limited how many and how did it, and we don't want every restaurant building outdoor dining on the sidewalk.
Why not? It seems unlikely that every single restaurant would, but it also seems like people like eating outdoors. So, why not?
> I don't think anyone is proposing a nightclub or bar scene on the sidewalk. These are people sitting at tables eating dinner.
I'm generally in favor of all this stuff. Neverthless, I did see an article in either The Guardian about complaints from residents in London (I think) regarding the expansion of sidewalk dining because it tends to up being not "just people sitting at tables eating dinner". Then there's this NYT recently about similar questions in NYC:
Where I live, restaurants have to be quiet after past 10pm both indoors and outdoors if they have outdoor tables for example on the sidewalk or terrace. I've been told off for talking too loudly in a group of 4 when sitting outside so a bigger group of loudmouth drunks would certainly be thrown out or told to come indoors. I think this is a non-issue. Not to mention that most restaurants like this are anyway in dense neighborhoods which have a higher noise floor.
>Sidewalk cafes are not nightclubs. There's a difference between people sitting at a table and having a bottle of wine with a meal vs. a frat party. I don't think anyone is proposing a nightclub or bar scene on the sidewalk. These are people sitting at tables eating dinner.
My neighborhood has a lot more bars with parklets than restaurants with parklets.
We were told the same thing about cabs, and hotels. And even though AirBnB and Uber exist, the world is fine. Personally I even prefer a world where I can Uber from my AirBnB to a sidewalk cafe and have a glass of wine.
So no regulations are valid, because you found a few to be invalid?
> We were told the same thing about cabs ... and Uber exist, the world is fine.
Lots of traffic problems in major cities due to giving Uber unlimited public resource capacity, rather than using the free market to bid it out (which is what medallions are, if I understand correctly).
Did the world blow up? Is that our standard for success? The world of many medallion owners blew up because Uber bought off government and propagandized the public to give them for free what others have to pay for.
that's pushing the use of "the free market" quite a bit. Cities control the supply of medallions. The fact that people can bid whatever they want for them doesn't make it a "free market".
> that's pushing the use of "the free market" quite a bit. Cities control the supply of medallions. The fact that people can bid whatever they want for them doesn't make it a "free market".
Why not? Every market and auction is premised on limited resources. There is limited road space, which is auctioned off in the form of tokens, which are the mediallions.
Medallions clearly don’t represent road space but a specific use. They basically create a taxi cartel with a high price of entry. I could get behind auctioning off all road space to limit traffic and pollution but not that.
we don't have any true free market. All our markets have limits due to some form of restriction. Even without medallions there would be resgrictions due to road space etc. but withinnthe framework society decided on thr medallions give a market.
The traditional, centuries or even millenia-old way of dealing with the commons was a set of customs and practices that resisted both the monied lords and the indigent local fool. These were resilient across an extraordinary long time, but the way in which industrial capitalism leveraged and facilitated greed defeated most of them, leading (in the late 20th century) to a belief in "the tragedy of the commons" and very confused thinking about how a commons could function.
If you mean 'Don't mediallions ...', no. They take a real scarcity, road space (and pollution capacity) and shift it from an externality, something an entity consumes and but doesn't pay for, to something they do pay for.
It is actually pretty funny that they managed to pick two of the most well known "evading regulatory oversight to harm communities for fun and profit" companies out there.
Uber and Lyft are both far more expensive than yellow cabs ever were in NYC, and it's now usually very difficult to hail a yellow cab. I'd say Uber royally fucked up that system.
You're on to something with Chesterton's fence, but don't mention a few key reasons for these rules. Safety is a major driver in the changes I see being reported. Some parklets go to the corner, which can make it be hard to see oncoming cars when you're trying to cross the street. The wall height thing is about accessibility for emergency responders, as is the roof height thing. The max parking spot coverage thing is probably about parking capacity.
Ultimately, it's a bad situation. It's not being handled well, but I don't really think there's a good outcome that doesn't compromise on either safety, parking or screwing over the restaurant operators.
> The wall height thing is about accessibility for emergency responders, as is the roof height thing.
Good points. Imagine that we allowed other businesses to build extra structures on the public sidewalk. Does the hardware store just build more retail space? It's a bit absurd from that perspective.
> The max parking spot coverage thing is probably about parking capacity.
Many see reducing parking capacity as a benefit: Parking capcity consumes limited real estate (imagine a dense downtown), driving up all other real estate prices. It's a public subsidy for greenhouse gas producing cars. However, the solution is probably not random takeover of parking spots.
> Imagine that we allowed other businesses to build extra structures on the public sidewalk. Does the hardware store just build more retail space? It's a bit absurd from that perspective.
If we, the public, decide that dining facilities on public sidewalks are something we want, then so shall it be.
We, the public, are not likely to decide that Home Depot should expand their shelving onto the sidewalk.
Home Depot doesn't put their shelving on the sidewalk because people will take stuff. They do frequently put a gardening section in their parking lot, as well as rental trucks and equipment.
Really if this stuff was allowed there would be no big problem, even if home depot put a couple planters on the sidewalk for sale. The outside of their business reflects on them, so they probably at least try to make it sort of pretty.
I never really minded street hawkers though, or all of the window/street advertising you typically see in a large Asian city.
I agree we can (afaik), but I mean to address the main question, should we? I'm not saying Home Depot has a case for equal protection, but using the analogy to point out the absurd aspects of giving free public real estate to a private business (while there are other aspects that are not absurd).
We would not be giving free public real estate to a private business. We would be giving a permit to use public real estate for a publically-endorsed purpose, a public good.
It's no different than allowing private bus companies to drive on public roads, or ice cream vendors to sell from their carts in a city park. We think those are good things, so we allow private businesses to do them.
European cities are a mix of unplanned and thoroughly planned. High Middle Ages in more developed places already had some municipal bureaucracy and planning offices.
Take a look at Prague, for example. [0]
There is a chaotic maze of medieval streets in the Old Town (around the Astronomical Clock). But the New Town to the southeast, which was founded in 1348, is already much more regular; the king who founded it had a certain vision and the street grid reflects that vision. Interestingly, a mid 14-th century grid was able to accomodate some degree of car traffic of our modern era.
In case of Kraków [1], there isn't any unplanned corner of the city left, the grid in the Old Town is perfectly regular. This was designed around 1260, so a pretty old grid, but a planned city nonetheless.
Remove "initial" from my original post and my point still stands; Europe planned for them at some point, the US didn't, and what the US did - to this article's point - doesn't lend itself to adapt to these parklets so readily.
Obviously there are cities in the US built before cars, and a lot of Europe was rebuilt after cars existed, so quantifying the difference would be interesting.
The city I live in, in the northeastern US, started with no particular plan in the 1600s, and indeed, some of the streets were too narrow for cars.
In the late 1700s, a plan was laid out, whereby "the east–west streets were named for mammals while the north–south streets were named for birds".
The town I was born in, was founded in the 1660s. Probably not with a plan for the next 300 years.
for those interested, I recently found this YT channel, run by a Canadian that moved around a lot and settled in the Netherlands. He goes into various urban planning issues, and breaks down some of the reasons why he thinks Dutch cities are more livable than US-ian.
> Does the public give away free real estate to the restaurant, to be used to generate revenue by the square foot?
I can only speak for Zurich, where there is a lot of outdoor dining during the season.
The space used by restaurants for outdoor dining on public space is "leased" to the restaurant. They pay a fee for the use of public space to the city.
This might be the most hated idea on Nextdoor. You could probably convince those city council meeting enthusiasts to double property taxes before they'll agree to road closures in favor of pedestrians and cyclists
What about the people that live there and use the road? A car is something luxurious and yet also something a lot of people are dependent on by now. I technically wouldn't need one since my workplace is very near, but that isn't the reality for most people. There also is no Uber outpatient care and many people have responsibilities outside their nearest starbucks. You won't "solve" the need for individual traffic with a sidewalk, that is just the reality of the situation.
I live in a city with a car free city core. Of course we have more cars today than before the change around 20 years ago.
The article isn't about sidewalks though. It's about re-using parking spaces. The word 'sidewalk' appears only once in the article, and only in reference to the type of thing you'd see in Europe. The "parklets" are build in the street, just at the edge (and off) of the sidewalk so the 100% of the sidewalk is still usable.
The mention of alcohol licences is very telling in the article and your comment - maybe some of the legacy of the founding religious cults needs looking at here.
Also look at the pic in article - its parking spaces that have been converted.
From experience in the UK its not patrons of restaurants with outdoor dining or drinkers outside of pubs in the evening that are the real problem.
I realize you are not defending these ideas, just stating them. However, they are absurd.... objections In order:
1. Charging rent would cost more administratively than giving the space for free, in 99.9% of cases. Yes, the city should allow the restaurants to "borrow" public space for free. People want this! It's in the public interest!
2. This is false. Public "outdoor" alcohol consumption is generally acceptable and if put on the ballot would win in most places. It's legal where I live, in Austin TX.
3. Sidewalks were built to encourage pedestrian foot traffic in cities. Outdoor dining also increases foot traffic. The two concepts aren't opposed, they are mutually beneficial.
4. ...Okay? Laws shouldn't discriminate between businesses of the same class, this is a good thing.
Sure, there might be reasons a fence was built. But there might not be! We shouldn't become a veto-ocracy.
> 1. Charging rent would cost more administratively than giving the space for free, in 99.9% of cases. Yes, the city should allow the restaurants to "borrow" public space for free. People want this! It's in the public interest!
I don't see it. Imagine rent in Manhatten or SF - it's hard to believe they couldn't make a mint. People want lots of things that commercial businesses sell; that's not what public interest means or all business is 'in the public interest'.
> 2. This is false. Public "outdoor" alcohol consumption is generally acceptable and if put on the ballot would win in most places. It's legal where I live, in Austin TX.
Can you back up your claim about popularity? It's illegal in most places I know.
> 3. Sidewalks were built to encourage pedestrian foot traffic in cities. Outdoor dining also increases foot traffic. The two concepts aren't opposed, they are mutually beneficial.
That's called a public nuiscance: We could have concerts and everything else on sidewalks, which would both attract foot traffic and obstruct it. That doesn't lead to good results.
> We shouldn't become a veto-ocracy.
That doesn't tell us much: Do we throw out all laws? Traffic lights? The question is, where to draw lines. But let's assume our anscestors weren't idiots, that you and I aren't smarter than all of them, but that they were people who had good ideas that we can benefit from.
> But let's assume our anscestors weren't idiots, that you and I aren't smarter than all of them, but that they were people who had good ideas that we can benefit from.
For many of us, we have ancestors (and cousins) in parts of the world where this is all just fine. So why would we prefer one set of ancestors over another? Why should we believe that the decisions the US-based ancestors somehow reflect a different reality here, rather than just, say, the motivations of the Prohibition movement?
Square footage in prime locations is extremely valuable. One use of section of a street precludes another. Most land in America is privately owned. Way too much public space in cities has been devoted to roads, parking, and highways. So the precious little urban land available is fiercely contested. Should a section of a street be outdoor dining, greenery, parking, a bus lane, sidewalk, a utility box, product display, or a driveway? Who decides?
The law formalizes the boundaries between people. Without any restrictions people will consume as much land as possible until they come into conflict with others and use informal means to resolve disputes. Banning sleeping in your car or tents seems cruel until you experience the logical extreme of people settling permanently on public space. Stores would use the sidewalk as extensions of their sales floor and let pedestrians walk on the road.
> 2. This is false. Public "outdoor" alcohol consumption is generally acceptable and if put on the ballot would win in most places. It's legal where I live, in Austin TX.
Looks pretty mixed. California and Texas in the "mostly OK" bucket, but then you've got Illinois, New York, and Florida as high-pop states in the "mostly not OK" bucket. State-wide bans in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, too. I'd guess, based on that, that more people live places with significant restrictions on open containers in public than not, but it may be fairly close to an even split.
> 1. Charging rent would cost more administratively than giving the space for free, in 99.9% of cases. Yes, the city should allow the restaurants to "borrow" public space for free. People want this! It's in the public interest!
It costing more isn't an argument, if society wants it. Building a road costs money. Keeping it clean costs money. We invest in roads. We invest in bureaucracy enforcing policy. The cost can then be a measure to control the behavior.
Here in my European city there is a few between 16 and 77€/m²/year depending on the district for using sidewalks for a restaurant. As well as other regulation (remaining space, noise, ...)
2. It's legal in Houston,Tx too. And It's never been a problem. The only I remember anyone even taking advantage of this is the occasional neighbor walking their dog in the evening with a beer or a glass of wine.
You mistake legitimate questions about the policy with questions about its implementation. The policy, and the issues you raised, were discussed, decided and voted on -- what the article highlights is the needlessly bureaucratic implementation.
>The sidewalk is public space. Does the public give away free real estate to the restaurant, to be used to generate revenue by the square foot? If the restaurant wants outdoor dining, they can build it on their own property. Perhaps the city should at least charge rent (in non-pandemic times).
The public collects a 10%ish[0] tithe on all that additional revenue, acting as if there is no financial benefit for the state (and public at large) is silly.
San Francisco is very much not a progressive utopia, they just have bad government. I live in Scandinavia and outdoor dining does just fine here. Not in the winters of course, but in the summer you see it everywhere. Companies just apply for a permit, the government reviews it and quickly comes back with an answer, our cities typically have an SLO of 4-10 weeks after applying to get an answer and that includes dealing with people complaining. San Francisco not being able to do that is just evidence that San Francisco has inefficient government, but that has nothing to do with them trying to be progressive.
To be fair the article is comparing SF to other American cities, not to actual working progressive cities.
And yes, American govt is vastly inefficient at all levels, mostly because the individual is prioritised over the community. When the goal is to prevent individual harm, at any cost, then naturally there is little change because someone is always around to object.
That’s like saying “Communism works, we just had a few bad apples”.
San Francisco has been electing progressives from top to bottom since forever. They identify themselves, run and get elected as progressives, they implement policies and get re-elected, so they are progressives.
Not taking responsibility is something progressives also are known for :)
I think with "very much not a progressive utopia", GP was particularly referring to the "utopia" part of the argument. I don't think anyone is denying that SF is progressive, especially for US standards. But it's also just badly run, and there's plenty evidence across the world that "progressive" doesn't need to imply "badly run".
I love San Francisco more than most places I don't live, but I really have a hard time even beginning to agree on any description of it or really any part of California as a "progressive utopia".
Certainly it has a lot of open minded people in it, but it has awful housing policy, mediocre transit for a city its size, historically some of the most brutal police behaviour and crackdowns, and an incredibly stark wealth divide. Many of these things get reflected in policies about land use too, to which the things this article is talking about are likely second order effects.
I mean, realistically table stakes for progressive utopia have to include universal health care, which I guess makes Hawaii the only state that's even at the table.
San Francisco is where reactionary conservatism is couched in the right sort of language and gets passed off as Progressive (the capital P is for the political faction). Any true progressivism that may affect the wealthy homeowner class is rejected with flowery but nonsensical arguments:
> “Zoning is racist and made by people like me who live here to increase my profit on my property. That’s [pro-housing activists’] line…tell that to the folks in Bayview-Hunters Point, the largest single family home owning area in the city.”
>
>It seemed to be lost on the group, which consisted of eleven white people over the age of forty, that minority homeowners might be clustered in that area in part because of redlining and racist zoning laws that restricted access to other neighborhoods.
The politics are truly cursed in SF and nothing makes sense, and all rhetoric is hidden behind several layers of misdirection and retribution for long-held grudges.
> > “Zoning is racist and made by people like me who live here to increase my profit on my property. That’s [pro-housing activists’] line ...
You left out some important context there. The full quote from the article is:
"For a club that sees themselves as progressive, it is ironic that they are such strong advocates for strict zoning rules, a practice rooted in racism and designed to segregate neighborhoods.
This was actually a running joke in the meeting, which began when Welch sarcastically stated, “Zoning is racist and made by people like me who live here to increase my profit on my property. That’s [pro-housing activists’] line…tell that to the folks in Bayview-Hunters Point, the largest single family home owning area in the city.”"
The part that wasn't obvious without the full context is that it is a quote within a quote, with the speaker quoting (and disparaging) someone who is critiquing lower-density zoning.
It's honestly not surprising in my view. Wealthy "progressives" have always had a "rules for thee but not for me" attitude, whether it comes to homeless shelters, new housing starts, police funding, or affirmative action.
It seems very weird that people are attributing this to progressivism. It's bad governance perhaps, but it has nothing to do with California's social policies. Since when are open container laws "progressive"?
It's as if the author realized nobody would read his article about patio dining, and went back and made it about how progressivism is destroying patio dining instead, because... California.
The article is about how an amalgamation of feel-good laws combined to destroy restaurants' ability to offer patio dining. Passing feel-good laws that have poorly thought out consequences is what California "progressives" do. That's why it's about how "progressivism" is destroying patio dining.
If this was about actual progressivism then you'd see any number of East Coast blue states mentioned, which they aren't.
"feel good laws", like fire codes and lost parking spots / parking spot revenue and accessibility? sounds less like "progressive feel good laws" and more like bike shedding.
yes, that's what i meant. those issues are concerns everywhere and not "feel good laws". the differences is in how much weight you give them; do you value lost parking spots / parking spot meter income more than this? how many people do you ask for approval? if you ask the nimby-neighbors whether they're cool with guests chatting below their windows until 10pm or 11pm, you'll never get a single one through.
It's a tough thing to represent correctly. Are these people actually "progressive" or merely wrapping themselves with the image?
Though I critique SF all the time for not actually being progressive, or left for that matter, at least where it counts for local politics and material effects that could be achieved by their politics before The Revolution, I sometimes think the author has it right. It's better to say that everybody that adopts a label gets to define it. Unless there's a really strong faction with the label that reject the politics of the others, we are left with SF "progressives" being "progressive," even if outsides find them hypocritical and counterproductive to the movement.
They are attributing it to a pattern of claims and declarations regarding one's own beliefs and desires that so-called progressives in places like SF and Berkeley make, which directly contradict their behaviors.
"Robert Reich, a left-wing professor at the University of California Berkeley who served as labor secretary during the Clinton administration, is very concerned about income inequality. He urged Wall Street executives to “invest” in cities by funding low-income housing projects. He also praised a “promising initiative” to promote the construction of affordable housing units in San Francisco.
Reich is not so keen, however, on a proposal to tear down a dilapidated building in his Berkeley neighborhood and replace it with a 10-unit development that would include low-income housing.
Reich and some of his wealthy neighbors are imploring the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the dilapidated structure, known as the Payson House, as a Berkeley landmark in order to stop the proposed development. In a letter to the commission, Reich said the proposed housing units would destroy the “charm of an older era of Berkeley” and likened the developers’ actions to “the illegal practices and corrupt politics of the late nineteenth century.”
“Dilapidated building” is a loaded description. The house is the oldest in the neighborhood, from 1889, and the neighbors claim it is of both architectural and local-historical significance. (I don’t have enough local knowledge to weigh in.) Here is the neighbors’ landmark application: https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_D...
Insisting that they are just saying that as an excuse because they don’t like town houses seems uncharitable at best. Considering the sources pushing this story I’d call it more like a bad-faith political hit job vs. Prof. Reich. E.g. your link is from a far-right “think tank” in North Carolina full of climate denialists, funded by Art Pope, GOP megadonor and close friend of the Koch brothers. Not exactly the people I would trust to fairly evaluate Berkeley’s decisions on which buildings should be landmarks.
In any case, the city council decided that the house isn’t important enough to qualify as a landmark, and the project is going through; the building will be torn down.
> the neighbors claim it is of both architectural and local-historical significance.
The neighbors will say whatever they can to stop the building without regard for truth or basic decorum. Their class interests are extremely conflicted, and such duplicitous bad-faith use of law is endemic in wealthy white neighborhoods like this.
Every neighbor who signs the petition to make a local building a landmark isn’t always and inevitably acting in bad faith.
Developers will also often happily tear down irreplaceable historical landmarks if they can profit, but that doesn’t mean that they are necessarily acting in bad faith.
Which is why there is a city process involved. (In this case, deciding in favor of the developer.)
Neighbors don't determine historical significance, they determine their financial and aesthetic best interests.
Not really sure what "developers" have to do with this. I thought it was about history? Or is any sort of justification ok if it stops housing that's more affordable than the rest of the multi-million dollar homes of the neighborhood?
If you have decided a priori that all historical preservation is just bad-faith NIMBYism, that’s kind of the end of the conversation.
Personally I think it is fine to leave to some kind of city process to decide which 19th century buildings to tear down, case by case, rather than just tearing them all down. In this case, the historical preservationists made their petition, but the city decided that their case wasn’t strong enough. Seems fine.
But if the process is working poorly in some places, then people in the city should press for fixes. (And if city officials are violating the law, they should be sued or prosecuted, as appropriate.)
Finding Bob Reich’s signature on a historical preservation petition for a 19th century building in his already mixed neighborhood (from what I can tell 2/4 corners at this intersection already have large multi-unit buildings) seems like an especially flimsy reason to write a screed attacking him for hypocrisy.
Historical status is not determined by financially conflicted neighbors, it's determined by historical societies.
My "pre determination" is that neighbors lie all the time another whatever they can to stop housing. This is a base fact.
If it's historical, there are professionals who determine that based on facts, not people who want to build financial walls around their house.
Still wondering why you brought up developers unless you're admitting that the historical status isn't actually about history but instead about stopping housing.
I would say historical status is determined by formal city process, not any independent organization.
But the person leading this petition was apparently historian Daniella Thompson of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association: http://berkeleyheritage.com
> ... According to BAHA’s records, the Payson House is the oldest residence standing in its neighborhood and is one of the oldest shingle houses remaining extant in Berkeley.... It is BAHA’s view that the Payson House qualifies as a structure of merit pursuant to the City’s Landmarks Ordinance...
What are your criteria for who counts as a valid historical society? As far as I can tell the BAHA is the most relevant/appropriate organization in Berkeley in this context.
(Note: historical societies are made up of local residents, and historians can be paid for their work; local historians weighing in on specific buildings are probably generally financially conflicted, as well as generally biased towards preservation.)
> Commissioners also used the contentious meeting as an opportunity to tell residents that if they took issue with the way landmarking typically unfolds, they should ask the city to conduct a historical survey for landmarking, instead of relying on applications that happen to come in when development is proposed at certain locations.
I support rent control, but I don't think it either drags down property values, or prevents this sort of behavior a ton.
A lot of NIMBY behavior is about financial interests, but there are a lot more motivations too: basic conservatism, fear of change, fear of different types of people, and the incredible human bias against the unknown.
> oldest in the neighborhood, from 1889, and the neighbors claim it is of both architectural and local-historical significance
The building is architecturally mundane and inefficiently built (SFH) .
It is around 150 years old, which is quite new as far as 'old' buildings go.
It also doesn't look that nice (subjective personal opinion)
Usually, 'historic significance' is a thinly veiled attempt to grasp at straws for blocking any densification.
"historic significance" doesn't have a formal definition as far as I can tell. We really need one that is stricter than people feel it should be.
Historical buildings should be protected, but I don't know how to formally define that. The best I can come up with is the market: if you actually cared about it you would put your money where you mouth is and buy it out (perhaps with a group of like minded to create a foundation), and protect it as you see fit for as long as people continue to protect it. Of course this mostly eliminates the poor, but for the most part I'm not sure it matters as anything that is historic probably has at least one rich person who cares.
Honolulu has the most ridiculous transportation system imaginable. Continuous traffic jams of single people in cars commuting all to the same few places (and huge amounts of real estate devoted to roads and parking), in a setting where their cars literally can’t go anywhere else (it’s an island!) or fulfill any of the supposed advantages of cars vs. other modes of transportation, and where the primary industry is tourism – visitors who obviously can’t bring their own private vehicles.
Scrapping 3/4 of the private vehicles there and investing in frequent high quality public transportation would make the city dramatically nicer.
My one visit to Hawaii was kind of eye opening in how there were so many cars just abandoned on the roads. They are just left there to rot in the salt air. The gov't doesn't remove them. It was just such a bizarre thing to see for a not-3rd world state.
just such a bizarre thing to see for a not-3rd world state
Unfortunately I'm not sure how valid this couching is any more. A lot of what was historically perceived as "third world" started from a POV that was 1950s - 1970s America, where the rest of the world was still either under communism or recovering from the ashes of WWII.
Today, there are many hundreds of cities & states in Asia that far outshine many US and European cities & states in "developedness". The problem is that the leadership in these Western places refuse to realise they can't keep relying on historical achievement to compete in the 21st Century.
> where the rest of the world was still either under communism or recovering from the ashes of WWII.
That is history: English is a living language, and today first world mean rich industrialized nation (developed), and third world means poor industrialized nation. Those Asian nations in todays English are first world countries even though they weren't Nato or Warsaw pact which is what third world meant in 1950-1970.
In my day to day, I have never understood 3rd world to mean non-NATO or non-Warsaw pact member states or anything specific to WWII. 3rd world status has always been understood by me to being a state of development on things like infrastructure, technology, medicine, gov't, etc.
I'm guessing you are younger than 40? In my school they made a big deal about this, but it was already clear in popular use it wasn't about NATO/Warsaw pact.
My interpretation: if you're 40 or older then (within some other constraints like where you live, etc.) your education was likely colored by cold war propaganda which still somewhat weakly insisted on dividing the world into 3 nearly exclusive spheres of influence (American, Russian, and Non-Aligned aka 1st, 2nd, 3rd), and that may have shown up in your education even though the concept was already pretty much already obsolete in the 80s.
I'm around that age, and Canadian, and I think it was at least brought up as the 'true' meaning of third world in my social studies classes, but it wasn't how people used it in regular use already.
Fwiw I think it's a term that there isn't really a lot of use in preserving, especially since its original meaning is so divorced from current reality. Current parlance for what people actually mean when they say third world is usually "developing world" which is in some ways better (it at least implies it's something that changes over time) but also carries a lot of awkward colonialist baggage.
I'm going to guess you don't live in Hawaii. We already have a bus system (TheBus), which is decent but still painfully slow compared to a personal vehicle. And we're in the process of building light rail system which, due to budget overruns and bizarre blunders, will be years before it ever sees operation and goes roughly nowhere to nowhere.
"Frequent high quality public transportation" is great for dense urban cores, which doesn't remotely describe Honolulu.
It's a common mistake to think of public transport as something imposed on unchanging cities, but it actually drives considerable change as well. Whatever the flaws of Honolulu's LRT may be, it will drive increased density in the corridor it serves, and that's exactly how it's supposed to work.
This does, however, assume that zoning near stations is also adjusted to allow this, which is something that many US cities including the Bay Area are notoriously bad at.
People can see how highways affect development: you only need to look at any overhead view of any major city outside the pre-WW2 core. Metro Atlanta is full of little outposts dangling off roads.
Everything else cost money or was too far away. I think underdeveloped imagination is why so many people can't see that better transit options would have the same effect, but with increasing density rather than increasing sprawl.
I do not live in Hawaii, but from what I can tell (from visiting one time and looking at what maps/analyses I can find in 10 minutes of web search) most of the traffic sources and destinations in Oahu are within a couple miles of a single 20-mile-long stretch of freeway (H1 / H201). We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people trying to drive every morning/evening along the same stretch of freeway in individual private vehicles (3–4 lanes wide in each direction), instead of riding some more space-efficient mode of transportation along the same route.
is plenty dense for good public transportation. Density is useful, but it is overrated. The important part is the public transport system go when and where people need, lacking that people won't ride and thus you get a vicious circle that people blame on low density but in fact is just bad service is driving people away.
> table stakes for progressive utopia have to include universal health care
Is this close enough?
> Healthy San Francisco, created by City Ordinance in July 2006, is San Francisco’s health access program for the uninsured, the first of its kind in the nation. Healthy San Francisco is not insurance, but provides uninsured San Francisco residents access to affordable basic and ongoing health care services, including primary care through a medical home, as well as specialty and inpatient care, diagnostic and mental health services, and prescription drugs. All uninsured adult City residents who are not eligible for other public programs are eligible to enroll in Healthy San Francisco, regardless of immigration status, employment status, or pre-existing medical conditions.
And on top of that, the politics and policies of these so-called progressive utopia cities in California are frequently the subject of scorn and derision by actual progressives I know of. I don't know anyone who would genuinely call it a "progressive utopia." It's a laughable idea unless you're trying to sell headline clicks.
I don't know if that's completely fair. I agree that San Francisco fails as a "true progressive utopia", but it feels like this is maybe a kind of "no true Scotsman". Labelling things is hard, but as far as "progressive utopias" can and do manifest themselves in the United States, San Francisco is probably as close as it gets.
I find very little to be actually progressive in San Francisco, unless it's for national level politics. Anything that affects local political power hierarchies is extremely regressive.
The San Francisco electorate, by and large, would likely call themselves "very progressive", probably more so than any other major city in the country. Almost all of the significant power brokers, all the way up to the governor's office, in San Francisco politics would call themselves "very progressive". In that sense, San Francisco's government represents the one of the purest embodiments of what is a real political bloc or viewpoint or movement, one that calls itself "progressive", and what it might hope to achieve. Friedersdorf wants to call this politics "progressive" too; you object, and say this "American progressiveness", and the utopia created in its image to the best of its abilities, has little to do with "real progressives" and what their utopia might be like. But either way, I think what I'm trying to get at is - regardless of what you want to call it, it's real.
And I think there's something to be said for, "Conor Friedersdorf is an American, writing in an American magazine, about American politics" that makes it reasonable to highlight that distinction, or default to an American understanding of the term. I'm not trying to say that "Nordic progressiveness" isn't better than "American progressiveness", or that it isn't good or workable, but I'm hesitant to say that it's "truer" than "American progressiveness" - that's the fallacy.
(and, for what it's worth: highlighting a real distinction is certainly a rhetorical feint, and maybe a case of moving the goalposts, but it's not the same as No True Scotsman, where the distinction is, as Wikipedia puts it, "rhetoric [that] takes the form of emotionally charged but nonsubstantive purity platitudes")
But to be clear, I do like this reply a lot. And also to be clear, I'm Canadian, and in most respects like the way Canada is more progressive (in any sense, really) than the US, and think both of us would be better off if we were more like the Nordic countries. So I think it's valuable to ask, then: why is it that, Sweden, say, is more successful at producing good "real" "progressive utopias" than San Francisco?
To me the reason why I don't think it really matters how the people of SF self-label is that they profess a lot of beliefs that they fail to carry out, in spite of the overwhelming electoral power they possess. People in SF, and California at large, will talk until they're blue in the face about wanting various things to be better (like, as I mentioned in my first post, universal health care: something that is clearly within the power of a state to enact) but when it comes time for anyone to enact those policies it fails time and time again.
In other words, while I think it's important to recognize the significance of self-identification, doing so while ignoring incredibly evident hypocrisy is a kind of solipsism.
Exactly. I'll add that the universal healthcare question is IMHO, underrated in it's power to reveal how close to a "progressive utopia" a place really is.
I have considered moving to the USA (which is a viable option for me, for reasons that I wont go into here), and the question "but, which state?" always stops me. I start with the revealing question "what's the guns-to-healthcare ratio there?"
In the words of US/Canadian author William Gibson:
"People who feel safer with a gun than with guaranteed medical insurance don't yet have a fully adult concept of scary"
No, it's not "no true Scotsman," because when you look at commonly held progressive values, little of them line up with how San Fran actually is. Again: massive wealth inequality, the housing crisis, gentrification, concentration of capital in VCs who gamble by funding unethical and scantily regulated tech companies. None of that is progressive!
The only thing about it that's progressive is its social culture, in some ways, such as how it's a very LGBT-friendly city. That's all that comes to mind.
> If the supermajority of progressives SF can't create a progressive city, then it simply isn't possible
Or, one of
a) They're not really, deep down, as progressive as they claim to be.
b) it's not possible, _within the USA as it currently operates_.
c) Related to b, power to "create a progressive city" doesn't actually lie with the "supermajority" of voters, but with a few powerful people who are fine with things the way they are.
I suspect, with no evidence, a bit of all of these.
The "utopia" part is a jab at fantasy thinking, lacking practicality, and most likely leading to poor outcomes. "Utopia" is generally used in a derogatory way by people who consider themselves practical.
> I really have a hard time even beginning to agree on any description of it or really any part of California as a "progressive utopia".
I think the label is tongue in cheek. You would agree that San Francisco has the most "progressive" policies of any American city, and therefore if there was a "progressive utopia", SF would be the closest to it?
I can't honestly say that I know enough about enough American cities to know if I agree with that, but I would honestly be pretty surprised if there aren't any American cities that rate better on the things I listed, in part or on whole.
As another person in this thread mentioned I think the one exceptional standout is LGBT issues, and even that's largely because of a motivated local queer community and even then it's also the city where Harvey Milk was shot.
San Francisco is at least partially the "Utopia" you get when you pave your path with good intentions. Bluest or close to Bluest city in a solidly Blue state. I think the author is being tongue-in-cheek.
I think you gave a very good description of "progressive reality": a mixture of unrealistic assumptions about human nature mixed with good intentions that went wrong and all of this advertised by crafty people who know how to get rich by being "progressive".
I think whoever sold high density housing policy as a progressive issue needs the get an Oscar for propaganda as it seems to be working extremely well. It has been so entrenched in the minds of people that this is a progressive solution. Only real estate groups can finance housing like this and it would create a situation where most people pay rent to their own detriment in the long term if you also criticise wealth divide, because this particular position would most certainly increase it. Of course real estate would love nothing more than high value cities zoning land for them to build thousands of housing units. That is like printing money if you have the capital to invest. I firmly believe people reject progressivism because they feel they would end up exploited and positions like this make that seem sensible.
Public transport is a classical progressive issue, also trying to curb police violence. In general I would agree, but the "progressive" strategy for policy makers seems to be more talk than action.
Eh, I think this is a pretty complicated thing really.
Part of the problem I think is that American-style land-use policies create a very bipolar concept of density. Everything has to be either SFH or high rises and the middle gets squeezed out. Both of these I think favour big developers: either big enough to buy large tracts of land to build houses on or big enough to afford the capitally intensive process of building large scale buildings. Other parts of the world seem to be less keen on both kinds of housing and also often manage to have healthier cities by most metrics.
Also, broad home ownership as a kind of free market mechanism for wealth transfer has been a big push, but I think the results are pretty mixed in practice. It worked for a while, particularly while family incomes were growing thanks to the workforce growing post-WWII, but it's also likely that it contributed to creating a new kind of wealthy elite that has become protective of itself, and that manifests particularly badly in California where property tax law is... comically absurd?
I dunno. Leftism existed before there was literally any hope of "everyone owning a home." Landlords are also deeply problematic from a left or progressive perspective, but I don't think that means the answer is the opposite.
Also, in practice, it doesn't really seem like developers are that keen on building "thousands of units". They seem much happier to build hundreds of really expensive ones. But it's hard to tell what they'd do without modern zoning laws.
Home ownership isn't just wealth building, I would not recommend it for that aspect. But it also has an effect in your investment in communities around you, which is pretty important to build support systems for people less fortunate. The economic advantages and insurances are a side effect.
Home owners are not a wealthy elite and if they have become that you might want to address this problem.
Perhaps 'elite' is too much, though I think it's at least somewhat accurate in California where the vast majority of people are priced out of home ownership in much of the state. At any rate, it's all relative, but as a 'class' of sorts homeowners often actively and politically work against creating affordable housing of any sort in their neighborhoods. I don't even think that should be considered controversial, it's a thing that very evidently happens.
I'm also just plain not sure I buy anything like the idea that home owners have greater investment in their communities in any particular ways that help 'less fortunate' people. I'm not sure what you're even thinking of there. At this point, thanks to housing price inflation, most homeowners wind up tying up substantial assets into debt service, which is about as far from something that helps the local community as you can get imo.
I'm not strictly against home ownership, I am one myself. I just don't think you've really presented a compelling argument (nor am I aware of one) that they are somehow the true embodiment of progressivism.
If you have a home, rising prices would be of benefit to you and another incentive to invest in your community. Yes, people are protective about their neighborhoods, that is not difficult to understand I think. That can have reasons, correct or wrong ones.
> I'm not strictly against home ownership, I am one myself.
I am not surprised. I believe your form of progressivism is pretty protective of your own status but you deny it to yourself. Will you sell your home and rent an apartment in high density housing? Do you want that?
I have actually done that before, in fact. I would do it again if it made sense.
Right now I am in a situation where I need a space for quite a few people to live together (5 adults), and where I live that's not really feasible in a high density rental (there is basically no such thing as a >3bdrm apartment in my city), nor is it possible to do so and also commit to certain environmental goals that we have as a group. This has a lot more to do with the politics of where I live than it does with my own politics, though.
"You criticize society, yet you participate in a society hmmmmmmm."
As for investment in the community, what kinds of investments do you have in mind? How do those investments specifically help "less fortunate people" as you claimed? I'm genuinely curious what you mean by this, as it doesn't reflect my experience in any way, but you seem unwilling to get specific. Again, mostly my experience is NIMBYism, for eg. when the people in the urban condo building I lived in objected to a halfway house existing a block and a half away.
At any rate, I'm perfectly willing to admit that I'm not always perfect in my praxis or whatever. I think I have a lot to learn about how to be a better person in a community. I am privileged in many ways and I do what I can to use that privilege for good, but I'm sure I fail frequently to do all that I could theoretically do.
The reason it's "like printing money" to build an apartment building is that there are so few relative to demand. You're using the result of a shortage as an argument not to fix the shortage.
> San Francisco–style progressives aren’t the only Californians endangering outdoor dining. In San Clemente, a successful effort to remove some parklets originated with downtown merchants who wanted parking for their customers.
San Clemente is nothing at all like a "progressive utopia" - it's voted solidly Republican for decades including in 2020 [1].
The author then goes on to tip his hat to a progressive politician from San Francisco for authoring a bill to extend outdoor dining:
"State Senator Wiener is correct when he observes, “If a city had come forward before the pandemic and said, ‘Let’s dramatically expand outdoor dining,’ there would have been a lot of pushback. Like, ‘Whoa, what’s going to happen to the neighborhood? We need parking.’ This is not a mysterious unknown now. Not everybody likes it, but most people do. They love it.”"
"Wiener’s bill authorizes the extension of temporary permits for outdoor dining, which are ultimately under the control of a state alcoholic-beverage commission..."
... all of which flat out contradicts the click-baity headline that the issue has something to do with progressivism. It's not about progressivism in the slightest.
> In San Clemente, a successful effort to remove some parklets originated with downtown merchants who wanted parking for their customers.
The youtube channel, Not Just Bikes, showed that in the 1970s, much of the Netherlands was car centric and claimed there were death threats by store owners who thought that getting rid of the parking spaces would deprive them of their customers. According to the channel the opposite was true. Removing the cars increased the number of people on the streets significantly and business for those stores increased.
I have no idea if that would work for San Clemente. It's not some $800k person city like Amsterdam. It's a 64k person city slightly isolated beach community with a 5-6 block long shopping street lined with parking.
Assuming it could get the foot traffic it would be 10x nicer with no cars and more outdoor seating but they'd still need some place to put the visitors (off the main street parking structures/lots)
I have seen this in my city recently. There's a fairly popular tourist street where they removed all car access, converting it to a pedestrian strip with a tram line. The businesses fought it aggressively because they thought customers would disappear along with the few parking spaces.
As expected by most sensible people, the opposite happened. More space for customers means they can access shops without cramming through busy footpaths, and enjoy the street itself more, spending more time there. Now it has more capacity and the businesses that opposed it seem to be doing very well.
> For decades, it turns out, needlessly onerous regulations had deprived Californians of both the pleasure of eating outdoors and the convivial streetscapes that curbside dining creates
Yes, like the regulation that sidewalks have to be clear enough for someone in a wheelchair to pass through?
I think either the author is clickbaiting or they literally have no idea what they are talking about. American "progressive" ideas would be at best centre or slightly right leaning anywhere else in the world.
I wish there were more of a science to implementing regulations. We might all agree that X is desirable, but there are tons of ways of trying to achieve X, and finding a good one doesn't seem to happen that often. Debate about it turns into accusations that because you don't like how the X regulation was implemented, you must be against X, therefore you must be evil scum. Systems get written in stone and duct taped together in a forever additive way. Nothing gets AB tested. Nothing gets refactored.
There’s not agreement on what’s desirable, but there’s agreement of what the goals of a piece of legislation are. Often, those goals area measurable. The scale of experimentation that would be required to scientifically test whether legislation does what it’s supposed to do would be massive, but I’d bet it would be worthwhile.
Sure, but the problem is there are unintended consequences that you don't even think of until after passing the law. Sure you can measure metrics, but only the metrics you know to measure, not ones that you didn't think of.
I don't know how this can be laid at the feet of progressives. It's mainly NIMBYs who oppose outdoor dining. Here in Portland, progressivism and anti-car, pro-biking/walking dogma has been hitched to the expansion if outdoor dining that in some cases shuts down whole streets, as another way of intentionally making it hard on us evil people who insist on owning cars. As a neighbor of one of the proposed streets to be shut down, who already deals with a lack of parking and a lot of drunk kids staggering around at 2am on Saturdays, I opposed the total street shutdown because while I'd love to live in Paris, I don't particularly want to live in Amsterdam. But the "parklets" in Portland have taken their place beside the many (wonderful) food cart pods, and definitely seem here to stay. Which is great. It absolutely saved a lot of struggling restaurants during the pandemic, and it adds another layer of life to the streets.
While disappointing, this is not exactly a surprise. California's approach to regulation, in general, is onerous and creates substantial headwind to development or change. This is not a statement about the legitimacy of the underlying concerns for why such regulation exists.
The problem is the patchwork of regulation, multi-stage enforcement, and ability for competitors and activists to introduce painful delays and reviews at each stage. Streamlining is desperately needed, and public review should be more limited in scope and timeline.
Candyland meets Kafka indeed. This a great article for all, not as a political piece, but as a teachable moment about process, stakeholders, requirements , over-optimization and compromise. We many not be able to fix California, but we can at least try to fix our own projects.
Compared to European cities (except parts of London or Frankfurt etc.), US cities have always felt dead to me. Even Chicago and New York. There's previous few places in these cities where one can sit outside somewhere interesting. Specifically, they exist in such a low concentration that no real public "life" happens, rather, life happens beyond closed doors of establishments.
Contrast this with cities in Europe where people just hang out, like for free, all around the town at rivers, parks, bridges and have a good time. It always feels like European cities place a premium on such public places, on the idea that a good time could be had without going to a commercial venue.
I guess this is why US cities feel weird to me... somehow compartmentalized and commercialized, even oppressive. I realize you are not supposed to walk "around town" in the US. Rather, you pick a target (Bar, Restaurant) and then go drive there. And that's fine.
I also know public consumption is frowned upon. But look at people sitting at the Seine or Canal St. Martin in Paris on a summer evening... sharing spaces between open-air restaurants, sidewalks and just public spots. It's a far cry from "rowdy drunkenness" that US Americans frequently imagine, and (to me), something is just missing without this public life.
And even more extreme version of the US model can be seen in newer parts of rapidly growing cities like Dubai and many new developments in Istanbul and the like:
Here, the city amounts to a system of isolated complexes, separated by highways or roads and with little walkability. Residential areas are also often physically shut off from the public. The closest you get to a normal space is a Mall.
I find just being there makes me depressed. Other's don't mind at all. Weird.
> Contrast this with cities in Europe where people just hang out, like for free, all around the town at rivers, parks, bridges and have a good time. It always feels like European cities place a premium on such public places, on the idea that a good time could be had without going to a commercial venue.
Except that one of the nice things in European parks is that they have outdoor cafes, bars, food sellers, etc, i.e., commercial venues. I sometimes get the impression that the US doesn't think public parks should have any commercial elements, thus contributing to their lack of life...
The point is to remove and replace all forms of public 'hang out' space with private space in which wealthy land owners can monetize the act of hanging out, and utilize ancient trespass laws to kick out anyone not paying.
I sympathize with the point you’re making but public spaces suffer from adverse selection. Private spaces reject drug abusers and the homeless. Public spaces lack the legal authority, political will, or resources to ban the badly behaved. This is why we can’t have nice things like public restrooms or popularization of mass transit.
If that was actually some sort of universal, which I would dispute, you'd still have to add an explanation how there could be parts of the world where this is not a problem (i.e. they have public spaces with public restrooms that you can access with public transit).
> Public spaces lack the legal authority, political will, or resources to ban the badly behaved.
Is this US-specific? What prevents policing public spaces?
Also, many toilets in Europe charge a fee, which both allows for better maintenance, and keeps out casual visitors; a PITA but keeps them clean and free of much antisocial behaviour, but more practical in high-traffic areas, not so much in quieter areas - though a lot of the problems seems to be in high-traffic urban areas.
I see a well-designed, clear, and not-very-dense set of guidelines for building and maintaining an outdoor dining space. You could probably squeeze everything in this document into 10 pages of terse prose, but that would be far less intelligible. Friedersdorf is just being his typical contrarian self in order to get contrarian clickthroughs.
There's some really great content in this document: pages 29-30 explain in very clear terms how to attach your parklet to an existing street, and include clear, helpful diagrams. Pages 37-39 explain in great detail how to make your parklet accessible to people using wheelchairs, and even include helpful architectural diagrams and photographs.
If the original PDF had been submitted instead of Conor's contrarian clickbait, I imagine that most of the comments would've been about the terrific guidance around best practices.
Yeah, I wish someone would explain how a city with perhaps the biggest concentration of wealth inequality in the world, fueled by nearly-unfettered speculative venture capital gambling on unethical tech companies, is a "progressive utopia."
These headlines are clickbait. I wish The Atlantic was better than this, but I know it's not.
You're claiming that because most people vote Democrat, it must be a progressive utopia?
The Democrat party is barely a left-leaning party. You have famous national examples like AOC and Bernie who are very progressive, but by and large, most Democrats are happy to accede to corporate power and regressive policies when it actually matters. What is considered "radical left" here in America is basically centrist by the standards of the rest of the world.
California doesn't revolve around tech workers alone.
Of course there's no progressive utopia. That's what utopia means: "no place". But California is incredibly progressive compared to other states in the US.
"For decades, it turns out, needlessly onerous regulations had deprived Californians of both the pleasure of eating outdoors and the convivial streetscapes that curbside dining creates."
I have to think that any restrictions on that are local, not statewide. Personally, I can't think of many places in LA where I'd want to sit right next to the street, and even less a parking spot on one. The city just wasn't built to accommodate that and it's silly to think public parking should be converted for that purpose.
Honestly, this sounds more than just a bit snobbish to me.
The chances are, if it's inhospitable to dining outside, it's a road[1] or a stroad[2], not a street[3]. And its not snobbish to want places that are a little more friendly to people.
“ city residents and urban planners draw a crucial modern distinction: a road's main function is transportation, while streets facilitate public interaction.[1] Examples of streets include pedestrian streets, alleys, and city-centre streets too crowded for road vehicles to pass. Conversely, highways and motorways are types of roads, but few would refer to them as streets.[2][3]”
I lived in NYC for a decade and know plenty of city residents, none of whom make this distinction. I really hope this doesn’t turn into a case of niche experts redefining a common word and then insisting that people using the normal definition are somehow wrong or less precise.
I know lots of people who would never make that distinction either, but that's mostly because they've never actually thought much about urban planning, pedestrian/vehicle interaction, mixed-used neighborhoods and so forth. That doesn't mean they are bad or stupid people, it's just not their thing.
What are the normal definitions of "road" and "street"? What words would you use to describe the differences that Strong Towns is referring to?
‘What are the normal definitions of "road" and "street"?’
The wikipedia article gp linked and I quoted says that street is another word for road and is usually used for paved roads. I’d say that that is consistent with how i’ve seen people use those words.
And of course using words as they are commonly used doesn’t make people bad or stupid. Similarly, using a non-standard definition of a word in some narrow setting doesn’t make the people doing that bad or stupid. But it’s silly for people in that latter group to behave as if the definition they’ve made up is the REAL one that other people just don’t know about.
ETA: I don’t think I have a word for what they’re calling “streets.” Which makes sense; I’m sure if there were an existing word for this, urban planners would just use that instead of repurposing “street.” If it were up to me, I probably would have chosen a different word, since this usage is so at odds with the norm, but I don’t think it matters much as long as the usage is consistent within the discipline itself.
And then of course, in Chester Co., PA (a western suburb of Philadelphia), there's the delightfully named "Street Road", which is generally a road, but occasionally a street.
There are very few quaint streets in LA that are zoned commercial. So in LA we're not talking about "streets". There may be places that fit that description but I'd expect parking spots are not abundant there.
This feels to me like recently gentrified neighborhoods wanting to keep the "riffraff" out.
Why is it silly to think public parking shouldn't be converted? It's the restaurants that are doing these conversions. They want this dining space. It rains 5 days a year here, so having that space means you've just doubled your square footage for some of these restaurants without paying any extra in rent at all. On top of that there is too much parking in LA. Tons of parking lots and garages already exist and nearly anything new built seems to have a good 2-3 stories of parking structure included with the build. It's only hard finding parking in LA if you insist on finding free street parking vs paying for the $2/hr lot that might even be free itself with validation from nearby local businesses.
>>It's the restaurants that are doing these conversions. They want this dining space.
Taxpayers own that street. That's why it's silly to give a business that space. A flip side of this is I pull up in my "Food Truck" and park there and sit all day selling my food in front of the restaurant that's in a building just on the other side of the sidewalk. And while I'm at why not set up some tables and chairs on the sidewalk in front of that restaurant?
If it's me that's "doing these conversions" no one should object, right?
If they're not paying the city for it then they're giving it to them, but that doesn't mean they're not paying for it.
The idea that there is no "pay to play" going on in local politics is absurd. But the public is not getting anything for their tax dollars in return when that happens under the table and no fees are placed in the local Gov's coffers.
What do you think those restaurants would do if the city allowed catering trucks to sit in those parking spots for free and serve food right outside a their front door all day and night?
What if I own a business next door to them? How does that not inconvenience my patrons?
This is flashback to what we used to call "Yuppies" back in the `80s. I lived in LA then. Not much has changed there except the gentrification of places like Venice Beach.
I was told once by a long San Diego resident, that the city starting limiting outdoor seating decades ago to discourage Italians moving in at the time, from opening restaurants.
> Aaron Peskin, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, compared parklets to beaches, “arguing that anyone should be free to sit down in a parklet and enjoy a cup of coffee,” Eater’s Becky Duffett reported. “But, in practice,” she continued, “countless restaurant and bar owners have called into these hearings and shared complaints with their supervisors, saying they are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, they have spent tens of thousands of dollars on parklets, and are having to clean out urine, feces, and needles every morning.” A theoretical comparison to public beaches is one way to see the issue. But isn’t buying a coffee as a condition of occupying a section of asphalt a lower barrier to entry than having to own a car and feed a meter?
It seems totally disconnected from the rest? Are they having to give up these due to pointless red tape or are they just fighting to exclude non-paying customers from using this part of the street? Is "you can't just act like you own part of the street when you don't" the red tape they want to get rid of?
I didn't get too far into the article, but it seems the main answer is America's fear of alcohol.
One of the coolest spots in Prague is a little snack bar stand near the giant metronome. Serving mostly beer. With only a few outdoor seats most people would take their beer upstairs and watch kids skate... This couldn't happen in America, and that is sad.
It's entirely up to cities and states to set their alcohol laws, and that's kind of the beauty of America. In Las Vegas, open containers and such are totally legal--you can walk around the strip from casino to casino sipping drinks. But in another town like Salt Lake City the alcohol laws are much more strict because the population there decided they wanted to take a harsher stance on it. People have the freedom to decide through America's democratic structure what laws are in an area.
An important note about this as well is that when people become intoxicated they tend to become more flagrant about wearing masks and maintaining social distancing. This is generally true whether the person means to be that way or simply starts losing their ability to pay attention. Yes, you are not supposed to serve a person who is visibly intoxicated- but even a single alcoholic drink effects the way that we as humans relate to our environment However I would also argue that even under those circumstances outdoor seating will still remain safer as we continue to live in the pandemic. I think that rushing to remove many of the changes we have made to our society to help mitigate the effects of the corona virus is a mistake. We are not through the woods yet.
You have to appreciate logical leap it takes to argue that because a policy was implemented during a pandemic, the policy obviously scales to routine traffic and zoning.
I'm all for taking back the street but this argument isn't going to convince anyone who wasn't convinced already.
Also this has to do with progressive policies exactly how?
Ahh, I thought this was going to be about the “people experiencing homelessness” making it miserable to dine outdoors. Turns out there’s a whole other problem too!
>City staff said they don’t see any way around putting restaurateurs through a more intensive process to make their outdoor structures permanent
What? Make the current rule changes permanent? How come this is not considered as "a way" and dismissed out of hand? I'm genuinely amazed at the lack of imagination here. 5th graders could solve this problem.
To be fair, there are legitimate things to consider like accessibility and fire safety that were waived temporarily. The whole thing that makes fixing this hard is that there are good reasons some of these rules exist.
“ A given curbside-dining setup might make gaining access to a nearby building a bit harder for the fire department than it would be if a car or SUV were parked in the same spot. “
Imagine thinking this with a straight face.
How could it be harder to move civilians and a wooden plank compared to a locked SUV? Aha
> How could it be harder to move civilians and a wooden plank compared to a locked SUV?
A lot of outdoor dining is much larger and more obstructive than a wooden plank. I see entire structures, planters, electrical power, heat lamps and fire 'pits', etc.
> Imagine thinking this with a straight face.
If we approach unfamiliar ideas curiously, we can imagine part of factual reality that is outside our conceptions: people know things we don't and have legitimate motives we haven't considered. I know almost nothing about outdoor dining; it would be interesting to hear from a restauranteur and city planner.
>If we approach unfamiliar ideas curiously, we can imagine part of factual reality that is outside our conceptions: people know things we don't and have legitimate motives we haven't considered.
This is an extremely healthy mindset, I'm glad to see it here. I only hope this way of thinking can spread.
>If we approach unfamiliar ideas curiously, we can imagine part of factual reality that is outside our conceptions: people know things we don't and have legitimate motives we haven't considered. I know almost nothing about outdoor dining; it would be interesting to hear from a restauranteur and city planner.
He has a point though: treating every idea 'curiously' will kill an endevour by a thousand cuts.[0] To the point, attempting to apply these standards retrospectively would result in a very different and much worse current day. For starters most of San Francisco would still be part of the bay. I can't even imagine the horror and outrage at proposing to fill in the bay to increase the footprint of downtown? And yet considering we aren't chomping at the bit to return SF to nature I can't help feel society has decided it was the right thing to do.
[0]How does outdoor dining affect the patterns of migratory birds? Better fund a study. For each restaurant, so the individual facts. Are you a 'bird advocate' who thinks the aforementioned study was a sham? Sharpen your legal pencils because the state is very interested to hear and debate your case.
> He has a point though: treating every idea 'curiously' will kill an endevour by a thousand cuts.
That is a strawperson, and not related to curiosity. Curiosity is what I described above (at least by my definition). I don't see what that has to do with your examples.
> To the point, attempting to apply these standards retrospectively would result in a very different and much worse current day. For starters most of San Francisco would still be part of the bay.
What standards are we applying retrospectively? Outdoor dining rules would cause SF to remain part of the bay?
> [0]How does outdoor dining affect the patterns of migratory birds? Better fund a study. For each restaurant, so the individual facts. Are you a 'bird advocate' who thinks the aforementioned study was a sham? Sharpen your legal pencils because the state is very interested to hear and debate your case. / I really wish this sort of thing was hyperbole.
Can you provide actual evidence of it happening in reality?
'Curiosity' is so often a dog whistle for BANANA. Apologies if you didn't intend it that way. But so often the 'lets explore the possibility of this' and 'lets study that' questions are weaponized -- There's always a reasonable sounding additional thing. That it takes months, and that there are even serious discussions and hand-wringing over something so simple as putting a few tables outside is itself absurd[0]. Heck, if the pandemic hadn't happened, would we even be able to have this conversation about possibly putting tables on sidewalks in SF(like is done in much of the civilized world)? or would there be too many things to be 'curious' about to (s) chance such a drastic social upheaval.(/s)
The hypocrisy[1] of the current status quo is that we live in the benefit of decisions made in a far more carefree manner that would never pass muster today (e.g. filling in the SF bay.)
Some permitting requirements including treatment for migratory birds. I expect you can find some news of delays over lawsuits from environmental groups over things easily
Question. We've now had outdoor dining for the past year. What do you think the chances are that this regulation significantly moved the amount of fire damage or number of fire related deaths that occurred?
I strongly disagree that we can guess without expertise. I'm not even sure the sample size is big enough: We could eliminate fire regulations in skyscrapers, and probably, over a year, it would cause no damage. Fire regulations are catastrophe insurance.
How much do you think it changes the risk of death? Last year ~800 ppl died of fire in commercial buildings. What would that number have been if outdoor dining was allowed everything?
There are more issues caused by fires thann just deaths. Non lethal injuries come to mind, along with lost livelihoods and other economic damage. And there's more than just fires to think about. You're choosing one narrow slice of potential consequences and presenting your opinion on that basis. I'm not even sure I disagree with you, but it's hard to tell because you're coming at the issue in this way.
No data from this year can be considered representantive of what the actual trend would look like under normal circumstances. Not least of why is that none of these new structure have had much time to age and wear out to the point of causing structural issues.
You might be right and there's little or no safety issues to worry about, but the data needed to assess that opinion doesn't exist yet.
Data that exists from before? I suppose you could look at fire issues or structural collapses from before there were strong building codes, but these codes were generally developed specifically in response to issues like fires. In the US (colonies, 1600's) building codes emerged for exactly this reason. Later, George Washington & Thomas Jefferson were instrumental in pushing them further. [0]. They continued to evolve in response to things like massive crowding into cities in the early 1900's by new immigrants living in overcrowded and unsafe buildings [1]
They continue to evolve now, with fire deaths dropping significantly over the past 40 years despite population increases as construction methods and building materials get better [2]
I think it's fair to say that there's a legitimate safety concern in allowing structures not built to normal codes for a permanent structure to become permanent without some sort of review. Although I think that simple street dining-- absent these structures that weren't intended to be permanent-- should be much less of an issue. If a restaurant just has tables & chairs out there then I don't see much of an issue as long as they don't obstruct normal pedestrian traffic.
>How could it be harder to move civilians and a wooden plank compared to a locked SUV? Aha
One is a locked SUV whose windows are designed to be broken easily and safely in case of emergencies, pop into neutral and push out of the way sort of quickly (depending on whether or not there's even enough time to do that, but I digress). This SUV has wheels whose direction you can adjust in order to to help maneuver the vehicle easily.
The other is a structure often built considerably longer than even a few SUV lengths, weighed down so that guests and weather don't move it, and made out of material that is considerably less easy to break through in an emergency situation than the aforementioned tempered/laminated safety glass. Said structures may even contain even more hazards - eg, gas-powered heat lamps - than you would find in a traditional parking space. This structure is bulky and doesn't have wheels to help change the direction you want to move it in.
Really? That's a development I wasn't aware of. I'd also assumed that was the easy answer to "it's an actual emergency and we need to move this SUV". They really lock the car from shifting into neutral without a key?
[EDIT] The more I think about this the more it bothers me. Being able to shift even if the car is partially disabled—including, quite possibly, whatever's responsible for reading a modern electronic key—is really important for safety, and also for generally dealing with a disabled car after it's come to a stop, which can also be safety-related if you're trying to, say, get it off a busy highway. Especially being able to get into neutral. That there's any possible way that failures in not-strictly-necessary-for-shifting systems could block that seems crazy to me.
They're not wrong, but they're also not entirely correct. Many vehicles have a panel beneath the wheel that has a release inside it for such a situation. It's just not easy/convenient.
But playing devil's advocate, assuming that no modern car can be popped into neutral without a key, a car is still much more favorable than many parklets. You can easily break the glass to run firehouses through, or you can more easily run the hose over/under/around it because it's a smaller object than an outdoor dining space. Emergency crews can run between parked cars, but there often aren't any such opportunities in a 16-foot parklet.
Really a big problem in Finland. Imagine having 6 centuries worth of churches slowly disappearing beacuse "church burning" seems to have become a common holiday activity.
To be fair, many of the outdoor eating spaces are 8-10ft wide, 20+ feet long and have substantial structure like roofs. An SUV is probably be easier to tow out of the way.
Huh, I wasn't aware these were even a thing. While many of them seem quite reasonable a few seem rather intrusive on the public space. The Palette one specifically makes me feel uncomfortable just looking at it, I feel like if I were walking down that sidewalk I would feel as though I were entering a private space.
What I suspect is that the bureaucrats use fire safety as an excuse to justify their work; if a structure really is dangerous for fire safety the owner will get a visit from the fire department rather quickly as soon as they notice it.
* The sidewalk is public space. Does the public give away free real estate to the restaurant, to be used to generate revenue by the square foot? If the restaurant wants outdoor dining, they can build it on their own property. Perhaps the city should at least charge rent (in non-pandemic times).
* Cities don't want loud drunk people on sidewalks, i.e., a bar scene on the sidewalk. Public alcohol consumption is generally banned in most places in the US, afaik.
* It obstructs sidewalks, which have an important purpose and were built to a certain capacity. Analogously, should we allow dining in the street, blocking a lane of traffic (structures could be built that would shield patrons from the street). Possibly, there was less foot traffic during the pandemic so the problem wasn't as noticeable.
* Laws that apply to one person apply to every restaurant in the city. Maybe the temporary pandemic situation limited how many and how did it, and we don't want every restaurant building outdoor dining on the sidewalk.
The title is inflammatory: Assuming 'progressives' are bad, caused the issue, the issue is somehow bad. I expect more from the Atlantic than joining the lynch-the-progressives mob.