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.
High rents -> Homelessness -> Debilitating mental illness -> drug use -> even worse mental illness.
Nowhere has rents quite as absurd as SF but what you describe has happened to me in London.
Reducing homelessness and ever rising property values are not compatible goals.
It hasnt been going on as long and isnt nearly as bad in Munich as it is in SF but the same problem is there.
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.)
It could be a coincidence that SF has an epidemic of mental issues and sky high rents.
(although it seems to have gotten slightly better over the past 5-6 years)
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.
[0] https://nypost.com/2021/06/26/san-francisco-run-homeless-enc...
> "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.
What? No. Obviously not. What?
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 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.
B/c of the large amount of corruption that progressive cities tend to support.
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.
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.
----------------------------------------
[1] https://frenchmoments.eu/newspaper-kiosks-of-paris/
[2] https://ny.eater.com/2021/5/25/22452773/new-yorkers-debate-o...
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]
https://www.google.com/maps/dir//Maison+Sauvage+Saint-Germai...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-19/how-paris...
https://slate.com/business/2021/09/paris-cars-bicycles-walki...
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.
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.
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'.
Security isn't advocating something positive since it implies that you would need it.
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.
How does it work?
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.
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.
I don't think government-bureaucracy-as-a-person-with-desires is a useful way to think or talk about this stuff.
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'.
Regardless, the question stands.
For one the roads and sidewalks were designed quite a bit differently.
Most other countries are far more well designed for foot traffic, where many places in us are more well designed for vehicles.
Actual steps were taken to change that.
I don't know California enough to compare. From the comments it seems worse.
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'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:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/nyregion/outdoor-dining-n...
My neighborhood has a lot more bars with parklets than restaurants with parklets.
> 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.
> Airbnb
Regulated in many/most cities.
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.
Why do you say that? It's not clear to me, especially sans any support.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 thought we, Hacker News commenters, decided? ;)
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.
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.
The US needs to change how it does planning and learn from the experiences of other countries that actually took steps to become less car-centric.
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.
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.
Get rid of the cars and make the road the sidewalk.
It works fine all around the world.
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.
There is no need to travel specifically along those roads if there are a dozen others to chose from.
There are very, very few specific roads that individuals have some kind of attachment to.
They close my high street to traffic in summer and it makes 0 difference to traffic. We're talking less than 0.1% of roadway.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
It's called a "government", and its both a process and an institution that can, in a pinch, be used to make decisions like this.
https://www.wideopeneats.com/states-can-drink-public/
Scroll to the map.
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.
wow
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, ...)
If you agree with the article ...
I used to do this, but 99% of the time it was to enforce economic or racial segregation, so I don't find the maxim very useful anymore.
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.
[0]Sales tax + income tax
I do t think there’s an assumption, politically active progressives in office are pushing the policy?
If I’m incorrect, who’s policies should we be evaluating to fix the issue?
* 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.