COVID-19 has bestowed an abundance of misery on New York, but one of the public initiatives in reaction to the calamity warrants our attention as we think about the long-term future of the city. I am talking about the city’s excellent decision to allow restaurants to claim the sidewalk and parking space at the curb alongside their street frontage for table seating.
Restaurateurs in all five boroughs have taken up the challenge with gusto. We see them everywhere: chairs, tables, planters, partitions, tropical plants and flowers, big colorful umbrellas. All are creating a fresh, fun and welcoming atmosphere — which is exactly what we need after the past three-plus months we’ve endured.
Restaurants claim sidewalk and parking space at the curb for outdoor dining
And New Yorkers have responded. They’ve settled in these new digs as if they had the same storied history as their Parisian or Roman counterparts. They are ordering food and drink, their masks down for a minute, and it seems that this new program might do just what it was designed to do: Save businesses from the bankruptcy that was looming following long months without customers. Summer looks like it will not be a failure after all.
But beyond the immediate economic need, I say: Don’t take this wonderful program away. I’ve seen it in and around the district I serve, Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, and our city’s streets have been made immeasurably better by the addition of these new seating and service spaces. I believe that the city should extend the temporary regulation and make it a recurring event, every year for the warm season, maybe from Memorial Day until the waning days of October.
There is no reason why we should not enjoy our streets as Europeans have for generations, and following this extraordinary experiment, we know now just how suited our city is to this new way of life.
New Yorkers enjoying the extended outdoor dining innovations of NYC restaurateurs
While it is too soon yet to know much about the exact impact of the initiative, my guess is that aggregate sales tax on meals and drinks more than compensates for the loss of parking revenue the city would earn otherwise. Besides, there are plenty of indirect and intangible benefits the program is creating.
First: Right out of Jane Jacobs’s playbook on “eyes on the street,” the light and inherent socialization created by the terraces make streets feel tangibly safer for people such as my teenage daughters, who now are much more comfortable walking home in the evening.
The physical presence of the various elements of the terraces — planters, umbrellas, lush greenery — also augment the visual presence of the sidewalk into a driver’s field of vision and, as is well documented elsewhere, contribute to the slow-down of cars on local streets. This is particularly welcome now as lighter traffic has caused drivers to get in the habit of speeding up in recent months.
And let’s not forget the people-watching. Now and always, people-watching is the city’s best outdoor activity, and New Yorkers are as fascinating to discover as anyone, anywhere. These new spaces finally give us the ability to do so from the comfort of our sidewalks.
Nicely-appointed outdoor cafes transform city streets & sidewalks with charm
One negative I will mention is the creeping habit by restaurants to incorporate loud sound systems onto sidewalks to complement their offerings. If a few get into it in a limited space, it is a race to the bottom, and quality of life will go down for residents. Amplified music should be excluded from the list of authorized activities.
However we look at it, the Big Apple is looking at a few hard years ahead. It will need all the advantages it can get to fight off the renewed luster the suburbs have gained in the last few months, and will likely retain for some time. Street life, messy, fun, colorful and never dull, is the one prize jewel that they can never hope to emulate. New York should do everything in its power to keep its streets as lively as they can be.