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Comment by CJefferson | Hacker News Reader

I feel the title is willfully insulting to the city. How about "She had a genius idea: Putting private doghouses in the middle of public property as handy tripping hazzards for the blind, which couldn't even be used without paying. Then the city showed up"

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Yeah, without some sort of permit and/or payment to the city, she's just putting a vending machine on a sidewalk that doesn't belong to her. It's not categorically different from building a store to sell phones in the middle of a public park--she's stealing part of a shared public resource, and keeping the profits. Sidewalk space doesn't belong to the first person to setup shop on it.

I mean, it's bad enough that dog owners have their dogs piss and shit all over the sidewalks. Now they gotta have air-conditioned dog houses on public right of ways too? Not a reasonable ask, in my opinion. Then again, the status quo isn't reasonable either.

It is already illegal not to leash-curb your dog in Manhattan. If you’d like that enforced, complain to your local representative.

Damn, I didn't know it was illegal! I can honestly say that I have seen maybe one instance of a dog doing its business on the road since I started living here eighteen months ago. In the vast, vast majority of cases I have personally observed (at least hundreds), owners let their dogs piddle on the sidewalks.

I would love to see this law enforced and I will complain to my representative. But I would also love for dog owners to have some decency and do the right thing without enforcement actions.

The smell of concentrated excrement is one of the charms of big city life.

Honestly, in Manhattan, trash is a bigger issue for smell because it is just everywhere on trash days. We need to adopt the Barcelona dumpsters-in-parking spots method.

> the title [...]

Gotta get those clicks somehow.

Damn, what would cause someone to write something so biased? Surely it couldn't be someone as incompetent as a city government. Not sure why people have to let everyone know they're a horrible person and all their opinions can be discounted.

As other commenters, and the article itself, have pointed out, there's already plenty of stuff on sidewalks. The fact that this even needs a new law to be passed points out how ridiculous regulation is. There should be a law that talks about who has de-facto right to approve/object to it (probably business/residence which it is in front of), some law on the minimal amount of side-walk space that should be left, etc, and not have to re-license every single thing people might want to put there. You can always pass laws to exceptions that people don't like, rather than having a policy of default-deny.

Your argument doesn't really make sense: regulation is bad because it regulates some stuff... but since some stuff is regulated then we should be able to do some different stuff?

Things are on that sidewalk because they were "analysed" and accepted, they are regulated. They are sidewalk-legal things. Just like on the road there are road-legal cars and what you're saying is that illegal cars should also be allowed because they're cars and we already have plenty.

So regulation is bad because you're not allowed to do illegal things that are sorta' like legal ones but not really.

Regulation can't cover everything perfectly from the get go because it would imply that the people making it can know with perfect accuracy every single issue that might come up in the future. So you make it more restrictive and then adjust case by case. The genius idea can be covered by a permit unless there's a real blocker somewhere.

If you're in IT you'll understand this example: try writing a RegEx that matches all those words and only those words (strings?) that I will be using in my comments over the next 2 days.[*]

[*] Sesquipedalian

i read the argument as regulating types of behaviour and outcomes, rather than individual things.

much current regulation seems to be frustrating because they failed to do more root cause analysis: why don’t you want things on the sidewalk? regulate so that these things are met, then people can do what they like.

That's exactly how it works. But regulation is there for years or decades. Sometimes "types" might be something too generic to be valid for so long. You will invariably end up with things that shouldn't be allowed but (arguably) are. That can be really bad. Or things that should be allowed but aren't. That shouldn't be that bad since you can get an exception. In this case the regulation probably says: You are not allowed to put any type of thing on a sidewalk that doesn't belong to you unless explicitly permitted by the owner.

The only reason we're discussing it is because the title is clickbait. Might as well have been: Person breaking rules is stopped.

Good news - the is a law that talks about who has the right to approve use of public space; it's the City, and not the business / residence that happens to be next to the public space.

The minimal amount of side-walk space that should be left is... all of it.

I don't see this being far from those coin operated kiddie rides where you plop a child on a poor plastic copy of Donald duck or Mickey mouse which bobs up and down like a rocking boat for 30 seconds or so. Used to be popular outside of grocery stores and the like. Coin operated doodad would fit this. My bet is on ignorant city admins who don't have enough brains to figure out the designation so they simply say no so as not to take on any responsibility for their decision.

https://www1.nyc.gov/nycbusiness/article/sidewalk-usage-guid...:

”Property lines sometimes extend beyond the building line and into the surrounding sidewalk. That means that a portion of the sidewalk in front of your business might be within the property that you own or rent.

[…]

Any structure or activity extending beyond private property lines requires revocable consent from the City, which gives you permission to occupy or use the space on, under, or over a public street or sidewalk. If you are a tenant, you will need permission from your landlord as part of your revocable consent application”

”(probably business/residence which it is in front of)”

As I understand it, the city owns this ground. Why would the owner/renter of a neighboring plot have (sole) say over how the sidewalk gets used and, thus, force the city to build (and pay for) a wider sidewalk (assuming there is room to do so)?

If a shop wants to put something outside its building, it should either keep room on its plot for it, or try and reach agreement with the owner of the sidewalk about placing stuff there.

I'm not saying government should have no say, but if the owner of the neighboring land was fine with it, that's a pretty good sign that it's ok, and the city shouldn't hassle them unless people complain to the city.

I take it you have no problem with random people putting things on your property, so long as your next-door-neighbor is ok with it?

That doesn't really work in Manhattan. You may use your bit of sidewalk more than almost anyone else, but in terms of the fraction of total use, you are likely less than one percent. Hundreds or thousands of people walk on any given stretch of pavement every day. To say that the owner of the adjoining property should have the right to impose upon their use of public space just doesn't scale.

Your concept would work marginally better in an exurb where almost no one uses the sidewalk, but even there, it's not really workable.

There is some stuff on the sidewalk, so anything goes now?

So your position is that anyone should have the right to place any artifact of commerce they want on a public way, so long as it’s novel enough to not be regulated?

Please reconsider what you’re saying from a pragmatic point of view.

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