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Comment by jph | Hacker News Reader

Parklets in U.S. cities can make a significant difference in some areas. There are neighborhoods in SF, LA, NY etc. where restaurants are able to expand into the street area, changing a few parking spaces into outdoor seating.

The outcomes are human-friendly sidewalk-friendly areas, and fewer cars in the areas. There are some parklets that also include bicycle racks and skateboard racks, which tend to also encourage alternative transportation and better health. What's especially nice about parklets is that business owners strongly like them because the parklets bring more customers to the areas.

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Due to quarantine restrictions, a number of parklets were created for outdoor seating arrangements here. What I wonder, is how many cities are considering making the arrangement more frequent and common now that it's been done.

My hope is that it happens. I haven't seen a lot of discussion from local officials yet, but I could see the new parklets sticking around this summer as a trial, particularly to help restaurants expand seating en route to recovery.

If you know the channel (the guy hates built-for-cars cities with a passion) he's probably not an advocate for that. But hey if it works, those look like a nifty way to make public space a bit flexible.

The cynic in me just expects that to become an argument for building more parking spots.

Some would say access to restaurants / eateries / other forms of vended food fare establishments are no more fundamental than access to essential means of transport as cars are. No city anywhere makes it a part of its charter to promise its residents ready access to global fare at their doorstep. If personal vehicles are secondary to public transit, then restaurants are secondary to home cooking.

Also restaurants reserve the right to deny or pick who they serve and who they do not and may bar you from dining there if they do not like you or your appearance - so why should they be afforded public spaces in the form of parklets?

I hope you realize that restaurants and other small businesses provide tax revenue to the city, while parked cars usually don't (in most places).

Those parked cars generally bring the people providing that tax revenue, or they bring the people working in the shop to have it be open in the first place.

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