She Had a Genius Idea: Air-Conditioned Doghouses, then the City Showed Up
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It's unclear from my skim if it would be OK if the usage were free -- I hope that's not that case!
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/site/resources/streets-and-...
The UK is almost identical except you need permission from the local council (for planning) and highways consent from national government.
Either which way, I think it's pretty naïe of somebody to think they're not going to need permission of some sort to [semi-]permanently occupy a public highway.
Retroactively, after she'd installed at (at least) 28 locations.
I get that some people work like that (better to ask for forgiveness, etc) but that just doesn't fly in bureaucracies. File your applications, then do what you've permission to do.
I do think they could have been a little more generous with scope to try and find a path through (granted we're only hearing half of one side of this) but I could see how this would need a better thought out process, given that this sits somewhere between a life support pod and a toilet.
City planning is tough. You have to have answers to tough questions, ahead of time. Questions like "what happens if the power goes out?" and "how do we clean around it?" and "what are the hazards of fluids leaking out of it?". Charging ahead without getting all parties on side is not a good way to get permission.
And as I said before, she thought she had permission. The government was literally funding and endorsing the project. It's just that not the right part of the government was involved, which is the classic example of excessive red tape.
As to the red tape argument, you’re sort of implying that every niche of a massive bureaucracy ought to be familiar with every other niche. That’s simply impossible at scale.
The prescribed nature of permits means they know exactly what they have to factor into their planning decisions. It means vending machines and coin operated rides all meet certain specs, and that allows for speedy turnaround.
Open it up and you have to spend extra time classifying what you're allowing for before you can decide if it's allowable.
1. Garbage and recycling bags on trash day
2. Restaurant and bar advertising signs
3. LinkNYC WiFi towers
4. Restaurant and grocery store food deliveries, which are literal pallets of food just left out on the sidewalk for long periods of time in the morning.
5. Bikes
6. Outdoor restaurant seating
I’ve seen one of these little doghouse things and they seem useful enough for the few square feet they occupy. At least as useful as any of the above given the number of dogs in the city.
Furthermore, after receiving two cease-and-desist letters, the owner of the company ignored them and continued to expand the company. The article phrases it as 'being unfazed by the letters'. One could also phrase it as willful neglect.
The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. She developed this project with help from the government, albeit a different department. Instead of that being enough to continue, she gets threats.
I hope she continues to ignore them, and her expansion goes well elsewhere. They’ll come around once she can prove they drive more business (read: taxes) to the area.
Just because the government helped pay to develop drones doesn't mean you can use them anywhere, at any time, on public property without any restriction. The same goes for these doghouses.
It is trivial to see they wanted them installed in Manhattan in the sidewalk. The fact that there is no method of permitting at all is the problem.
Ignorance of the law excuses no one.
In the country where I live, we have something called 'private property'. Conveniently, it is generally not located in outer space. You can pay to purchase it, and then you can put whatever you want on it (within reason).
Expropriating public space is illegal, unsurprisingly.
It's not the doghouses per se that are illegal, it's arbitrarily using the public's right of way that's illegal. What if people put sidewalk-blocking tents in front of their houses in summer (it'd be a good idea to give your kids a bigger, and cooler, place to play in the summer heat.) That also wouldn't be allowed, but it would be perfectly fine in your back yard (assuming you have one).
Sidewalks are public right-of-way, and an important piece of transportation infrastructure, and there is a civic interest in ensuring that they can, first and foremost, be used for that purpose. In a city as dense as NYC, that is naturally going to lead to rules limiting what can use the space, and then those rules are naturally going to be given exceptions for things like sandwichboards and sidewalk cafes and newspaper stands, because everyone wants to have those things, too. But that's going to be done by creating specific exceptions, which may require a permit, in the interest of not throwing it to the wolves all over again.
Which means, in turn, that there are always going to be uses that at least some people like, which don't fit cleanly into any of the official categories of exemption.
I don't think there's any perfect answer here. Lean too far in one direction, and you get news articles like this complaining about entrepreneurship being obstructed. Lean too far in the other, and you've got people who use wheelchairs being unable to easily navigate their neighborhoods.
NYC also fines for things out of code on the sidewalk. https://www1.nyc.gov/nycbusiness/article/sidewalk-usage-guid...
[1]: https://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/bacp/bu...
edit: Looks like they're just straight-up illegal. Some aldermen (including one who's pretty good at getting things done) are working on that: https://blockclubchicago.org/2018/06/28/a-frame-sandwich-boa...
That said, licenses are still a good alternative for those that want to colonize public space because it gives people a method to apply and potentially start something new like the dog house. It also gives a municipality the opportunity to manage issues by only distributing n per period of time or provide a caveat.
I don't think that bureaucrats in city hall are malicious, so much as that they are busy, have limited authority, and have very little incentive to put much effort into championing individual causes.
I am planning to take pictures and report to the city, but i have no hope anyone would care.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/little-library-hintonb...
Of course, they were taken down..
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.[*]
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.
The only reason we're discussing it is because the title is clickbait. Might as well have been: Person breaking rules is stopped.
The minimal amount of side-walk space that should be left is... all of it.
”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”
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.
Your concept would work marginally better in an exurb where almost no one uses the sidewalk, but even there, it's not really workable.
Please reconsider what you’re saying from a pragmatic point of view.
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.
Gotta get those clicks somehow.
The business model is unproven. I think the US is the wrong place to start this. People are too nervous about leaving their pets, but it seems unfounded.
I didn’t mean pets should be left unattended.
Personally I think it’s a great idea if they are clean, safe, and dogs like them. This opens up options for people with dogs.
Regulating as a vending amenity makes perfect sense. The city is being daft if they had that category available and decided it couldn’t apply.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/05/22/t...
>At the same time, the Bakkers were reveling in an extravagant, go-go life style more akin to "Dynasty" than Christian ministry. Tammy wore mink. Jim drove luxury cars. They cruised about in one of three black Cadillac limousines, bought a houseboat, a vintage $62,000 Rolls, a Corvette, an $800 Gucci handbag and vacationed in $350-a-night hotel suites in Hawaii. They built a heated and air-conditioned dog house for Tammy's pooches. For a 1981 Christmas bash for PTL executives at a Charlotte restaurant, Cafe Eugene, $9,000 worth of truffles was flown in from Brussels. All of this was paid for by charitable contributions, say officials with access to the files.
Yes, the same Jim Bakker who recently said "God Personally Told Me He Sent Donald Trump to Delay the End Times":
http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/06/27/jim-bakker-god...
God, the saturation of framing! Every sentence spiked with adjectives (either overwhelmingly positive for the owner or negative for the city), big friendly picture of the owner, name of her dog gets mentioned, tirade of irrelevant positive details about the owner...honestly just reads like WWII propaganda. At least be a little more subtle about your message!
Just let the dogs in if they're well behaved. No big deal...
Dogs are not guaranteed to be well-behaved, some are dangerous, they're dirty, and plenty of people are scared of them or are allergic.
They're in far too many places as it is.
I'm allergic, it's a huge pain. Just leave your pet at home.
It's only no big deal to you, due to a subjective preference. I find it disgusting to allow most dogs into restaurants (with an exception for well-behaved service dogs only), that's my subjective preference.