Outdoor Dining Is Doomed
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Outdoor dining sucks in most North American cities because you get to eat right next to a bunch of loud, polluting car traffic zooming by a few feet away. Last time I ate outside in Chicago I could reach out and touch an idling minivan. No thank you. New York City keeps their garbage, most of the time, again, within touching or at the very least smelling distance of outdoor eateries. The city is loud because it's overrun with automobile traffic. Who the hell would want to eat in that environment?
Perhaps we could work on making the rest of our cities look and feel like the parks that are usually popular places to bring lunch, since, you know, they're quiet and feel safe.
It's exactly the same as you describe in many European cities. When you pack houses next to each other and stack apartments on top one of another, which is the definition of a city, you get concrete. Lots of concrete.
Sure some European cities may have historical city center totally car free but most restaurants have outdoor terrace on regular streets, complete with cars, lots of people passing by, noise (not just from cars) and dog poo.
I agree with you one point: it's not a relaxing environment to eat.
One thing I’ve noticed in tightly packed cities like Paris is that neighborhoods in the city proper are very quiet because there’s little car traffic. If there is traffic, it’s light enough to not make it through one tightly packed row of units. Contrast to any American city, and most downtown areas will be within hearing distance of a large freeway.
This problem isn’t solved globally, but there are loads of cities that are very pleasant to be in outside. That’s not the case in North America, mostly because of car traffic. (Space inefficient, so less room for nice things, loud, and dangerous)
Barcelona, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Porto, Copenhagen, so on and so forth are all cities I thoroughly enjoy to eat outdoors during summers, in almost any part of the cities, and not only in their "historical centres".
It's definitely not even close to the same issue as in North American cities.
I think those places that were already set up for this before the pandemic, along with those who have managed to create such an experience, will continue with a slight uptick in outdoor dining.
Those who just put some tables and chairs on the pavement in front of the store will not, especially amongst increasing calls to reclaim that space for pedestrians and cycle lanes.
But I also didn’t enjoy how loud it was at 11pm with there being many patios near my apartment, given I hadn’t yet adopted their culture of a later evening.
Or even Southern California. Turns out when you have good weather and properly planned spaces for dining, it's quite popular.
This article reeks of New Yorkers being obsessed with the smell of their own farts assuming if they have a problem, everyone else must too. Which is funny because they also had plenty of established popular outdoor dining well before the pandemic, it was just on the rooftops.
If there's some sort of covered space or a heater then even colder temperatures might be nice.
I constantly feel like I'm about to be run over...
Outdoor dining that was not properly planned for, and was shoved in at the last minute to accommodate covid restrictions will probably die out.
Outdoor dining that is:
- On a pedestrian only (or low traffic) street
- Covered (simple overhang is fine)
- Heated as needed (or just closed on particularly cold/rainy days)
Will stick around for a long time (and mostly predates covid anyways). New York certainly has some areas that are great for this - but given that a lot of the city is... dirty, smelly, and car infested... I don't see outdoor dining hanging around in those spots.
I apologize if this is mean, but who even are The Atlantic's readers?
The prose is too dry to overlap with tabloids or, like, Time Magazine. It's strictly worse at essays and cultural commentary than the New Yorker. It's strictly worse at lit than the Paris Review.
Who reads this stuff, and why?
But yes, this turned me off entirely, from the start.
Golly gee, people aren't eating outside in uncovered, unheated cold in the North.
I live in south Texas, right around the latitude of Cairo, Egypt. We aren't eating outside as much right now, either.
> For one thing, dining sheds tend to take up parking spaces needed to attract customers, Cutting-Jones said.
This is absolute bullshit. In the space it takes for one car to park, you can easily have a dozen or more patrons dining there. And these streeteries are located in dense cities (the article's title image is clearly Manhattan), where, guess what, the VAST majority of people aren't driving to go out for dinner.
Also, yes, it's winter. Of course outdoor dining is less popular (though I'm still routinely drinking outdoors on sidewalk tables at my favorite bar). But you know what? Winter won't last forever, and the outdoor dining will be bustling again soon enough.
I'm so tired of hearing these same lame car-centric takes over and over again. Let's just leave everything as parking and never have anything nice on the streets. I bet this guy would get rid of sidewalks too if he had his way.
Outdoor dining sucks in most North American cities because you get to eat right next to a bunch of loud, polluting car traffic zooming by 5 ft away. Last time I ate outside in Chicago I could reach out and touch an idling minivan. No thank you.
I live in the usa. The places I've been to that have outdoor tables and aren't in pedestrian areas tend to have a giant parking lot shielding them from any high-traffic roads. The place that was an exception to that was on the edge of a university campus with relatively slow traffic.
Spoiler: Summer.
Otherwise you have humidity, rain, bugs, etc for your meal, and you will be perspiring quite a bit.
On monsoon days, or during periods of peak heat/cold? Yes, the outdoor table attendance is down, but rarely zero.
As others have stated though, outdoor dining in other cities is typically nothing at all like what the Atlantic is discussing in NYC. NYC wasn't built for outdoor dining, but it has nothing to do with being car-centric, or too hot/humid.
Highly subjective. I often find it more pleasant to sit outside for most of what I consider the warm part of the year, which includes summer. I eat lunch outside almost every day and love it.
The confusion of the journalists is such that they expected people would desire this after the period of exceptional circumstances
Other places with NYC density have pedestrian-first areas for outdoor dining, transform car parks into patios in the warmer months, and transform old parking lots into beer gardens, food truck events etc.