Snapshot: Sidewalk Patios
A cold beverage and urban people-watching on a summer’s day – this is the beauty of sidewalk patios. The “eyes on the street” that they bring can make for a safer and more interesting pedestrian environment. Sidewalk patios thrive in pedestrian priority streets like Copenhagen’s Strædet. The Project for Public Spaces even commends their presence overlooking children’s play areas so that parents can drink coffee and socialize while keeping an eye on their charges.
From a regulatory perspective, however, sidewalk patios can be tricky because they not only blur public and private space, but do so in a context where alcohol is served. When patio space extends onto city property, restaurant owners must apply for a license, typically demonstrating that a proposed patio leaves sufficient sidewalk space for pedestrians to pass in safety and comfort.
In most Canadian cities, the organic interface between patio and public street shown in the photos above would not be possible. Guidelines for both Vancouver, British Columbia and Hamilton, Ontario, for instance, require that sidewalk patios be clearly marked off from the street by planters or railings.
As super-blogger and Vancouver-based journalist Frances Bula reported earlier this summer, venerable European café culture allows the line between public and private spaces to be blurred. In Paris, patrons can bring their drinks out on the sidewalk, and restaurants place chairs outside, facing the street. In the comments of her post, some readers argued that Vancouver’s requirement for barriers around sidewalk patios should be abandoned in favour of a more organic interface.
Thanks to Rachael Young and Alana Cole-Faber for the great pictures!
