Urban Design Critic Says SF’s Outdoor Dining Spaces Are ‘Accidents Waiting to Happen’

[Pedestrian]

by Eve Batey Aug 3, 2020, 12:45pm PDT

Since San Francisco launched outdoor dining in June, hundreds of parking spaces across the city have turned into dining areas. Typically, the loss of even one parking space in a San Francisco neighborhood is grounds for a Nextdoor.com panic, but the temporary transformation of oil-stained car storage spots into sit-down restaurant use hasn’t stirred much in the way of complaints quite yet.

Enter the SF Chronicle’s urban design critic. Since 2001, John King, a two-time Pulitzer finalist, has picked apart the city’s architecture, parks, and landscape. Today, he’s taking on restaurants that have used the city’s Shared Spaces program to take over the parking lane, warning that blocks with loads of parking-space dining are likely to “end up looking so cluttered and desperate that potential patrons won’t want to visit once the novelty wears off.”

King has many opinions on who’s doing in-the-street-dining well and who’s doing it poorly, saying that many of the spots are “accidents waiting to happen” as “padlocking a few bicycle racks together won’t repel a car whose driver turns the corner too sharply” . . . .

At the end of 2020, they must all disappear As noted all along, SF’s Shared Spaces program only lasts thought [sic] December, so these shared spaces platforms are only approved through December 31, 2020. After that, who knows?

https://sf.eater.com/2020/8/3/213529...-shared-spaces

Besides the use of parking lanes for dining, now the city is closing whole streets--wonder what he thinks of that?

SF’s Tenderloin to receive wider pedestrian areas, play spaces amid pandemic
Megan Cassidy Aug. 2, 2020 Updated: Aug. 2, 2020 9:05 p.m.

A four-block stretch of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood will be remodeled to make room for pedestrians, a temporary project intended to allow for more physical distancing during the coronavirus pandemic . . . .

The Jones Street project will extend from O’Farrell Street to Golden Gate Avenue. It will include an additional five to eight feet of walking space, adjacent to the sidewalk borrowed from the streets and protected from traffic with concrete barriers or parked cars.

Additionally, the initiative build on the Play Streets effort, shutting down full street blocks on Saturdays so children can safely play there instead. City officials will also work with local restaurants to support outdoor dining on the blocks . . . .

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/...n-15453518.php

No mention of scraping the tent cities off the existing sidewalks.