"Some business owners have responded to the ban with new amenities for their smoking clientele."

Smoking Ban Activates the Urban Landscape:

Seattle’s nighttime personality has dramatically changed since the smoking ban of 2005. It quite literally pushed people out of their interior hideaways and onto the city streets. The places for movement in, out and along are now becoming places where people stop, stay and socialize.

Initiative 901 passed overwhelmingly in November 2005, requiring Seattle’s public places and workplaces to be entirely smoke free. The law also prohibits smoking within 25 feet of the doorways, windows and air intakes of these protected places. The implications of this new law are particularly interesting in terms of how it has manifested itself in the urban landscape, immediately transforming the sidewalks, alleys and otherwise static places into a new active terrain.

Some business owners have responded to the ban with new amenities for their smoking clientele. For example, in an effort to offer a sense of comfort for the smokers, the Stumbling Monk on E.   Olive Way provides moveable seating and ashtrays on its sidewalk. Some businesses have even built exterior structures that extend 25 feet from their back door complete with landscaping and heat lamps like Linda’s on E Pine and The Beacon Hill Pub on Beacon Ave. S.

What are the lessons? Among several that
• urbanism doesn't require central planning except at the grossest level,
• socializing is the core indicator of urbanism and
• you can't stop a free market.

Comments

[Gomez]

If only more businesses in Seattle adopted this practice of providing basic amenities for people who are gonna smoke regardless, instead of doing nothing, then complaining when they leave their inevitable mess.