Problem
The process of waiting has inherent conflicts in it.
Solution
In places where people end up waiting (for a bus, for an appointment, for a plane), create a situation which makes the waiting positive. Fuse the waiting with some other activity—newspaper, coffee, pool tables, horseshoes; something which draws people in who are not simply waiting. And also the opposite: make a place which can draw a person waiting into a reverie; quiet; a positive silence.
Related Patterns
… in any office, or workshop, or public service, or station, or clinic, where people have to wait - Interchange (34), Health Center (47), Small Services Without Red Tape (81), Office Connections (82), it is essential to provide a special place for waiting, and doubly essential that this place not have the sordid, enclosed, time-slowed character of ordinary waiting rooms.
The active part might have a window on the street - Street Windows (164), Window Place (180), a cafe - Street Cafe (88), games, positive engagements with the people passing by - Opening to the Street (165). The quiet part might have a quiet garden seat - Garden Seat (176), a place for people to doze Sleeping in Public (94), perhaps a pond with fish in it - Still Water (71). To the extent that this waiting space is a room, or a group of rooms, it gets its detailed shape from Light on Two Sides of Every Room (159) and The Shape of Indoor Space (191).
Alexander, Christopher. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 707.