Problem
The street cafe provides a unique setting, special to cities: a place where people can sit lazily, legitimately, be on view, and watch the world go by.
Solution
Encourage local cafes to spring up in each neighborhood. Make them intimate places, with several rooms, open to a busy path, where people can sit with coffee or a drink and watch the world go by. Build the front of the cafe so that a set of tables stretch out of the cafe, right into the street.
Related Patterns
… neighborhoods are defined by IIdentifiable Neighborhood (14); their natural points of focus are given by Activity Nodes (30) and Small Public Squares (61). This pattern, and the ones which follow it, give the neighborhood and its points of focus, their identity.
Build a wide, substantial opening between the terrace and the indoors - Opening to the Street (165); make the terrace double as A Place to Wait (150) for nearby bus stops and offices; both indoors and on the terrace use a great variety of different kinds of chairs and tables - Different Chairs (251); and give the terrace some low definition at the street edge if it is in danger of being interrupted by street action - Stair Seats (125), Sitting Wall (243), perhaps a Canvas Roofs (244). For the shape of the building, the terrace, and the surroundings, begin with Building Complex (95) …
Alexander, Christopher. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 436.