The Demise of Outdoor Dining Isn’t Really Anyone’s Preference. So How Did We End Up Here?

A stretch of West 32nd Street known as K-Town had 22 restaurants with tables strewn across the sidewalk and stacked up in elaborate “streeteries” in the curb lane.

New York is n’t the only city to have pulled back from outdoor dining phenomenon.

Even the conditional approvals have yielded just 78 outdoor setups in the Bronx , the city’s poorest borough, down from more than 1,000 in recent years .

The urgency of the post-pandemic period has faded, and larger problems loom in the form of confrontations with an increasingly hostile Trump administration.