mindstalk | More on balcony use (Reply)

People say they value balconies, but do they use them? This seems debated beyond my blog comments. I found a couple of Reddit threads asking that, and answers were a mix of "no", "thought I would but no", "yes because of covid", "yes, but briefly" (step out for air or a smoke), and "yes, all the time". I won't try quantifying them. Answers also included a couple uses I hadn't thought of: letting a cat/dog/toddler go "outside", and increased ventilation, since doors are longer than windows. Someone explicitly said that they could be benefiting from the balcony without being out on it. And I was reminded that a friend uses hers as a bird feeding platform.

"thought I would but no" included complaints about construction noise and dust buildup.

After that, I took a walk through University Village, to take a more careful look, and found:

Lots of plants. Some balconies aren't usable for lounging because they're full of pots, making a small garden.
More clothes drying than I noticed before. (Also, UV is more immigrant-rich than I'd realized.)
Again, lots of furniture; no, I can't tell if it's used, though some ground level patio chairs did seem suspiciously dusty. -- Though when the grill is next to an actual bag of charcoal, you really hope they use it sometimes.
Other storage, which I agree is not a good argument for a balcony per se.
Lots of open doors, for that ventilation effect.
And finally, live use!

Two humans lounging (reading or talking on the phone); two dogs lounging (or barking at me); two humans doing active things (couldn't tell what, one involved spraying); and one human taking his dog outside, but not for long, which I guess is evidence that balcony use can be brief and hard to capture. On my walk home, I saw someone out on their balcony, elsewhere.

So, not a lot of live active use, but some. (Along with tons of passive use -- I don't consider plants trivial.) And heck, more than I ever see front yards being used... Also, UV is somewhat handicapped in a way: no buildings are higher than 3 stories, and there's lots of common lawn with little car traffic (and a fair bit of human use), so if you want to read outside you could just go downstairs. Vs. being in a 12th-story apartment in the middle of a city.

Also of note was that many balconies had tenant-added privacy screens obscuring the railings, so a lot of people anticipated using it enough to not just put out chairs but to go to more acquisition and effort to block outside sight. I don't think they were safety screens, the balcony slats aren't wide enough for a cat or baby to escape.

And fewer, but still several, had ceiling-to-floor curtains enclosing the balcony. I can't be sure whether that was for privacy or for sunshade.