Fermob offers well designed, durable outdoor furniture that is frequently purchased for homes, universities, hotels, resorts, restaurants, museums and even wineries. But one of the best places to put Fermob products are outdoor public spaces. You may know that Fermob products can be found all over New York City - like the Poppy Red Fermob Bistro chairs and tables in Times Square, the Cedar Green Bistro chairs in Bryant Park, the Luxembourg products in Brooklyn Bridge Park, and Bistro pieces at the High Line.

(Squirrel on Bryant Park Chair - photo by Jared du Plooy)

Fermob pieces can also be found all over the United States in public places - in Downtown Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Nashville, Charleston, Alexandria, Detroit, Hollywood, Norfolk, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Fort Worth and San Francisco.

When cities implement moveable outdoor seating in public places their communities respond with dog walking, book reading, coffee sipping, and friend visiting. Local businesses benefit from increased sales, and crime even decreases.

Recently Michael Kimmelman wrote the article "Treasuring Outdoor Oases" in the New York Times. He discusses what makes urban public spaces so special...

(Photo Credit: Richard Perry/The New York Times)

"What makes high-density neighborhoods pedestrian friendly? Good public space, for starters. The best public spaces encourage diverse urban experiences, from people watching to protesting, daydreaming to handball, eating, reading and sunbathing to strolling and snoozing. Witness the High Line. The park opened a couple of years ago on the West Side with no special program of cultural offerings or other headline attractions to lure people. The attraction was, and remains, the place itself.

"Rockefeller Center, Times Square and Bryant Park (which copies much from European landmarks like the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris), are among the world’s great public spaces and they are also commercial hubs. The goal is to learn from their success, and avoid lost opportunities like Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street.

(Photo from Flickr user Gary Burke)

"Every new plaza the city opens, like the recent one on Gansevoort Street, instantly fills up; local shop owners reap the benefits. Retail sales rose in Times Square after Broadway was closed to traffic two years ago and became a pedestrian plaza, contrary to what some businesses there feared. The transformation of Times Square required brave thinking by the Bloomberg administration. The same level of daring might help blossoming neighborhoods like Bushwick, Brooklyn, and could yet redeem New York’s most ignominious failure to safeguard the public realm, Penn Station."

Read more of the article here.

It seems that well designed public spaces can do so much for communities. Downtown areas and public parks are taken to a new level when attractive, comfortable seating is available. Outdoor spaces can become living spaces for people to meet their neighbors and explore their cities.