I took a little trip through New York via Google street view. And one thing in noticed where a large amount of gantrys above the sidewalks. In almost every street I could find at least one. They seem to be build out of temporary construction scaffolding but no signs of construction work. And they always are only one floor high, often with a (green or grey) balustrade on top. I think it looks rather ugly, blocking the sight on the sometimes nice fronts of the buildings behind them.
Edit: thanks for the explanation. Seems like the New Yorkers need to invest in some more quality fassades. Remembers me of a building of my local university. Pieces of the building have fallen off. Thus the building was completely covered with a net for many years.
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Many of the building have old facades that are threatening to send chunks of brick or stone to the street at any time. The city requires that building owners with brick or stone facades over a certain age pay for these “gantries” as a way to protect the public until such time as the building owner updates the facade. It’s just cheaper to pay for the gantries than to actually pay to replace the facades, so they stay put with no work being done to fix the problem.
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