I kinda like it too. I want to smack people here who drop trash two steps from a garbage can. All part of the general coarsening of society, in my opinion.
Probably the same ones who are too lazy to put their shopping carts where they belong.
The article doesn’t say that you have to pay to sit down at the seating provided by the restaurants. And it’s not cheap. I was dead tired when I got to St. Mark’s Square several years ago, but I wouldn’t sit down in the designated seats. You can’t sit anywhere in the little shops in Italy without paying for the pleasure. I wanted a cup of coffee one morning in Florence and wondered why everyone drinking their coffee—Italians and tourists alike—were standing up, bunched around the cash register, making it hard to order mine. It cost 1 euro for a cup of coffee; 3 euros for the privilege of drinking it sitting down. We learned to order food and look for another place to eat it. I think this is probably trying to get back at tourists who are trying to avoid their costs of sitting down.