Change Your Attitude

One of the most common reasons/excuses cities give for why they don’t install (more) public toilets is that they’re expensive, often prohibitively so.  Yes, public toilets can be expensive (purchase price ranges from the high five figures to the low six figures, depending on the supplier and the level of sophistication of the toilet unit, plus the cost of infrastructure hookup), but I believe cost is the least important reason why cities don’t provide more public toilets.  While the financial cost of providing a public toilet is not insignificant, it doesn’t have to break the bank, either.  In some cases (New York City and Toronto), cities don’t pay a cent for public toilet provision because their toilets are included as part of a deal with advertising companies whereby the companies provide a variety of street furniture (public toilets included) in return for the right to advertise on the furniture (in Toronto, this arrangement, which was supposed to net the city 20 public toilets, yielded two public toilets.  Plans for further public toilets recently were scrapped).  Let’s face it, cities don’t provide public toilets because they’re not seen as important amenities—their worth is not recognized.  Public toilets are seen as psychologically, philosophically, and politically undesirable because of the potential trouble they will bring.  Cost is just a canard, an expedient myth.  The ironic thing is that the more a city spends on public toilet provision, by selecting ultra-sophisticated fortresses of steel in order to ‘design out’ bad behaviour, the more problems the toilets cause and the more expensive they become.  Trying to control human behaviour with technology and design is an expensive and, ultimately, futile endeavour (just ask Seattle).  Cities need to accept that public toilets are going to be used hard, and they need to figure out a way to work with this reality rather than trying to squelch it.  First, it’s impossible—you can’t monitor and control humanity’s every move in a public toilet and people always will outsmart technology and ‘environmental’ design.  Second, trying to monitor and control humanity’s every move in a public toilet is what ends up costing a small fortune.  Cities need to get over their public toilet phobia.  As corny as it sounds, public toilets don’t need to be feared, they need to be accepted.  Once they’re accepted in all their complex glory, then a strategy can be formulated for how to provide them, how to maintain and service them, and how to keep them in operation.  I’m not saying that design isn’t an important feature of a public toilet.  In fact, I would say it’s one of the most important features.  The key idea is that public toilets need to be designed in order to be as accommodating as possible, rather than designed to be as punitive or restrictive as possible.  This about-face in mindset will go a long way in slaying the fears and suspicions that plague public toilet provision.