Despite making a case for Complete Streets, the Toronto
Official Plan does not talk about the city’s need for public toilets anywhere
within its 167 pages. One hundred and
sixty seven pages about the socioeconomic significance of city streets and how
Toronto needs to be designed to make walking and cycling more obvious choices
and how city streets need to be seen as beautiful and vibrant places in order
to attract people, and not one reference to public toilets. Where are the pedestrians and bicyclists and
tourists supposed to go when they have to go?
Does the creation of Complete Streets imply the creation of more Tim Hortons
and Starbucks and McDonalds to handle the increased amount of bladders on
the streets of Toronto?
The closest reference to public toilets is a point about how
a Complete Streets approach will provide space for “street elements” such as “street
furniture” (Toronto Official Plan, 2015, p.3-3), except that the city has
scrapped its plans to install 20 public toilets by 2019 (only two public
toilets ever were installed), so public toilets aren’t included in the reference to
street furniture. Perhaps when the Plan
states that Complete Streets will consider “the needs and priorities of the
various users and uses within the right-of-way,” what it actually means is that
Complete Streets are to function as exclusive streets: “various users” = users
who can afford to pay for a cup of coffee and use the toilet at Starbucks.
Without providing adequate and accessible public toilets,
Complete Streets should more accurately be called Incomplete Streets.
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