Clara Greed, Inclusive Urban Design: Public Toilets (2003)

[oursin]

I've been reading this, on and off, for some while now, and have now finished. It's not really a book one wants to sit down and read all at once, but I've been wanting to read it ever since I read an interview with Clara Greed in the Times Higher Educational Supplement. This was just after I'd been asked to be A Nexpert on the history of public

Comments

[adrian_turtle]

What a wonderful book. I think an important difference is that the lack of public loos is presumed to drive men to pee in the street and presumed to drive women to stay home, and only the former is a public nuisance. Does this book (or anything else you've read) go into why that difference is so common? I certainly find myself going out less often, and limit where I go, as toilets become less accessible in this area. My brother learned to pee behind bushes when he was small, but it honestly never occurs to me (even under a skirt, or with the gadget gathering dust in my bathroom cabinet.)

[jonquil]

The weird thing about this is that if you read Victorian memoirs, women peed in the streets, too. Even respectable women.

[vahepeatus]

And in some countries they still do.

It is also a class thing, I guess. And level of urbanization thing (not only for me, but also for my daughter peeing in bushes is nothing unusual).

Also, reminds me how someone expressed her dislike about women laborers from the islands: "Sure they are "hardworking"! Any island woman is able to multitask and do at least 3 jobs at the same time - to knit, to swear at the supervisor and to piss!"

I must say my imagination holds this picture of a woman still keeping on her knitting while squatting down to piss in my mind (and some people complain that people lose old good manners and use cell phones in loo - it is nothing new, just that in old times the activity was different).

[oursin]

I don't know why it is, but there seems to be something there about 'you can't expect men to control their urges' and 'a woman's place is in the home'.

I could bring myself, I think, to use one of those gadget things were I to find myself hiking in the wilderness (or at least the countryside), but I do feel that urban environments should provide for these needs.

[oursin]

That's a bit of an anxiety with the automatic doors, as well - will they open after some particular, but unspecified, period?

[jonquil]

Are the TARDIS-like ones the British racing green ones that are oval in shape? Because SF has those, and I find them unbelievably civilized.

Another important loo issue that I'm sure she addresses is not recognizing the difference in throughput between a woman's stall and a man's stall. It takes longer to undress, and there's no alternative urinal. The same number of stalls for men and women guarantees long lines outside the women's room.

[wordweaverlynn]

I love the ones in SF. Elegant and usable. You'd think that civilization would be defined as providing comfortable ways for one's body to function.

[oursin]

The English ones seem not very civilised - there is the anxiety that they will spring open, and they are not, at least not always, well-maintained. Greed is very good on the need for facilities to be properly looked after, cleaned and cared-for and kept in good supply.

She has a lot to say about the gender differentials, and that even if you have exactly equal numbers, it will not be enough for the women's needs.

[green_knight]

Not-well-maintained is always the anxiety with any loo. Even in civilised and generally cleaner Japan, where _the vast majority of_ public toilets are in much better shape (and much more common, *and* open longer *and* more spacious) the odd cubicle was... not fit for purpose.

The idea of spending 50p to enter a place of filth _and the not having the money to go find a usable one_ is very offputting indeed.

[wordweaverlynn]

Is "cottaging" what Senator Craig was recently caught doing?

I'm old enough to remember a few women's urinals in highway rest stops. They were narrow and boatlike, and they required one to straddle them -- no problem in a skirt, as long as you don't wear underpants, but virtually impossible in jeans.

[oursin]

Yes - I think 'tea-room' is the US term for what Britglish calls cottages.

[serrana]

We've had a big municipal go-round recently about how we can't have a nondiscrimination law which includes transgender people because, oh horrors, they'd want to use the women's room.

Never mind that the "problems" this would cause are so unlikely as to beggar belief: a man dressing as a woman so he could sleazily check out women in bathrooms would be guilty of other crimes, never mind much more likely to get beaten up than almost anyone else I can think of.

I tend to think the obvious solution is "family" restrooms, with a decent-sized stall and a baby-changing table and miscellaneous toiletage...but this suggestion in the local press was met with "that would be oppressing small business-owners." Rrgh. And in our household, it's not like my husband can take the girl in the men's room any more, but she can't go in the ladies' by herself....

[oursin]

Greed is thoroughly aware that men may need to change babies or be in charge of somewhat older children of the opposite sex. She is very in favour of more 'family-friendly' arrangements, and is particularly fierce about provision which doesn't take into account that women may have pushchairs to accommodate.

[serrana]

Well, you know, it's okay if people don't make provisions for my kid to pee in the potty.

As long as they want her to whiz on the floor of their stores.

[antisoppist]

Some shopping centres now have women's toilets with one larger stall at the end that you can fit a pushchair and a small child in as well as you, but we could do with more of them. Otherwise you have to choose between leaving the child in the pushchair outside the stall, going to the toilet with the door open or guiltily sneaking into the disabled loo instead.