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

[sollersuk]

Never mind public public toilets, there seems to be a planning rule in Manchester that pub toilets are either up or down stairs - or in some cases both. The one exception that I found, you have to go down a flight of steps to get to the pub!

[nineveh_uk]

I went at last year's Open House to the Foreign Office, which had beautiful new womens's loos, all wood panelling, and hopeless for use. I'm 9 1/2 stone, fairly slender, and with no mobility impairments, but the stall was the narrowest I could manage. I can't imagine it was simply a male translation, as the average man would not have fit in there, but it was certainly someone thinking "ah, we can fit 4 stalls in that space" and not thinking in practical terms of what the average woman might want to do in there and need space for. No room for sanitary bins for a start.

[jcalanthe]

I remember you mentioning this book earlier & marked it on my "someday" list. Definitely sounds like interesting stuff. I've heard (and thought/experienced) a lot about transgender needs wrt bathrooms, and this sounds like a good addition (although it sounds like the author could also use a little info on the trans side of things, on the IAMC front). Gender-neutral is of course the big push on that front and so it's useful to have the reality check that gender-neutral when designed by men is really all-male

[oursin]

I did feel that that was one element that she didn't really address.

On the race/class issues, Greed is v sensitive to different cultural traditions and need to accommodate these. In fact very much about getting proper input from the diversity of users about what their requirements are.