The urinary leash: how the death of public toilets traps and trammels us all | Hacker News Reader

The urinary leash: how the death of public toilets traps and trammels us all

theguardian.com

37 pointsCRConrad27 comments

It's incredibly disappointing that ostensibly modern cities do not have adequate public restroom facilities.

It may sound insensitive to say, but the truth is that the loosening of controls against delinquency has led to major cities being inundated with drug users who make public washrooms unclean and feel unsafe.

The belief that it is unethical to set and enforce boundaries on the behavior of people in the lowest rungs of society, to prevent anti-social behavior, has spread like a memetic contagion, leading to societal decline.

Where do you live that your city had been “inundated” with public drug users? I live in a major American city with millions of people and this just isn’t true.

Come on man, most major cities suffer from this. San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Austin, Denver, etc. all have overrun areas in their downtown core with rampant homelessness and public drug use.

The telltale sign is, "do the Starbucks have code locks on the doors?"

I live in Vancouver, Canada and I can confirm it's a severe issue in the downtown core.

You're not wrong, but to be slightly more sensitive, I'll say that a small number of people with serious behavioral problems can ruin it for all the rest who just don't have money.

In Poland there is a very good rule, that if you have any kind of food or beverage consumption related establishment you must make your toilet available to non-customers.

This pretty much solves this problem beautifully. If you can find a place to eat or drink, you can find a free place to piss.

In at least some US states there are laws that businesses' employee-restrooms have to be made available to people with digestive conditions. However, they aren't enforced very well.

In Poland it's a hard rule, if you have a toilet for customers, and when you serve food or beverage you must have one, you also need to allow public access to it for non-customers. I think the only exception are food trucks.

I will definitely be sharing this with friends & family since using public bathrooms has always been a taboo in my circles. Great article! :)

Suburbia is worse... like a desert.. no water no trees no shade with all the houses built wall to wall now, and no toilets, one MUST drive a car to survive

Suburbia is a classic example of the harm done by central economic planning.

There is a confluence of at least two government failures behind the emergence of modern suburbs:

* government officials, pushed by NIMBY SFH owners and anti-profit left wing groups, restricting zoning/housing-development in major economic nexuses where the most job opportunities exist, leading to pressure to develop the adjacent suburbs as they are the next best location for housing.

* taxpayer funded left-wing groups pushing for social housing and social services in city cores, leading to neighbourhoods with high concentrations of low-income residents that become breeding grounds for crime, and cause urban decay that leads to the flight of middle class taxpayers to safer suburbs.

As someone who grew up in the suburbs (late 1950s through early 1970s), this account is simply unrecognizable.

They've probably changed quite a lot since then.

Suburbs have of course always existed, but the proportion of the population living in them has grown significantly since the period you note. Between 1950 and 2010, the suburban population quadrupled while the city center population doubled:

http://energyfuse.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/suburb2.gif

This is actually how I explain white privilege to my kids. Whenever we travel and need to go, I waltz into the nearest 5 star hotel and just march to the restroom. If it's in the morning, I usually grab a free cup of coffee too.

Unbelievably racist comment.

Really? I don't feel the racism in this comment. I believe he's accurately pointing a white privilege he has, which is kind of a thing anti-racists do.

Or us that inacurate because it's more of a class privilege than racial privilege?

Not at all. I'm just saying this is something I can get away with easily, and that if I was a black guy wearing the same hoodie and jeans, I have to believe it would probably be harder. Structure supports me even though I didn't do anything for it. The definition of white privilege.

May be a US/elsewhere thing but for me more important in this sort of circumstance are >= middle class dress, hair cut, accent/idiom if spoken to, demeanour etc. Not directly related to race.

Having kids in tow also makes this easier.

Yes all of the above but have certainly done it all over the world (American), so having different language actually helps as it establishes you as a traveler. With or without kids.

Point above on white privilege is that I think it would be a lot harder to try it as a black guy...

Post over. Shut it down!

Dogs seem to be fine with peeing and pooping on a leash ?

Thing is, as long as they're on the leash, they can only do their business within the reach of the leash...

But, you seem to have misunderstood the metaphor of the headline: This isn't about people going to the loo within the reach of some other leash -- it's about how the lack of public restrooms is the "leash", tying people to within reach of a restroom. With restrooms becoming ever fewer and farther between, these people can only move within ever shrinking circles.

My point is the laws against public urination and defecation by humans are ridiculous given how many dogs are doing the same thing all over the place.

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