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Comment by pstuart | Hacker News Reader

Public restrooms are a sign of advanced civilizations. It's a pity that they have to be built to withstand damage from hooligans.

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The existence of well maintained and clean public restrooms and hooligans is a shibboleth for culture. Some cultures are simply superior.

I’m currently travelling in China and the total absence of graffiti and the wide availability of public toilets as well as the general cleanliness of the place is a stark contrast to London. I am somewhat dreading that part when I return.

You haven't gone away from touristy track. A friend of mine did last year and the stuff I heard was pretty bad

touristy track is covered by cctvs and they are used to get people for anything including public urination or graffiti so of course it's clean

If by tourist track you mean several cities each with a population count greater than London then sure. :) But it is true I was there as a tourist to see a few places and China is an absolutely huge place.

I wish the touristy places in the UK were as clean though.

Also, writing this comment on a crowded, dirty and smelly train from Gatwick Airport, which has 2 carriages inaccessible because of broken doors and crawling due to signal failure on the line, I already miss the clean and comfortable Chinese trains I was taking from place to place.

That said I do get to work 945 here for more money so I am grateful for this for sure. :)

From my experience and what I heard in China you will get a super clean airport train and metro but if you go away from urban centers you encounter crazier and crazier stuff, the likes of which you would never see anywhere in UK or even US

I think it's kind of the opposite in non authocratic countries...

The restroom building provides more utility than most buildings do to a hooligan. Unclear why it is an enemy.

Any "private" space in a public place becomes valuable with more density. It's basic scarcity incentives. It unfortunately incentivizes hooligans to make the restroom appear even more disheveled and unsafe to increase the privacy (less people want to go in it)

You're reading way too far into it. Private spaces are simply easier targets.

So the solution is obviously https://juxthpose.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/m...

Vandalism scales linearly with [accessible, visible, unsupervised].

Uncorrelated with the usefulness of the building after controlling for other factors

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