Public Toilets

Communal commodes in cities is a sensitive subject with a number of considerations. Shrubbery is for decoration only and accessible walls are not acceptable. Neither Harrod’s nor Holiday Inns appreciate drop-in visitors. As more of us roam the world’s great cities, more of these cities are looking at how and where to deposit their visitors’ needs.

To meet the frequent demand, architects and engineers from New York to Singapore have designed street-side kiosks, not unlike the ticket or metro kiosk possibly located nearby. In Venice one can buy potty passes. Be careful not to confuse this pass with your vaporetto pass. One is good for a certain period of time. The other is good for a certain number of visits per week. In Paris the “sanisettes” are found throughout the city and suburbs, and payment, if required, is in coins. Sleek looking and modern, the sanisettes are programmed to self-clean and disinfect after each use. Just don’t take too long—there is a timer.

To preserve its medieval beauty, and avoid pressure on its historical sighs, beautiful Brugge has adopted a theme-park approach. Before discharging passengers into the city, all tour busses park next to a long building of public bathrooms. At one Euro per pee, this may be a creative approach for cash-strapped cities to consider.

One year the annual report from the Mayor of San Francisco devoted two of the 29 pages to deliberations and proposals over the Automatic Public Toilet program. Unfortunately, JCDecaux of France, installer of public potties in more than 500 cities around the globe, found San Francisco to be, as always, different. What sounded like a good idea on paper never really worked in practice. It is still a good idea to know where the nearest Macy’s is located.

Along with an adequate supply of toilet paper, a useful resource for the world traveler is The Bathroom Diaries, www.thebathroomdiaries.com. Bathrooms all over the world are listed and rated. Worried about the public bathroom in the Piazza del Duomo in Milan? Just look it up—and note the “horrible” rating.

The really serious student of public plumbing will not want to miss “The History of Public Toilets”, a paper presented by Dr. Bindeswar Pathak at the International Symposium on Public Toilets held in Hong Kong. It reminds us that we are still tackling very old problems.