We also need shittable cities. It is a massive pain to be out without a public restroom, especially at night when the already slim toilet options get locked up. My best strategy has been going to police stations and bothering a cop for a bathroom key at 1am. If nothing else, it’s funny.
I think they live in one of the uncivilized countries that don’t have a free public restroom in every store and in parks and such
Like England
Savages…
I once turned in a wallet I found on a bench near a police station and the way they spoke to me and asked questions made me never want to enter a police station again. And I’m white.
Shout out to all of the fellow Lemmy people with IBS/IBD who cannot be more than 5 minutes from a bathroom and yet have no right to one in public. It’s a legitimate disability that the ADA does not cover despite more and more people having it. The right to accessible bodily waste disposal should be recognized the world over.
What I mean by this is that the ADA recognizes it as a disability and you can get work accommodations for it, but the ADA does not require access to public bathrooms to be made available. I view it as an accommodation similar to wheelchair ramps on sidewalks or businesses, the law should absolutely change.
Some states have enacted their own policy that allows you to carry and show a card that states your disability and forces businesses to open their restroom to you, even if its employees only. This should be done at the national level though.
I’m not an expert on this btw, this has just been my own experience and research on it having IBD myself.
Absolutely! I don’t even have any bowel related health issues and occasionally find myself in trouble.
The worst was when I used to go running along the river the city I lived in. For years, the public toilet I occasionally used was open 24 hours. Then one day, for no reason and with no notice, they started locking it between 9 pm and 9 am. The day I discovered that was not a good day.
Knowing that I needed ready access to a toilet a few times a month was enough to curtail my running to the point where I just quit.
One of the rare things that America actually does pretty well. There are restrooms in practically every building.
And there are a lot places its just a public bathroom no need to pay. Less true on the coasts till you get to the highways in exp though.
In more than one way. When I’m out with my dogs I sometimes have to carry their poop for kilometers because my city can’t be bothered to set up some bins along the walkways. The very few that are around are at playgrounds where I’m not allowed to enter with the dogs. And then for whatever reason they realize they’ve got a bunch left and just install five of them at one place.
I hate that many other people don’t pick up after their dogs, but in a way I understand at least some of their frustrations. They’re assholes nonetheless.
Benches are just so nice. The value-to-price proposition is amazing and I don’t see why any city would disagree with this other than incompetence. I recently ordered a bench for a little public garden in my neighbourhood and plopped it there for 100usd. People love it :)
Cities discourage benches because the homeless might use them and that would mean acknowledging the homeless exist.
That’s not always the case tho. Sometimes cities just forget benches exist. My town has no real homeless issues but still lacks of benches for some reason and the public parks team would rather spend the money on touristy shit like “dancing fountains” smh
Also benches, like any public property, get vandalised, stolen and covered in bird and other droppings and need costly maintenance to keep in usable condition.
What about shitable cities? We need more free toilets!
Sadly, that doesn’t always help. I’ve lived in a city with several public toilets. Some people would still rather piss on a wall ~30 metres away from the public toilet rather than use it.
They probably reduced the amount of people doing that, though.
Yeah, going on a roadtrip with my mum is a constant quest for reaching the next toilet, often relying on the goodwill and staff toilets of stores. And there’s genuinely trips she just cannot or does not do, because there’s no toilets on the way.
Absolute insanity to me that we’ve outlawed peeing outside, without having free toilets available everywhere.
And there’s a good chance you’ll be disabled before you even get old.
From What is a Walkable city:
These spaces incorporate elements like seating areas, public art installations, water features, and greenery, enhancing the overall aesthetic appeal and providing a respite from the built environment.
and
Ample green spaces, street trees, and seating areas provide comfortable resting spots and encourage people to enjoy their surroundings.
So… yes? Like I know it might be cathartic to someone driving-by (heh) the concept, but seating is very much in the design of walkable cities.
I think their point is that even in situations that able bodied people might consider to have “ample seating,” it may not be enough for those with disabilities. 3 minutes of walking between benches, I’d say, would probably be considered pretty ample seating by most city planners. It would be no where near enough for my dad, or for my mom before she went full time in the wheelchair. One solution to this could be something along the lines of the little carts they have at Walmart, but like, owned by the city and able to be checked out for free, combined with some people with mobility issues actually getting a say in how the city is planned out, and where the ramps and stuff are for the sidewalks.
No, we absolutely don’t need to inundate every city with eight benches per block. (Two per side.)
There’s a point at which you have to meet halfway, and if you can’t walk for five minutes straight you should probably be in a walker or wheelchair.
In general I agree that cities need to be more walkable, and that includes seating. But the “some people can’t walk three minutes” idea needs to go.
I’m a part time wheelchair user with some walking ability and there are a lot of spaces in my city that are too inaccessible for me to use. I don’t mean internal space, I mean the built environment of the city itself. There’s one route which, if I’m walking, is 0.2 miles. If I’m in my wheelchair, it’s just under 0.6 because I have to take a weird route that doubles back on myself, because city designers put little ledges everywhere without considering how mobility aid users can be impacted
Of course you’re right to highlight that a properly supportive and inclusive world requires more components than just modifications to the built environment, but I think that making accessible spaces needs to be in people’s minds from the get go, and that “some people can’t walk three minutes” is a useful idea for this.
Yeah, totally unreasonable for people to have seating options. I mean the downsides are just so numerous…
