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.
If that ain’t white privilege I don’t know what is
Yeah, but better to annoy cops with it than gas station employees
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’m american, it’s still hard to find a free toilet in the city sometimes outside of subway stations.
As in they have a “bathrooms for customers only” sign or they have an actual set fee for using the facilities?
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.
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 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.
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
Send them a letter saying it would be nice for your old grandpa to sit on a bench and look at those dancing fountains.
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 costly maintenance do benches need?
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It’s really powerful if you’re a disabled person too. Learnt some great advice in that community. Stuff like spiked covers for the handles on your wheelchair so people don’t just move you without your consent.
My city removed all the benches during covid, but they didn’t give them back. So I bought a BAGOBAGO for my parents. (backpack you can sit on)
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.
My aging engineer of a father had an idea for a great design that keep getting updated in my head. He said he would like some kind of passive exoskeleton strapped on his legs and pelvis. When sitting though, it would put some springs in tension that would then help him lift back up. I think it could also be designed to have a locked mode to “sit” comfortably against any straight wall/tree.
I wonder how much weight an effective design would add. It would probably need to be made out of some decent material, which would probably drive up the cost.
Aluminium would probably suffice, I doubt it would add more than a kilogram even if made of steel. You need an articulation that can hold let’s say 150kg for an overweight person putting all their weight on one leg. It is not a crazy mechanical constraint. Bikes handle more with lightweight structure and more complex mechanisms.
And there’s a good chance you’ll be disabled before you even get old.
With how the world seems currently, getting old might not even be on the table
