I guess if you don’t have a massive population of antisocial people who destroy the public facility, you can provide them. It’s a shame we in the west surrendered that. Not the worst thing in the world, but I do find it frustrating often to not have a bathroom available nearby (small bladder)

But, while the toilets aren’t the worst sacrifice, the cumulative sacrifices made on the alter of our huge antisocial populations are profound

"EU" is too broad of a term to describe cultural/social/political norms such as public toilets. There are places in the EU with fairly decent toilets, and others with almost none. In some you have to pay in many public toilets, in others they are free. The best bet in most places are public buildings such as libraries. And very often cafes etc allow you use a toilet, esp if you have health reasons and ask them nicely, though ymmv. The biggest issue as others said is vandalism, so in (richer) countries where public toilets are cleaned more often the toilets are much better.

What's wrong about syringe disposal? A significant portion of population has diabetes. And even if a drug addict uses it, still better than throwing to the trash, similar to how cigarette disposals are mandatory in typical airplanes.

> Then take any shopping mall in Bangkok

That is an extremely small subset of Thailand. I wouldn’t surprised if high end malls in any western capital city also had good toilets.

Most toilets outside of malls in Thailand were bring your own soap and toilet paper and covered in water from the bum guns.

> I lived for many years in China and Thailand, and toilets are free, clean, and plentiful there

I don't know about China but this was the opposite of my experience in Thailand. The majority of public toilets I encountered had an attendant you had to pay for access. Shopping malls / hotels / other places were you were already paying to be there were the exception of course.

> China

> toilets are... clean

Okay I'm going to have to say that this _really_ depends on where you are. Sometimes, yes, especially newer buildings, but man I have seen some horrors there in the past few years when it comes to bathrooms in terms of cleanliness and smell (the frequent smoking in a lot of bathrooms doesn't help). This is coming from someone primarily experiencing Canadian and American bathrooms, for reference, and a lot of those are pretty nasty. I think it's getting better at least...

Just to be clear though I agree generally, at least from my experience with East Asia. Hong Kong often has really good bathrooms now IMO (I feel like it improved a lot between 2018 to 2023?). Japan is also really good from my experience (fancy-ass bidets). Taiwan was fine too from my recollection.

Weird. When I was living in Beijing, I made a mental map of all my bathroom choices when I wasn't at a luxury shopping mall, because they just weren't that convenient and available. This includes squats, which I included since sit down toilets were often hogged by some guy on the phone doing a long smoking session (squats never were, which is great when you absolutely need to go!).

But this was in the time when Xi had just taken office, so it is probably better now. I didn't see any issues on my trip to Chengdu this summer. I have a lot bigger problems in downtown Seattle today, which is just really bad (either the toilets don't exist, or there is some homeless guy doing drugs in the only stall they have). Sigh.

A reduction of public restrooms didn't stop the worst 10% of society from having public sex, shooting up drugs, or destroying an area with their lack of defacatory etiquette -- did it?

In places where these things were problems with public restrooms, they remain problems without public restrooms.

The 10%'ers are still doing their dastardly things. The remaining 90% of society still has the same messes to clean up (or to willfully ignore).

Nothing has been improved in this process.

You're right about who is causing the damage etc. but the 'commons' does not refer to the people; it refers to the shared resource. So a public park is the commons. And when it gets polluted with plastic rubbish etc. because externalities are not internalized that's a tragedy of the commons.

I tried to find a good term for this trend and the best I could do is "defining deviancy down" defined as "the tendency of societies to respond to destructive behaviors by lowering standards for what is permissible."

It's like a behavioral Overton window that grows downwards.

Ten percent is way too optimistic, I'd say 20% are destroying everything for the majority.

We are experiencing "changing consumer habits"

Homelessness and the post-2008 wave of poverty ruined it. A few people who need to use a public bathroom everyday is fine, but when you have 100x of ppl who are desuetude, on drugs, mentally ill etc. emptying their medications and needles and so on it becomes a public health hazard and overwhelms staff.. better to just shut it down altogether or limit to staff only. .

And then we'll brand anyone who dares to go to the bathroom a sex offender or other huge penalties. That is the paradox of a country that is so wealthy yet low trust. Public infrastructure is the first to go unless legally mandated( sufficient public bathrooms does not fall under this apparently).

You just charge for it. A dollar per entry should be enough for someone to come by and clean it twice a day, such that it doesn't matter what shenanigans antisocial people get up to in there. No mess will last longer than a few hours.

Yeah. Once in SF I was rejected by 5 businesses in a row to use their restrooms. The nearest public park had its restroom locked. I, a non-homeless person, was forced by nature to pee behind a building in a parking lot.

I had no choice. The businesses had a choice. The parks manager had a choice.

And now I understand why SF stinks.

The 50 cents is dual purpose, the one is obvious in that it pays for the attendant and them keeping it clean, but the other is like using a coin to unlock a trolley, it cuts back misuse by a lot. Once you've been to free vs 50 cent toilets a few times you'll see (and smell) the difference.

Would much prefer this than what we have in NYC, which is go into a bar or cafe, buy something small and then use the restroom. Another thing I'll do sometimes is if I see a busy bar where the bartender isn't paying attention you can walk in, pretend you're looking for friends you're meeting, use the toilet and then sneak out.

As the result will be shit and piss elsewhere in the open, a compromise could be having shitty free public toilets and nice toilets where you pay (or maybe not nice, but bearable).

The alternative would be social workers, more psychotherapists, free healthcare, ...

That practically ensures that some people who have to go really badly, and for whom €0.50 is a big deal, will just drop their business on the sidewalk.

I visited Hollywood Boulevard once. That was nuts. No public toilets anywhere, in one of the most famous tourist attractions in the country. Worse, food establishments won't let you use the restroom, claiming they have none.

Thankfully I found one in a cinema.

Around where I live, they first shut down during covid with the excuse of preventing transmission. Of course they just never opened up again. Ditto water fountains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y31WAq4cENo

Is tragedy of the commons overused?

Enpissification?

I’m not sure it’s a regression really

If you look at a graph of the world population it’s seems clear to me that freely available common resources are just going to continue to get overused and ruined as we continue to add people to the equation

Micro-regressions will largely be in the realm of charity and hospitality as society has aggressively embodied capitalism's cost and benefit analysis.

Surely there are all kinds of interesting and constructive classroom discussions to be had about lawbreaking.

Classrooms teach about reality (among other things) and there are many things in reality that don't involve obedience to the law, as it exists at a particular time and place.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

> The law determines that public space can't be used for any sexual activity.

Follow-up question: Does an enclosed stall count as "public space"?

It sounds like, of the three options given, you are squarely in the “authorities” camp (although it seems to me that you interpret the question as asking what you believe should happen, whereas it appears to be asking what happens in practice). Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear the other points of view?

They're probably talking about the sociological functions of the facility, not the set of legally permissible uses of it. (There's a pretty famous book on this particular application, Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex In Public Places.)

That didn't stop... a lot of people.

At least in my area, a lot of folks didn't trust the tap water, and more didn't trust the fountain to not be super germy, so fountains just didn't end up used. I noticed many shuttered during COVID then they never got turned back on, then eventually got removed.

I have seen indoor fountains gradually being replaced with water bottle filler stations, but I personally wonder how often those filters get replaced.

the public bathroom should be redesigned so that one can do only the thing it is designed for - and maybe it needs to be a single-user design.

Almost like an airline bathroom size - might be a bit claustrophobic but these are for emergencies and space saving would be big.

the doors could be wired to sensors that are connected to a central network that shows in real-time the availability and also some alarms if something is out of the ordinary etc.

Yeah you have to actually hire people to clean them and patrol for homeless weirdos. Which is why in my country they cost money.

I never really understood the economics of public restrooms in America. Who pays for them?

I disagree. A lot of people do not care about public facilities. They do not believe in leaving things better than they found them. You've seen these people around, you know who they are. These are the same people that don't rerack weights at the gym or don't put the cart back at the supermarket. That attitude has nothing to do with income, housing, race, or activity they are interested in. It's simply a result of narcissism. The only way is stopping excuses and enforcing the public etiquette. The world will be much better off.

But I have to say that if you have a very cheap solution for 25% of your use cases you should definitely use it.

What you can't do is neglect the other 75%.

Fascinating stuff. And what a logo.

> Starting a national crusade to cast away coin-operated commodes, Gessel told newsmen, "You can have a fifty-dollar bill, but if you don't have a dime, that metal box is between you and relief."

I'm sympathetic to this argument. Carrying around loose change with US-style billfold wallets has never been convenient, and back in the day you'd often find yourself without change for a bus fare or a pay phone and so on in a critical moment.

Today, though, almost everyone carries either a contactless credit card or a phone with an NFC wallet. I would pay $0.25 for access to a clean public toilet if I could swipe one of those instead of having to carry change.

LA Metro has these restroom facilities at their rail stations, which are free for a 10 minute visit but require an access code on your phone or a standalone entry pass. I've never used one, but heard great things. https://thronelabs.co/

Another example of completely counterproductive interference in the free market, this time eliminating public toilets more or less entirely because you can't make money from them and the state is too incompetent to provide them.

drug users ruin everything. it's why we cant have nice things anymore

This reminds me of a story I heard (read?) a long time ago. At Disney World they had a rule about a garbage can being within a 10 foot distance of basically anywhere in the park. The logic was that when a garbage can is nearby, there is additional social pressure not to litter, and the result was that they were able to save money on park cleanup because people used the cans.

When I see lone overflowing garbage cans in big cities I think about this.

I haul my garbage home in my backpack like a good little global citizen but the lack of trash cans in San Francisco is crazy

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SAN-FRANCISCO-Trash-c...

You would think it's in the interest of whoever is responsible for keeping those areas clean to offer garbage cans.

One of the primary goals of the pandemic and lockdowns was to eliminate cost centers for every business.

If you notice how courtesy services disappeared, and many facilities were closed, because of a lack of staff or funds to clean them and maintain them.

It has actually been difficult to get into a restroom at certain restaurants, even now; sometimes I will find a handwritten sign there like “Employees Only” which is against health codes.

I rode a scooter to a “Drive-In” burger restaurant last month. Not a drive-thru, mind you, but a place where folks pulled up in cars and carhops served them, and they ate while parked. And this place had picnic tables, so I ordered a burger combo and tried to wash my hands.

There was no restroom available, and I contacted the order-taker guy and asked to confirm, and then I asked to cancel my order. He said “Your order is ready!” and I said hell naw, if you don’t have a restroom then you’re not serving anyone, so I got my refund...

> I had some trash in my car I needed to get rid of

Bring it home and use your own trash can? I don’t really understand why you need to immediately get rid of it.

In city centers it's usually counter-terrorism: it's easy to throw a timed bomb in a metal garbage can and flee the scene, so they got rid of them (London did because of IRA, and of course now they have Islamic terrorism). Outside of city centers it's about (lack of) recycling: it's easier to check if you're recycling correctly in your home bin than public bins.

Blame the raccoons!

Hence one of the activities they are best known for - "cottaging".

Sounds like the Romans had it better than your description of the Chinese, though I am sure in the modern world someone would be stealing the sponges for unfathomable reasons.

In the UK, it's a big pub chain called Wetherspoons. City centres often have multiple of them too. I don't think any of the toilets need an access code, unlike a lot of other places.

You can get a £2 pint of cider or ~£1.80 half-decent coffee while you're there too

IMO each city should have space dedicated for homeless camping with 24h running water and easy to clean stainless steel bathroom facilities. Do any cities do this, especially cities where weather is mild? Would homeless actually use it in favor of streets if available?

Also why didn't you use shelter facilities, were they too crowded, unsafe, or had onerous rules?

This is true, and an understated consequence of homelessness. My city is working on deploying portapotties for the homeless for this reason.

You're blaming ... the poor?