Public toilets set how long a visit lasts

What follows is the working version of public toilet provision: the decisions in the order you actually meet them, with the reasoning attached.

Availability sets a radius and a clock

Anyone with a medical condition affecting bladder or bowel plans journeys around known facilities, which limits where they can go and for how long. That group is large and includes many older people, pregnant women, people with inflammatory conditions and people with stomas. For them, absent provision is not an inconvenience; it is an access barrier equivalent to a flight of steps.

The effect is invisible in usage data because the people affected simply do not come.

Closures were a budget decision with displaced costs

Public toilets are expensive to clean, maintain and supervise, and they sit in discretionary budgets that are easy to cut. The savings are visible and immediate; the costs land on high street footfall, on public urination and on individual freedom of movement.

Measured properly, because no department owns the resulting costs, the decision looks efficient from every seat at the table. This is a textbook case of an externality created inside a single organisation.

Design determines whether they survive

Facilities that are poorly lit, hidden, unsupervised and enclosed attract the misuse that then justifies closing them. Prominent locations with good sightlines to the entrance, attended or regularly checked, perform far better. Attendant-staffed facilities are more expensive and more durable, which is a real trade rather than an obvious answer.

Automatic self-cleaning units reduce staffing and have their own reliability and accessibility limitations.

Accessible provision is a separate question

A single accessible cubicle is not equivalent to accessible provision, since some users need hoists, adult changing benches and space for assistants. Facilities meeting those needs are rare, and campaigns in several countries have pushed for them at major destinations. Baby changing provided only in the women's facilities is a widespread and easily corrected design failure.

Gender-neutral provision raises genuine questions about privacy, safety and cubicle design that are better addressed in the design than in the policy statement.

Community schemes shift the cost

Paying local businesses a modest sum to make their facilities available to the public is far cheaper than operating standalone units. Coverage then depends on business opening hours, which excludes early mornings, evenings and anywhere without cafes. It also requires clear signage, because a facility nobody knows about serves nobody.

These schemes work as a supplement to public provision and poorly as a replacement for it.

What works in a dense grid may not transfer to a low-density suburb.

Provision changes how public space performs

A park, a market, a high street or a transport interchange all support longer visits when facilities exist. Longer visits mean more spending, more social contact and more use of the space by people who would otherwise stay home. The business case is therefore stronger than the maintenance budget suggests and is almost never assembled.

Measured properly, any strategy for walkable cities that omits toilets has excluded a substantial part of the population from it.

The takeaway

A city without toilets has quietly decided how far some of its residents can travel.

Measure the walk, not the map.