Public Toilet Strategy 2013 - City of Armadale

8 GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Automated Public Toilets have become popular around the world as they promote sanitation (perceived
cleanliness because of hands-free operation) and hard fixtures are designed to minimise vandalism. Research
and development has created a range of automated toilet suppliers and products that are valued for their
ease of maintenance and code compliance.
“Automated toilets have been common fixtures on European sidewalks for decades. But they have been less
popular in American cities, where concerns including their appearance cleanliness and tendency to attract
illegal activity have slowed their installation. In Seattle, problems arose almost immediately. Users left so
much trash behind that the automated floor scrubbers had to be disabled, and prostitutes and drug users
found privacy behind the toilets’ locked doors.
Seattle officials say the project here failed because the toilets, which are to close on Aug. 1, were placed in
neighbourhoods that already had many drug users and transients.
Rather than automated toilets, some cities are looking for cheaper alternatives that would be cleaned by
human attendants.” 2
“Although they are not the cause of problems in the neighbourhood, they are contributing to problems.
They give people a place to hide out, to duck out of sight.” 3
However, in Europe and many other countries throughout the world, the APT concept has been
acknowledged as addressing issues such as vandalism, security and environmental impact.
It is more likely nowadays to believe that no unsupervised installation can prevent vandalism. Even with the
most vandal resistant appliances, an unsupervised facility will eventually become sub-standard.
Over the last 20 years, designers and architects worldwide have begun to see the need to plan and build
public toilets with the real or potential threat of crime in mind and to incorporate Crime Prevention Through
Environmental Design (CPTED) principles (see Appendix 1) in the original design phase of all public toilets.
It is also part of the Australian Toilet Organisation’s (ATO’s) vision to create public pride in public toilets,
thereby creating local guardianship of public toilets. Their main goal, locally, is to transform the public’s
expectations of and relationship to public toilets by raising awareness about issues and providing solutions.
9 ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
9.1 Mandate to provide public toilets
Times have changed, as have the pressures and duties on local authorities. While much of the new provision
is on a smaller scale than that it replaces, there are many instances of the total withdrawal of toilet facilities.
The lack of compulsion of local authorities to provide public toilets, together with a perception of nuisance
associate with them, has arguably resulted in a steady decline in the provision of public toilets in recent
years. What was an essential service is now a desirable, discretionary and non-statutory function that
competes for finite resources.
Although the City has no legislative responsibility to provide public toilets other than those associated with
building regulations for the stock of Council owned public buildings, they have shown to improve local
amenity and support active participation in recreational, social and commercial activity within the City for
visitors and residents alike.
2 Christopher Maag, The New York Times, 17 July 2008
3 Seattle (Washington, USA) City Council member, Sally Clark, at a news conference, March 2008
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