When the prevailing solution is to punish citizens and power wash sidewalks of human feces each morning instead of providing access to public sanitation sites, we are facing a tragic failure of imagination. Who are we if we cannot provide our neighbors with the benefit of dignity?
The issue is bigger than bathrooms, but the need is clear. Who among us does not have sanitation needs? The human body’s ability to eliminate waste is a great equalizer, but too often we treat public sanitation as a privilege afforded to some and not others. But in this case, meeting individual needs meets a collective need.
We cannot afford to ignore all of our sanitation needs. Public health risks like Southern California’s Hepatitis A outbreak in 2016 and the e. coli outbreak in the American River in 2019 put the community at large’s health at risk. When we describe the features of a developed, prospering country, sanitation has become more of an assumption than a hallmark. Without public sanitation that considers the ecological possibilities and problems of managing human waste, we have not realized a collective vision to promote equity and protect dignity.
In the United States, many cities have insufficient public sanitation, especially when compared to the rest of the world and cities across Europe and Asia in particular. Several cities across the US are currently piloting public sanitation programs: San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Portland, etc.
Everyone needs and relies on public sanitation from park goers to shoppers to rideshare drivers and other workers without access on the job, public transit riders, and unhoused folks. Some people have higher needs and particular needs around sanitation access.Access to sanitation is an equity, economic justice, racial justice, disability justice, gender justice issue. Certain populations have higher or specific needs for sanitation: young children, senior citizens, pregnant people, people with disabilities or medical conditions. Unhoused people often have higher need, 24/7 need, and less access; in Oakland the majority (7 out of 10) unhoused people are BlackTransgender or gender non conforming people often experience discrimination and are barred access to appropriate sanitation facilities. Unhoused communities are particularly vulnerable and impacted by limited and inaccessible sanitation facilities: restrooms, showers, clean drinking water, laundry, etc.
Long-term solution to lack of sanitation is accessible, actually affordable housing with appropriate services for formerly unhoused peopleAnd still there is an immediate need for public sanitation and public sanitation facilities are needed for everyone beyond unhoused communitiesInsufficient sanitation is a public health risk: Hepatitis A outbreak in Southern California in 2016-18, American River e. coli contamination near Sacramento in 2019.
Proactive solutions to sanitation are more affordable and more dignified than reactive responses. Proactive solutions aim to meet everyone’s basic needs instead of criminalizing and punishing open defecation and urination. Western sanitation systems are largely waterborne, centralized sewer systems that are water and energy inefficient and treat sewer as “waste” to dispose of instead of nutrients to reuse and recycle.
Western sanitation is often used and defined as the model for “developed countries” but fails to actually promote sustainability, resilience, or environmental health. It is sad when the UN describes Oakland’s Homeless Crisis as Cruel andOakland’s Homeless encampments are compared to Mexico City.
Pandemics and sanitation
Historically pandemics have motivated sanitation upgrades including the development and implementation of centralized, waterborne sewers Epidemics show our weaknesses and lack of resilience as a society and present the opportunity to envision and motivate more resilient infrastructure and futuresEpidemics are expected to increase with climate changeMedical professionals consider sanitation systems to be some of the most important medical advances of the 20th centuryWe believe that as urban planners and designers we have a responsibility to design public space and infrastructure to proactively promote environmental health: prevent people from getting sick in the first place and better care for them when they do.
