(11-15-2020, 02:12 PM)tomh009 Wrote: The G&M has 13 proposals on how to improve our cities. Some are more easily achieved than others, some are more concrete than others, some would have greater impact than others, some would cause more pushback than others. But I personally believe most of them are good ideas. But the challenge will be to get cities (and, in particular, our cities) to adopt some of these and make them happen.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-more-public-bathrooms-less-sprawl-better-bylaws-13-prescriptions/

Which of the proposals is your favourite? Which one are you opposed to?

1. More autonomy for the cities from the provinces
   
2. More free, municipally-maintained public toilets
   
3. Every city should have a carbon budget
   
4. Create an environment where people can live, work, learn and play within their own communities
   
5. Gather more community input
   
6. More open space in the downtown area [this is fairly specifically aimed at Toronto]
   
7. More health care options through mobile outreach or virtual
   
8. Remove barriers for active living and healthy eating
   
9. Retrofit suburbs with more density, and to enable living without a car
   
10. Loosen change-of-use bylaws [particularly for retail]
    
11. Create community land trusts to reduce tenants' insecurity
    
12. Gather more broad input to better understand the marginalized communities' needs
    
13. Reprioritize the space currently given to cars
    

(11-15-2020, 04:01 PM)tomh009 Wrote: * More free, municipally-maintained public toilets

(11-15-2020, 04:19 PM)plam Wrote:

(11-15-2020, 04:01 PM)tomh009 Wrote: * More free, municipally-maintained public toilets

NZ is extremely good with providing public toilets and this is really useful even as a person with no special needs. I can be confident that when I go somewhere in public there will be a city-maintained toilet accessible not too far away. Downtown Wellington is a bit less good (there are some but not as many) and during lockdown they closed many of them, but overall, far better than Canada.

From what I saw of Beijing, also very good with public toilets.

Montreal had city-built public toilets during the Depression but they went away unfortunately.

(11-15-2020, 04:27 PM)tomh009 Wrote:

(11-15-2020, 04:19 PM)plam Wrote: NZ is extremely good with providing public toilets and this is really useful even as a person with no special needs. I can be confident that when I go somewhere in public there will be a city-maintained toilet accessible not too far away. Downtown Wellington is a bit less good (there are some but not as many) and during lockdown they closed many of them, but overall, far better than Canada.

From what I saw of Beijing, also very good with public toilets.

Montreal had city-built public toilets during the Depression but they went away unfortunately.

Some European cities are very good for that as well -- and Tokyo has many in their numerous parks (but not much in super-dense urban areas like Ginza).

(11-16-2020, 08:02 AM)dtkmelissa Wrote: When I was last in Goderich, they not only had public accessible washrooms (right off the square), they had signage elsewhere telling people about the existence of them. Lezlie Lowe has a great book on this issue called 'No Place To Go'.

(11-16-2020, 10:12 AM)tomh009 Wrote:

(11-16-2020, 08:02 AM)dtkmelissa Wrote: When I was last in Goderich, they not only had public accessible washrooms (right off the square), they had signage elsewhere telling people about the existence of them. Lezlie Lowe has a great book on this issue called 'No Place To Go'.

She is, in fact, the one who proposed the public bathroom point in the G&M article!

(11-15-2020, 04:01 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Fair enough. I won't post the full article here, but I'll include the 13 points, each from a different person. Details and rationale are in the article.

1. More autonomy for the cities from the provinces
   
2. More free, municipally-maintained public toilets
   
3. Every city should have a carbon budget
   
4. Create an environment where people can live, work, learn and play within their own communities
   
5. Gather more community input
   
6. More open space in the downtown area [this is fairly specifically aimed at Toronto]
   
7. More health care options through mobile outreach or virtual
   
8. Remove barriers for active living and healthy eating
   
9. Retrofit suburbs with more density, and to enable living without a car
   
10. Loosen change-of-use bylaws [particularly for retail]
    
11. Create community land trusts to reduce tenants' insecurity
    
12. Gather more broad input to better understand the marginalized communities' needs
    
13. Reprioritize the space currently given to cars