© klo:lektiv

workshop

Right to the city = right to piss*.
A workshop of ideas.

Recht auf Stadt Forum 2021
3rd-5th of september
Alte VHS, Bonn

Katharina Ciax
Martine Kayser
Theresa Mertens (Gemeinwohlorientierte Stadtentwicklung e.V.)

We all know the situation of being out and about in the city and suddenly desperately looking for a toilet where we can relieve ourselves - sometimes more, sometimes less urgently - while at the same time already scanning the surroundings to find a place to pee outside. Depending on the physical and social constitution of our bodies, finding a toilet or another place to pee is easier for some than for others. The great need for an inclusive and adequate sanitary infrastructure has so far found rather little entry into urban policy debates and still seems to be covered with a cloak of silence and shame. Even in urban planning, sanitation facilities have so far been mentioned only in passing, thought of only as a banality and not as an important, powerful and necessary infrastructure that can socially or limit. While toilet facilities are often simply missing, existing toilets are broken, have an unequal number of urination options by gender, are not or insufficiently designed to be barrier-free, and cost money. Not to mention the binary gender order according to which toilet spaces are designed and the inherent androcentric design of toilets.