Should Major U.S. Cities Install Sidewalk Urinals?

What’s the story?

• Paris officials are tackling public urination by making urination even more public: installing open-air urinals across the City of Lights.

• The four Uritrottoir (a combination of “urinal” and “pavement”) are housed in bright-red flower boxes and have large signs – of a cartoon man peeing (ouing?) in them – to advertise their availability.
• According to a statement from city officials, the eco-friendly “intelligent urinals” were installed in areas where les pipis sauvages, or wild peeing, is a problem—including next the Seine near the Notre Dame Cathedral.
• The Uritrottoir have been criticized on both aesthetic and sexist grounds.

"They have been installed on a sexist proposition: men cannot control themselves (from the bladder point of view) and so all of society has to adapt," Gwendoline Coipeault of the feminist group Femmes Solidaires told the news service. "The public space must be transformed to cause them minimum discomfort."

What do you think?

Should U.S. cities consider installing public urinals to tackle “wild peeing”? Is public urination a problem in your city? Hit Take Action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: @ShashiTharoor via Twitter)