date_range 2024-07-23 00:00:00
Public toilets are essential infrastructure to guarantee the right to sanitation in public spaces and, in more general terms, the right to inclusive and sustainable cities. Moreover, since the equipment has a direct user interface, it is important to understand their demands and needs. Given this, the present research aims to understand the perspective of public toilet users on the City of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. For that, observations and semi-structured interviews were carried out with different public toilet users. In addition, different NGO and INGO journals and other related documents were used as a secondary database for understanding user’s experience of COA (City of Addis Ababa) toilets. The analysis made it possible to identify aspects related to availability, quality (health and hygiene), security, and accessibility. Collected data showed how the contradictory choice of whether or not to use the toilet was directly related to the health and conservation of the urban equipment and interfered with social and leisure prospects. On the whole, the importance of the user’s perspective was highlighted in this study with emphasis on elaborating adequate urban planning with regard to health, sanitation, and accessibility issues.