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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Freestanding public toilet design and location in Boston and Cambridge : a comparative case study

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

This paper explores urban sanitation provision in the United States via a comparative case study of the freestanding public toilets in Boston and Cambridge. The research attempts to capture the influence of municipal institutions and local actors on public toilet design and location, and further attempts to assess to what degree the resulting design and location meet project stakeholders' own communicated priorities as well as anticipated user needs. This is an IRB approved project that engaged stakeholders through interviews and further corroborated online research with toilet block site visits. The study concluded that the Portland Loo design, while it lacked many amenities of the Automatic Public Toilet design, it is a more robust and suitable toilet for a high-demand and high-risk urban environment.

Degree

thesis:*
Department dc:contributor.department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Grantor dc:publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Year dc:date.issued
2017

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Castaños, Emma Isabel
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Maria C. Yang.

Subjects

dc:subject × 1

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.
Language dc:language.iso
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112570
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/112570

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
MIT
Base URL
dspace.mit.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Castaños, Emma Isabel. Freestanding public toilet design and location in Boston and Cambridge : a comparative case study. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112570