In much of the world, people do not have access to toilets and sewers. To make these places safer, innovators look for cheap, easy-to-install solutions.
"Worldwide, 2.3 billion people don’t have access to a toilet," Alia Dharssi reports for Next City. Because traditional sewage systems can be expensive and take time to build, inventors are looking for ways to give people access to sanitary toilets without them.
Inspired by seeing this issue first hand in Bangladesh, Daigo Ishiyama took on the challenge. "Ishiyama and his team developed a line of cheap plastic toilets with self-closing trapdoors that separate people using latrines from the sewage beneath them," Dharssi reports.
Another group, based out of Kenya, engineered a different solution. "Sanivation installs container-based toilets in homes in informal settlements in Naivasha, a city of north of Nairobi, for free, hauls away the sludge from them for a small monthly fee and processes the waste into fuel briquettes," Dharssi writes.
FULL STORY: In Cities Without Enough Toilets, Innovators Look Beyond Sewers
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Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
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New York City School Construction Authority
Village of Glen Ellyn
Central Transportation Planning Staff/Boston Region MPO
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
City of Grandview
Harvard GSD Executive Education
Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada
Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commissions