Rhonda Cheryl Solomon

I am a third-year PhD candidate in Urban Planning at the University of Toronto. My work examines public toilet provision for people with disabilities. My first publication was a research paper for University of Toronto Cities Centre (now the School of Cities), and was published while I was an undergraduate student at the U of T. My paper analyzed public toilet provision policies primarily in North American cities in order to develop recommendations for a public toilet policy in Toronto. Successive to my undergraduate paper, my master’s thesis explored the subject of public toilet provision further, studying how lack of public toilet provision in the urban environment impacts marginalized social groups. Now, as a PhD student, my research concentrates on how lack of public toilet provision impacts people with disabilities. As a disabled, neurodiverse, scholar, the subjects of ableism and social exclusion are of personal importance to me, and these subjects are central to a paper I co-authored with my PhD supervisor, Ron Buliung. In our paper, ‘Leaky Bodies and Broken Bathrooms: Stories about Ableism and Going to the Loo’, we offer a personal account and critical questioning to expose how a token compliance approach to building accessible public toilets fails to consider the varied needs of diverse leaky bodies.

On January 24, 2023, I moderated a panel discussion on public toilet provision for people with disabilities. This event, which was hosted by the School of Cities and Centre for Global Disability Studies, was the end product of my 2020-2021 School of Cities Fellowship. Entitled 'Disability in the City: Inclusive Public Toilets as a Humanizing Feature of the Urban Realm', this panel discussion had scholars and advocates making the case for accessible public toilets in urban centres. Panelists exposed the failures of an ableist approach to planning for accessible public toilets and offered concrete suggestions for contemporary planning policy and practice regarding accessible public toilet provision. My near-future work includes publishing further papers on public toilet provision and disability, as well as papers on public transit and disability (mental illness specifically).

Publications

Buliung, R., & Solomon, R.C. (2022). Leaky Bodies and Broken Bathrooms: Stories about Ableism and Going to the Loo. Planning Theory and Practice, (23)1. DOI: 10.1080/14649357.2022.2035545

Solomon, R.C. (June 2013). A Comparative Policy Analysis of Public Toilet Provision Initiatives in North American Cities: Recommendations for the Creation of a Public Toilet Strategy in Toronto. 53pp. ISSN 0316-0068; ISBN-13 978-0-7727-1484-8