Residents of Soho, London’s iconic neighborhood known for its intense nightlife, can’t stand the smell of pee in the streets anymore. A good part of the almost 1 million pounds that the British capital uses for urban cleaning every year is destined to washing with water from the urine accumulated on walls and sidewalks.
A project presented by Westminster District Council wants to prevent the practice using a resource to, to some extent, take revenge on men who usually relieve themselves on the street.
It is an “anti-pee paint”, which promises to repel urine in public places, causing it to splash more and reach, for example, the clothes of those who are breaking the rules. The substance is transparent, so tight bohemians can’t tell which areas would be “safe” to urinate in.
The peculiar proposal was a response to more than 3,000 complaints from the population to the local legislature and is inspired by similar experiences in Germany. “Obviously the urine is not pleasant and our residents are angry,” Aicha Less, who holds the equivalent of a councilor, told AFP news agency. “We will see the difference in six months and if there will be less odor”, she added, defending the right “to live in a clean and safe environment”.
In Soho, there are signs painted in some places with notices like “this wall is not a urinal”. The alerts add to London legislation, which punishes with fines of 50 to 80 pounds who treats public places as a toilet.
According to Tim Lord, leader of an association of residents of Soho, there are more than 400 establishments in the neighborhood with authorization to sell alcoholic beverages. At least a hundred of them stay open until dawn. “At night there are thousands of people drinking here and this summer Soho stinks. If the anti-pee paint works it will reduce the problem of smelly streets and that is something to be appreciated.”
Although Soho has several portable urinals placed at strategic points between Thursdays and Sundays, public toilets have all but disappeared. Some of them were closed during the most critical phase of the coronavirus pandemic, but did not reopen when the health crisis eased.
In Lord’s view, it is a “specifically English problem”. “You don’t have to travel far in Europe or North America to find perfectly clean and well-managed public restrooms,” he adds. “Soho is a very important historic part of London, built in the 1650s. We just want our council to take care of it.”
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