Emerging categories of urban shared sanitation

With 2.6 billion people without access to improved sanitation facilities and with a growing urban population globally, shared sanitation in the form of public or community latrines is a pragmatic way of increasing coverage, but it is currently not deemed 'improved'. This paper explores the variety of facilities that currently exist in order to identify what would enable some of these latrines to be classed as acceptable and to ensure that future shared sanitation facilities meet minimum standards. The categories mostly relate to issues of ownership, management, location and finance rather than technological considerations. An extensive literature review reveals that the users' perspective of acceptability is largely absent from current discussions.