Despite having the largest network of public toilets in Europe, the French capital has yet to face the persistent urine problem on public roads – the so called “Pipi Sauvage”.
Known as Light City, Paris brings the title of capital of love and European charm. But behind the romantic image of the illuminated Eiffel Tower, there is a problem that annoyed the residents, tourists and authorities for a few years: pee on the street.
Urban in public places is a common infringement in large urban centers, but in Paris, behavior has even earned its own name: Pipi SauvageWhich in the free translation means “wild pee”.
In the French city, it is not uncommon to cross the city underground stations and hear a strong smell of urine in theaters or platforms, or walking on the streets at night and capturing someone who relieves in a corner.
More than 200 years of Pipi Sauvage
The city has fought this uncomfortable habit of its residents for many years.
Still in the nineteenth century, the local police installed a series of iron bars or cone structures in corners and corners of the streets of Paris in an attempt to create obstacles for those who have been raised in buildings, sidewalks or roads.
Some of these structures can still be seen in the city today. They became known as Enfeche-pipi (Something like “Xixi bar” in Portuguese).
Around 1840, Claude-Philibert Barthelot, count of Rambuteau and mayor of Paris, created the first modern horuals during a countryside to make the city cleaner.
The urinals of the time have been integrated into simple cylindrical structures, mainly used for warnings and announcements. From their format, they were nicknamed by the Parisians of Colonnes Rambuteau (Columns of Rambuteau).
Over time, however, the city has tried to detach the image of the former mayor of public urini and a new name was created: Vespasienne. The word refers to the Roman emperor Vespasian, to whom the collection of a tax on the urine in ancient Rome is attributed.
Mycarians, however, quickly became places of sexual activity, especially among men, due to the privacy they offered.
In the 1960s, the French national assembly voted for a project to remove everything Vespasienne from the streets to prevent sexual encounters.
And it was only in 1981 that the city of Paris installed its first unisex public bath. Today, public stands are everywhere.
By the way, Paris leads a ranking prepared by the newspaper Le Monde of the European cities with multiple public toilets per square kilometer: there are more than 6 per km², right in front of second place on the list, Lyon, which has 3 toilets per km².
However, the problem persists, according to residents and public employees who need to face the issue daily.
“People are not ashamed, no. There is not even that thing to hide in the bush or behind the tree,” says Brazilian Isabel Vigneron, who lives in Paris for a year and a half and says he often sought men urinating in public.
“And this also happens with different public toilets on the street. I also saw people pee on the walls of the cabin. Not inside, but outside.”
Ecology, art and civilization
In recent decades, the Town Hall has used several new strategies against the Pipi SauvageLike the use of repellent paintings on the urine on sidewalks and walls, the installation of ecological urinols and even artistic interventions.
One of these initiatives provided for the placement of murals at the hidden points of the railway stations – places where the practice was common – since 2021. The idea was to reduce the feeling of privacy that encouraged the offenders.
“We installed a sensor to find out if the incentive was working. And on average we reduced the Jets of 80%,” said Isabelle Collin, an expert in behavioral sciences and a consultant at the State Railway Company, told the BBC that participated in the project, in an interview with the BBC recorded in 2023.
In another creative attempt, Paris tested the ecological urinals who promised to transform the urine into a fertilizer of flowers.
The red structures were full of straw and were not designed to have no smell.
The measure attracted international attention in 2017, when it was launched and quickly generated controversy. Some places said that the open horinatorio open, installed near the monuments and in front of the Sena river, where several cruises and other ships pass, compromised the image of the local historian and was offensive.
Some urinols have even been vandalized by radical feminist activists, who accused the mechanism of being sexist and excluding women.
The Town Hall has also bet on the creation of a special brigade to fight the beginnings, active since 2016. In addition to watching those who urinate on the streets, agents also sanction other questionable behaviors, such as throwing garbage on the floor or not collecting feces for dogs.
The urinated in public is an infringement envisaged by the French penal code and, in Paris, it can produce a fine of up to 150 euros.
‘The Universe’
But for many residents, all the strategies have done very little to force those who urine on the streets of Paris.
Isabel Vigneron claims to have been very surprised by these Parisian habits.
Paulistana says that having seen something comparable in Brazil in the Carnival time.
“This is really much worse than in Brazil,” he says. “Every time I walk with my dog I meet someone who urinates or I have to dodge the puddles.”
The Frenchman Edwart Vignot is originally from Paris and sees stains of urine on the walls and on the sidewalks, he started recording the shapes he saw on the points with the photos.
“You can see poetry in this kind of thing, because they create a form, an image. At first glance, you think it is abstract, but if you look, you will see different things like animals, a figure … the universe,” he told BBC Brazil.
The director shares his photographs on his social networks as a form of amateur art.
“That’s why I like to be a hiker in Paris and simply observe.”
‘Way of marking the territory’
But because the Parisians maintain the “tradition” of Pipi Sauvage For so many years?
The behavioral psychologist Nicolas Fieulaine was one of the consultants who helped the Paris town hall to elaborate the installation strategy of artistic walls in the city’s railway stations. In an interview with BBC News in 2023, he tried to explain the phenomenon.
“In French imagination, and I’m not sure this happens elsewhere, public urine is an option that seems to be available and that does not control a person’s moral character,” he says.
Fieulaine also criticizes solutions based only on the installation of urinols aimed at the male public. “People urinated there, then elsewhere, then more … and transmits a sense of freedom, of power over public spaces, which excludes women,” he says.
“This is a powerful way of appropriation. Urbinare in a place is a way to mark the territory.”
For the expert, hygiene became a taboo in France in the nineteenth century, when a public health movement grew in the country. Hygienic, as it was called, defended social and behavioral standards in the name of health.
He contributed to revolutionizing some European cities, including Paris, proposing the construction of waste water networks, the supply of drinking water, parks and public spaces, as well as encouraging the adoption of personal hygiene practices such as regular bathroom and prohibiting the disposal of waste on the streets.
But, according to Fiolen, this philosophy has also created a feeling of shame for anything considered dirty or linked to body fluids.
“This is how it has become a small taboo,” says Fieulaine. “We do not face these things with your head held high. When exposed to other types of bathrooms, such as the bathrooms in which it is necessary to make their crossed needs, the French feel disgusted because it forces them to look back and face the problems they themselves have created.”
BBC News Brazil searched the Town Hall of Paris to understand what the current urine impacts are on the streets on the organization and budget of the city and what measurements are adopted in 2025 to minimize the problem, but has not been answered until the publication of the relationship.
Source: Terra
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