Or is it, as Heritage Advisory Group chair Mike Lee says, that the old city fathers had a better understanding of the concept of public service than our present rulers.
Up for conversion, currently, are 10 heritage toilet blocks, mostly abandoned, which the report notes are "commonly around previous tram stops".
This should have been a clue. They hark back to an age we're now trying to recreate, when public transport was the main mover of people around the city. With bus and train patronage figures now creeping up to match the figures of old, doesn't it make sense to follow the examples of old and restore some of the related facilities, once regarded a necessity of a modern transport network.
Among the 10 heritage blocks singled out for the first round of adaptive re-use is the old underground street toilet block outside the Auckland Art Gallery in Wellesley St, and one outside the old Customhouse below Customs St West. Another is at the corner of Sturdee St and Market Place on the fringes of the booming Viaduct Basin.
This one comes complete with a historic water trough, where your horse can drink its full while you're attending to business inside.
There's others at Kingsland Railway Station, Remuera shops and Sandringham Park. Some are in better state than others, but what sets them apart is the wall to wall white tiling, and the solid, sometimes ornate, porcelain fittings. Lets not over-romanticise them, they were just public toilets. But as they're already there, slap bang exactly in places both present and future Aucklanders will need them, why would you gut them in the hope of a small rental return as yet another cafe or a souvenir shop?
In a perfunctory nod to heritage, council officers say they will insist on the placement of an "interpretative panel" within the structure "that allows visitors to understand the history of the toilets". It seems original tiles and decorative details will be retained, but the working bits, the "hardware and fittings" are dispensable, to be "documented before removal".
I guess insisting on retaining the urinals and toilet bowls within a restaurant would have lessened the marketability of the various spaces. But as an exercise in heritage preservation, following the proposed path is no better than Auckland's shameful acceptance of facadism as a branch of heritage preservation.
The key reason to revive these facilities as toilets is a strictly utilitarian one. But in these days of mass tourism, let's not forget how the remote little town of Kawakawa in the Far North has become something of a visitor magnet, thanks to its upgraded public toilet.
Frederick Hundertwasser, an international artist who'd made his home in the town, upgraded their run-down toilets back in 1998 with local bricks and decorative ceramic tiles made by local school kids.
He said a toilet was special because you meditate there, like a church. His metaphor not mine.
Whatever, every tourist bus travelling through Kawakawa now makes a compulsory stop to view his handiwork.
Just what happens to anyone wanting to take a pee, I'm not sure. Instant fame via social media I guess.
In Auckland, we don't have to go to these lengths.
On busy street corners, both above and below ground, there already is a network of spacious old toilets, waiting to be revived.
For locals and tourists alike, what more could one want?
