Gender Inclusive Design for our Built Environment

Architects generally want people to feel comfortable around their buildings or interior spaces; however, architects aren’t perfect and may overlook some simple design solutions that can put people at ease. The World Bank Group has released a handbook for urban planners, architects, and anybody shaping our physical environment to use when making (or renovating) spaces. The handbook is all about designing for all genders and ensuring that the built environment is useful and welcoming to all regardless of their gender.

Urban planning and design quite literally shape the environment around us — and that environment, in turn, shapes how we live, work, play, move, and rest. This handbook aims to illuminate the relationships between gender inequality, the built environment, and urban planning and design; and to lay out a menu of simple, practicable processes and best practices for urban planning and design projects that build more inclusive cities – for men and women, for those with disabilities, and for those who are marginalized and excluded.

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A Map to find Organizations Fighting Climate Change

tree with climate knowledge

Climatescape is a new web-based database to help you find organizations around that world that are trying to save the planet from environmental destruction. It can be hard to find groups on the other side of the world to partner with, or just to find a local organization that is also interested in your goals. Climatescape is trying to make it easier and faster for people to make the world a better place.

The creator mentioned on Hacker News that they are looking for more support in all sorts of ways:

I made Climatescape after seeing dozens of people go through a similar process of cataloging interesting climate-focused companies in spreadsheets, notes, and elsewhere. The goal is to unify these efforts and provide the content free to anyone who might find it useful. The website is open source[1] and content is Creative Commons licensed.

This is really just the beginning of what I’d like to see the project become. We want to go deeper by including key org attributes like headcount, location, investments, and more. There are also plans to increase the breadth of the database by including books, podcasts, events, data sets, and other important resources related to climate.

If anyone is interested in contributing please get in touch! brendan [at] sinceresoftware.co

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Eating Locally isn’t as Important as you Think

Diets make a difference in your individual health and our total global health. If we all eat healthier then the planet’s health will also improve, and the best way to do this is by eating foods with low green house gas (GHG) emissions. It turns out the best way to reduce your carbon footprint with food isn’t to eat local – it’s to change what you eat. The transportation of food is a negligible amount of the total GHG emissions from our processed food system.

For most foods – and particularly the largest emitters – most GHG emissions result from land use change (shown in green), and from processes at the farm stage (brown). Farm-stage emissions include processes such as the application of fertilizers – both organic (“manure management”) and synthetic; and enteric fermentation (the production of methane in the stomachs of cattle). Combined, land use and farm-stage emissions account for more than 80% of the footprint for most foods.

Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%.

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Thanks to Delaney!

No Better Time than now to Work from Home

Office room

For many office workers there is little reason to go to the office thanks to the advances in technology (it seems the only reason to be in an actual office is to be watched by a manager). The environmental gains from telecommuting are obvious and the cost saving for workers and the employers are also obvious, so why isn’t telecommuting more popular? Companies are looking into their work-from-home practices due to the outbreak of the most recent coronavirus. One positive thing that might come out of the bad news of the flu is that we commuting will be easier for all of us.

The carbon benefits of working from home largely depend on how a person gets to work. If you’re like me and take a train to work, staying home doesn’t do all that much to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions. If you’re among the 76 percent of Americans who drive to work alone, then staying home a couple days a week could dramatically reduce your individual carbon footprint while also reducing all the congestion and pollution that results from so many cars on the road.

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In the ideal world, the positives would be enough to encourage employers to create flexible work policies. However, saving money is the real push, said Lister. Luckily for the planet, economics and the environment go hand in handthese days, so companies are also seeing the financial benefits of setting and meeting internal sustainability goals. These work-from-home measures may appeal to investors (and consumers!) that are interested in a company’s environmental and societal impact.

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Play a Game about the Trolley Problem

Wero Creative released Dr. Trolley’s Problem yesterday and you should go play it right now. The game presents a lot of trolley problem situations you can play through to test your ethics. You’ll find yourself trying to decide which way a runaway trolley should go – towards the upstanding citizen or towards a dog? The game includes an autonomous car mode which echos the choices AIs will have to make when they get into sticky situations.

I think this game is great because I made it, so don’t trust my thoughts on it – go make your own opinions. You can download it now for PC & Mac or get the game on iOS.

Dr. Trolley is an infamous robot mad scientist from another dimension who has sequestered you in its simulation to answer the most pressing questions.

The game includes dozens of dilemmas plus randomly generated problems which last anywhere from 30 seconds to one minute each. Some situations involve reading what is presented on screen. Within each situation the player decides whether or not to act to save a character (or not).

Check it out!