Urbanization30
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Reusable, Homemade Feminine Pads: A Simple Intervention to Help Keep Girls in School
In many areas of sub-Saharan Africa, gender parity tends to decline at higher levels of schooling. While girls’ enrollment and completion rates for primary school are typically high, these rates decrease with secondary and tertiary education. Girls may discontinue their studies to devote more time to household chores, to earn extra income by engaging in…
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In Support of the Neglected Drinking Fountain
The Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association built the first public drinking fountain in London in 1859, as an answer to some of the pressing problems of their times. Drinking fountains are also part of the answer to some of our own problems.
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Phytoremediation: Can It Solve the Brownfield Problem?
Brownfields, born from defunct industrial facilities, are a growing problem in the world today. Current cleanup techniques are invasive, expensive, energy dependent, and restrictive. Perhaps a better and more innovative solution to the problem is a form of bioremediation called phytoremediation.
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Global Population Growth and Water Scarcity Q&A
Russell Sticklor with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program in Washington, DC. recently contacted me requesting my thoughts on a number of issues for an article he is writing on global population growth and water scarcity for the magazine, Outdoor America. I thought some of the comments might be interesting to our blog…
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Notes from a Gender Needs Assessment: Kisumu’s Greatest Resource
The following is a guest blog, authored by Sarah Jaffe, an MCI researcher who is carrying out a Gender Needs Assessment for Kisumu, Kenya. My mobile buzzed in my pocket, and I shifted the crate of Fanta my seatmate had rested on my lap to one side. It was my colleague, Ben: “Madame Grace is…
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Addressing urban water scarcity in developing countries: Chennai, India
Ensuring an adequate water supply isn’t only an issue for large urban centers like New York or Los Angeles. It’s also a vital concern of the growing populations of cities in the developing world. Veena Srinivasan, of the Department of Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford University, shared her work on ‘The integrated water paradigm: a…
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Urban Design Lab: Plastic TrashPatch
How much is your trash worth? Using various visualization instruments, design ideas, engineering, and environmental science research, a team of designers, engineers, and scientists at the Urban Design Lab (UDL) are trying to find out. A new initiative for 2010, Plastic TrashPatch, seeks to raise awareness of ”trashpatches,” thick areas of concentrated marine debris that…
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Mayor of Accra, Ghana, Speaks to City’s Challenges During Visit to the Earth Institute
The Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) and the Earth Institute (EI) were honored to host Accra Mayor Alfred Vanderpuije this week, for a series of lectures and meetings focused on Ghana’s capital. Mayor Vanderpuije met twice with the leadership of the MCI Accra team – Professor Patricia Culligan, Vice-Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied…
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Changing the Urban Relationship to Food
With an Italian background, from a culture of food, as biologist and one time theatre producer, to me it makes sense to work with a research group that has the courage to break many taboos and re-discuss academic assumptions in an open and innovative way.
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