The Design Line: 5 - 11 March
Friday can only mean one thing: Design Line. This week, Santiago appoints an urban planner to tackle the heat crisis; a Twitter bot tackles the gender pay gap; design-focused brands – and smart device makers – pull out of Russia; Disney wavers on LGBTQ+ rights; and Tinder introduces in-app background checks.
Cristina Huidobro will help Santiago beat the heat (image: Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center).
An architecture against heat
Globally, deaths caused by extreme heat are believed to have risen by roughly 74 per cent between 1980 and 2016, with 356,000 people reported to have been killed in 2019 alone. Perhaps it’s all just a coincidence, but it may make you think something is going on with the climate and action should be taken. Kudos, then, to Santiago in Chile, which has just announced the appointment of the architect and urban planner Cristina Huidobro as its new chief heat officer (CHO). A CHO isn’t unprecedented (they also have them in Miami, Athens, and Freetown), but it remains a smart and innovative move: Santiago is home to around seven million people and has suffered for years from a severe drought (a situation further complicated by the fact that Chile is the only country in the world with a private water system). It’s a situation that needs a clear, coordinated response from city officials, with Huidoboro well placed to shape policy: she is currently Santiago’s chief of urban resilience, so is already well grounded in climate policy. In collaboration with Chile’s incoming government led by Gabriel Boric, Huidoboro has an opportunity to help improve millions of people’s lives.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the hashtag.
Mind the gap
It was International Women’s Day (IWD) on Tuesday 8 March, a holiday that grew out of the women’s suffrage movement over a century ago, but which has since become a more toothless (and condescending) celebration of “women’s achievements”. The IWD theme for 2022 was #BreakTheBias and called on women everywhere to hold their arms in an X shape to lobby for an end to gender discrimination. Of course, corporations and institutions tripped over themselves to make their women employees pose for content they could post under the hashtag on their socials. Whew, that’s a lot of activism for one day. Then, a Twitter bot-making duo unleashed havoc in the form of the Pay Gap App. The bot fished out UK companies using the hashtag and quote tweeted them with that workplace’s corresponding gender pay gap. The Pay Gap App (tagline: “Employers, if you tweet about International Women's Day, I'll retweet your gender pay gap ”) is the brainchild of social media manager Francesca Lawson and software developer Ali Fensome. Lawson and Fensome used a publicly available CSV file compiled by the UK government and coded it to match the data with the company name. Some orgs were so embarrassed they tried to delete their tweets or repost them without the hashtag, but this is the internet, so of course other Twitter users to step in and document their undignified scramble. Maybe next year for IWD they’ll consider making a tangible difference in the form of pay equity.
Reversible Uniqlo
As governmental sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine began to bite – with the country’s economy predicted to shrink by 9 per cent this year and the rouble having lost 40 per cent of its value against the dollar – the response was extended by a raft of major companies and brands also pulling services and products from the country. Design-focused brands such as Apple, Burberry, Levi’s and Ikea were among the many companies to take action, leaving those that did not looking like outliers. Uniqlo, for instance, had initially declined to suspend operations in the country, with its parent company Fast Retailing deeming that clothing was a “necessity of life” (and while the situation is undoubtedly complex, it would be interesting to hear the reflections of many Ukrainians on the necessity of supplying Airism T-shirts to Russia). This week, however, Fast Retailing seemed to bow to mounting pressure, declaring that while it still believed in making “everyday clothing available to the general public in Russia”, it would no longer be able to do so as the result of “operational challenges and the worsening of the conflict situation”. Faced with a growing litany of atrocities committed in Ukraine by the Russian armed forces, it is difficult to see what other decision could have been reached.
There’s something rotten in the House of Mouse (image: Save LGBT)
It’s a small-minded world after all
On Wednesday, Disney bravely spoke out to condemn Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill… the day after it passed in the state senate. The horrific piece of legislation, which calls to mind the UK’s evil old Section 28 laws, will ban teachers from talking to children under the age of 10 about sexual orientation or gender identity in schools. But despite happily taking LGBTQ+ people’s money in the form of rainbow-branded merchandise and holding themed “Gay Days” at its parks, Disney has been funding the Republican politicians supporting the bill to the tune of $249,126 over the past two years, as reported by Popular Information. In a bizarre move on Monday, Disney CEO Bob Chapek sent a three-page all-staff memo that suggested Disney was supporting LGBTQ+ rights by producing films such as Encanto and Black Panther. While queer people do enjoy cinema, it’s not mutually exclusive with having the right to exist. Queer animator Dana Terrace, creator of Disney Channel’s The Owl House, a kids cartoon featuring Disney’s first lead bisexual character, said she was “fucking tired of making Disney look good.” After the bill passed, Chapek told Disney shareholders he’d called Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis to express his “disappointment”. We’re sure DeSantis, who received $50,000 in donations from Disney in 2019, was suitably chastened enough by such strong words to stop persecuting LGBTQ+ children.
Tech exodus
Technology companies Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo are halving shipments of their smartphones to Russia after the collapse of the rouble following sanctions against Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine, the Financial Times reports this week. A month ago it was smiles all around when China’s president Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin hung out together at the Winter Olympic’s to mark their strengthening political and economic ties – Jinping announcing that there was “no limits” to their friendship. Putin even held back his illegal war against Ukraine until after the international sporting event so as not to overshadow it – what chivalry. With Western sanctions against Russia ramping up and brands abandoning Russia in droves, China is in a bind. Beijing has, so far, refused to sanction their pals in Russia, but it also doesn’t want to be seen doing anything to risk its export markets in the US and Europe. On Wednesday, two British directors resigned from the board of Huawei in protest against the tech company refusing to condemn Russia’s assault on Ukraine. The above Chinese brands normally make up 60 per cent of the Russian smartphone market. With the US’s Apple and Korea’s Samsung suspending all shipments to Russia, it looks like the country will soon be facing a severe shortage of smart devices.
Nothing says romance like running a background check (image: Garbo).
Swipe right for the carceral state
There’s so much to think about when hunting for your perfect match online. Are they tall enough? Are your star signs compatible? Have they ever done time? In case Google reverse image search and a bit of judicious internet researching weren’t enough, Tinder is now offering US users a paid-for add-on in the form of running a background check on your date’s criminal record. If you find a Tinder user with a history of violence, you’re asked to report them to the app. The rationale behind this dystopian piece of surveillance tech has ostensibly good intentions – it’s part of a partnership between the tech company and non-profit Garbo, which aims to tackle gender-based violence. Give Garbo someone’s personal details and you’ll see if they’ve ever had a history of violence or been put on the sex offender’s register. Of course, even Garbo acknowledges that this system is somewhat faulty – not every person who might wish you harm will have interacted with the (deeply flawed) justice system. And behind the glossy user interface, there’s the hard-to-stomach facts about gender-based violence. Data is spotty on the topic, but RAINN estimates that of every 1,000 rape cases in the US, only 310 get reported to the police and of those only 25 will ever face conviction. Perpetrators are rarely the stranger from the dating app or a man hiding in the bushes – according to RAINN, in 8 of 10 rapes the perpetrator is known to the victim, usually as a friend, partner or family member. There isn’t an app for fixing that, and this feature seems like another way of placing the burden on women to keep themselves safe.