Beverly Johnson votes without fail in every local, state, and federal election. But she didn’t know much about Ohio’s upcoming special election until last week, when singer-songwriter John Legend showed up at her house.

“I was on the porch when he came up,” says Ms. Johnson, a home day care provider. “I just [stood] there with my mouth open.”

Mr. Legend was in the majority-Black Cincinnati neighborhood encouraging residents to turn out and vote against the sole item on the Aug. 8 ballot – a Republican-written proposal known as Issue 1, which would make it harder to amend Ohio’s Constitution.

Across the state, activists have been deploying celebrities and urging voters to turn out for what The Columbus Dispatch calls “one of the most significant questions Ohio voters will be asked in generations.” If it passes, Issue 1 would raise the threshold for approving constitutional amendments to 60%, up from a simple majority. It also would make it harder for citizens to put such measures on the ballot in the first place. 

Driving this battle over direct democracy is one issue in particular: abortion. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ending of 50 years of federal protection under Roe v. Wade, abortion policy has become a state-by-state matter. And supporters of abortion rights have been increasingly turning to language in state constitutions to try to preserve access, even in deep-red states.

Last year, voters in Kentucky and Kansas rejected proposed amendments to their constitutions that would have stated there was no right to an abortion, which in Kansas effectively upheld a court ruling blocking an abortion ban. In blue states like Michigan and California, voters approved making abortion an explicit constitutional right. This flurry of abortion-related ballot measures, which could be repeated next year, was also seen as helping to boost Democratic turnout in what had been forecast to be a punishing midterm cycle for President Joe Biden’s party. 

Ohio is looming as the next high-profile test. A onetime swing state that now leans Republican, abortion is currently legal in Ohio up to 22 weeks of pregnancy. In 2019, Republican lawmakers passed a measure in anticipation of the end of Roe v. Wade that would ban abortion after six weeks, with limited exceptions. But after Roe was overturned, a state court put the measure on hold. The state Supreme Court is set to rule on an appeal. 

Now Ohio voters are getting ready to decide on a November ballot measure that would explicitly guarantee a right to abortion in the state constitution. Republicans have made clear that August’s special election is an attempt to make it harder for that November amendment – which a recent poll found had 58% support – to pass.

“This is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution,” Secretary of State Frank LaRose told a local GOP dinner in May, speaking about Issue 1. Mr. LaRose, who is Ohio’s top elections official, is seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2024. 

Patrick Orsagos/AP

Boxes of signatures are delivered to Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose's office in downtown Columbus, Ohio, July 5, 2023. Advocates of enshrining abortion rights in Ohio's Constitution delivered nearly double the number of signatures needed to place an amendment on the November ballot.

Mike Gonidakis, the president of Ohio Right to Life and a prominent campaigner for Issue 1, says that while stopping abortions was his primary motivation, conservatives might have other reasons to want to curb citizen-initiated amendments. These include business owners worried about labor-backed minimum wage initiatives and gun owners wary of firearm-related amendments. “This is not just about abortion. ... There are a hundred reasons to vote yes [on Issue 1],” he says. 

Mr. Gonidakis says that the state constitution shouldn’t be a policy document. “If the legislature wants to pass a law, they can do that. We can hold them accountable at the ballot box.” 

Opponents of Issue 1 say the legislature has become less responsive to the will of the voters due to selectively drawn districts, where primaries often serve as the only competitive elections. If Issue 1 passes, they say, it would further entrench the power of Ohio’s GOP-run legislature and stifle popular reforms, including how those same lawmakers carve out their districts and those used for the U.S. Congress. Republicans last year overrode a ballot-initiated reform of redistricting, effectively converting the state’s Republican tilt into a legislative supermajority. Good-governance organizations say restrictions on constitutional amendments would stymie future efforts to tackle gerrymandering in Ohio. 

A low-turnout election?

Both sides share one challenge: turning out voters in August. Only 8% cast a vote last August when parties held primaries for state legislative seats. Indeed, GOP lawmakers voted last year to scrap most special elections in August, calling them a waste of money. Mr. LaRose, the secretary of state, in 2021 described low-turnout elections as “bad news for the civic health of our state,” only to reverse that stance in support of Issue 1. 

Apathy in summer elections is real, says Bob Clegg, a Republican consultant in Ohio. “Normal people don’t know about it. All they worry about is getting kids ready for school and finishing up vacation. They’re not focused on a special election,” he says.

Which is where celebrities like Mr. Legend come into the picture. As the Springfield native told a small crowd gathered outside a polling center last week, he had a day off from his taping schedule in Los Angeles for the upcoming season of “The Voice,” so what better way to spend it than canvassing for votes in Ohio, with TV crews in tow?

“I could have relaxed at home. But I couldn’t chill on this Tuesday afternoon. We’ve got important work we’ve got to do in Cincinnati,” he said. 

In an interview after a lunch at a Baptist church, he described his role as raising public awareness of an election whose backers may have hoped it would go largely unnoticed. “I figure my job is to help bring attention to what’s happening,” he says. “Encourage people to vote, but also just make sure they know that this is happening.” 

Ohio is one of 18 states that allow citizen-initiated constitutional amendments. Successful initiatives are relatively rare: Since 1913, only 71 such amendments have qualified for the Ohio ballot, according to the Dayton Daily News. Of these, 19 have been approved; 11 passed by margins of 60% or more. Ohio’s legislature can also put constitutional amendments on the ballot, as it did with Issue 1. 

Patrick Orsagos/AP

A sign in Cincinnati's Fountain Square asks Ohioans to vote in support of Issue 1. The fraught politics of abortion have given the Aug. 8 special election heightened significance.

“I think most Ohioans are proud of the fact that we’re one of the states that have this initiative possibility,” says Ted Strickland, who served as Ohio’s governor from 2007 to 2011. “This has not been abused. It’s not resulted in our constitution being loaded with a lot of inappropriate policy matters.” 

Mr. Strickland, a Democrat, is among four former Ohio governors – two Republicans, two Democrats – who have publicly opposed Issue 1, as have five former attorneys general from both parties. He calls it “an outrageous power grab” by lawmakers. “Anybody with their eyes open understands that this is primarily about abortion. They know if the people of Ohio have a chance to vote on this issue under current rules, it will pass – so they want to change the rules.” 

Republicans have tried similar blocking tactics in other states that allow citizen-initiated constitutional amendments, so far to no avail. Voters in South Dakota and Arkansas rejected proposals last year to raise their thresholds for amendments to 60%. In Missouri, a proposal to raise it to 57% failed to pass in this year’s legislative session.

Early polls suggest that the Ohio effort may also fail. A poll conducted in July found that 57% of likely voters opposed Issue 1. Only 26% voiced support for the measure; the rest were undecided. Among Republicans, 4 in 10 said they were opposed. 

Support for abortion access

Should Issue 1 fail, November’s constitutional amendment seems likely to succeed. A USA Today/Suffolk University poll this month found that 58% of Ohio voters favored creating a guaranteed right to abortion, including a third of Republicans and 85% of independent women. A Public Religion Research Institute poll in December found that 66% of Ohio residents wanted abortion to be legal in “most or all cases,” the same proportion as in neighboring Michigan, which had voted the previous month to enshrine a right to an abortion in its constitution. 

But should Issue 1 pass, it would not only potentially impact November’s abortion measure, but also make it significantly harder to initiate future constitutional amendments. Groups currently need to gather signatures from 44 or more of Ohio’s 88 counties to qualify for the ballot. Issue 1 would require signatures from every county and eliminate a 10-day extension for finding additional signatures if any are ruled invalid. 

What is already an arduous process would become almost impossible for groups without deep pockets, says Jonathan Entin, a professor emeritus of law at Case Western Reserve University. “It’s basically only special interests that will have a reasonable chance of getting an amendment on the ballot,” he says. “Your average neighborhood groups are going to have a lot harder time.” 

And that could affect citizens on both sides of the ideological spectrum. For the past two years, Diana Smith, a certified nursing assistant, has been gathering signatures for a constitutional amendment in Ohio to limit vaccine mandates and outlaw discrimination against those who are unvaccinated. Her campaign is all volunteers, she says, and can’t afford to pay canvassers to collect signatures, so it’s been slow-going.

As a Republican, she’s unsure how to vote in next month’s special election, though she sees a higher threshold for constitutional amendments as fair. “I think 60% is OK, because if it’s a good initiative, it should be able to pass by 60%,” she says. 

But the new rules on qualifying for the ballot strike her as undemocratic, which makes her a likely no vote on Aug. 8. “It’s already a hard process for Ohio citizens. I think it takes power away from ‘We the people.’” 

Last fall, it took four weeks for Ukraine to liberate more than 4,500 square miles of territory outside the eastern city of Kharkiv.

Farther south, a simultaneous campaign took two and a half months to free the regional capital of Kherson, the only such city Russia had captured in the war. 

Since June, Ukraine has been fighting its latest, largest counteroffensive. With both sides suffering heavy casualties, it’s only retaken about 100 square miles so far. The attritional warfare is challenging Ukraine’s armed forces and its allies, as well. If the effort fails, say military analysts, that could lead to a shift in priorities for its Western supporters – away from future offenses and toward Ukraine’s long-term defense. 

“What that kind of a goal would do is make sure ... as much as possible that the Russians can’t retake territory yet again,” says Seth Jones, director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. 

This summer’s offensive was widely seen as the best chance to claw back territory from the Russians. 

In the six months leading up to it, Ukraine’s Western supporters had sent new capabilities: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, some long-range missiles. At the same time, they began quickly training new brigades – amounting to 63,000 troops – in Western-style tactics. 

The weaknesses of Russia’s military had been on display for more than a year. With Western training and equipment, the logic went, Ukraine might be able to exploit that fragility further. 

“That doesn’t mean we thought this was going to be the turning point,” says Eric Green, who led the National Security Council’s Russia desk until this April.

Indeed, war in real life doesn’t often resemble war on paper. 

When Ukraine launched its initial assault in early June, it met almost 20-mile-thick Russian defensive lines, layered with minefields, trenches, artillery, and enemy troops. Those defenses – particularly the minefields – have inflicted most of Ukraine’s casualties in this counteroffensive so far, said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, at a Pentagon press conference last Tuesday. 

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (in background) arrive for a news conference at the Pentagon in Washington, July 18, 2023.

“They are slowly and deliberately and steadily working their way through all these minefields,” General Milley said. “It’s a tough fight.”

In fact, this summer’s counteroffensive has looked a lot like Ukraine’s forward fighting efforts since the war began. It’s slow. And it’s costly, in casualties and equipment. 

To many analysts in Washington, that means advantage Russia, which has more artillery, more soldiers, and the easier task of defending territory rather than taking it.

“I don’t think there are any illusions among the Ukrainians that they can win in any meaningful way with an attrition approach,” says Dr. Jones.

Counteroffensive in middle phase

Attritional warfare hasn’t always favored Russia. 

This counteroffensive has drawn some more optimistic comparisons to the one in Kherson last year, which involved steadily eroding Russian lines. 

With that in mind, the actual change of territory may be a lagging indicator of Ukraine’s success so far, says Michael Kofman, a military analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. What may be more important is the state of Russia’s defenses and the capacity for Ukraine to exploit a break in them. 

“The Russian lines can bear a lot of strain until they can’t,” says Dara Massicot, an expert on Russian defense issues at the RAND Corporation. “The problem is that right now they’ve constructed their defensive position precisely to prevent Ukraine from” breaking through.

The counteroffensive is still in its middle phase, and may last into the fall now that the United States is sending Ukraine cluster munitions, which will help prevent an artillery shortage. Ukraine reportedly paused its counteroffensive and changed its approach after heavy losses in the first two weeks. In recent days it's reached beyond the battle lines with drone strikes on Crimea and  Moscow. It may still produce significant gains.

Regardless, some experts counsel that the counteroffensive is not an audition.

“We need to depart from seeing the counteroffensive as the definitive moment that will determine what happens next,” says Yuriy Sak, an advisor to Ukraine’s minister of defense. 

Three more Ukrainian brigades are being trained in Germany right now, said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the same press conference last Tuesday. The Pentagon that day announced a $1.3 billion aid package – most of which will arrive after the counteroffensive ends. 

Pavel Golovkin/AP

From left, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, U.S. President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and NATO Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoana stand during a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 12, 2023.

What if counteroffensive fails?

The recent NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, didn’t result in a clear pathway for Ukraine into the alliance. But it was a reminder that its security remains an extended priority for the allies. 

If this counteroffensive stalls, Ukraine likely won’t be able to mount another one until next spring, given the weather and time it would take to recover from attrition. By that time Russia would have had even more time to harden its defenses.

The Kremlin’s projected budgets will increase funding for national security – or holding on to territory – more than they will for the military – which would be required to take territory. That doesn’t mean the front lines would be frozen, or that Russia isn’t interested in taking more Ukrainian land. But the lines would be harder to thaw. 

Hence, says Mr. Kofman, the countries supporting Ukraine need to think about what happens after the counteroffensive. 

“Whether successful or not this offensive was not going to decide the war and it wasn’t going to end it either,” says Mr. Kofman. “This has been a long war. It is going to be a long war.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

The upscale Louis Vuitton store in Union Square was the site of a 2022 smash-and-grab robbery, in San Francisco. Stores have been ramping up anti-theft efforts.

At a clothing store in downtown Seattle, a woman approaches the exit during the busy lunch hour. A security guard smiles at her. But when she passes through metal detectors at the store entrance, security tags inside her shopping bag trigger an alarm.

“Ma’am?” says the security guard.

Without turning around, the woman starts running. The guard dashes after her and stops her on the street outside.

“She actually did purchase a couple items, but she also stole a couple items,” says the security guard, who asked not to be identified. “Between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m., I say we probably catch 10 to 12 [thieves].”

This kind of stealing isn’t confined to just urban Seattle. Across the United States, retailers are undertaking extraordinary measures to combat a rise in shoplifting, from locking goods behind plexiglass to installing specialty surveillance cameras.

There’s no shortage of demand for stolen goods due to “the increased inflation/ financial stress that people are experiencing right now,” says Christopher Herrmann, associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

How big a problem is retail theft?

The latest annual report by the National Retail Federation found that inventory loss amounted to $94.5 billion in 2021. Some say this is hardly cause for alarm. This rate of “shrink,” averaging 1.4% of revenue, is similar to the previous five years.

“Whether it’s some of the data that has come from retail theft organizations or others, we need to be careful about understanding what the data tells us,” cautions Miriam Krinsky, executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, a nonprofit that advocates an “equitable and compassionate justice system.” 

Retail shrink, in fact, includes everything from shoplifting and customer fraud to employee pilfering and inventory accounting mistakes. Still, the retail federation’s latest survey also reported a 26.5% increase in incidents of organized retail crime. A lot of this large-scale theft consists of under-the-radar looting such as cargo theft. Some of it is smash-and-grab theft by mobs. But a link between lone-actor shoplifters and organized crime rings is that serial offenders often sell their stolen wares to fences. 

Other reports confirm the trend of thefts on the increase. When Business.org surveyed 700 small-businesses owners, it found a 54% spike in peak-season shoplifting in 2021. And while there aren’t comprehensive law enforcement figures, New York City revealed a 44% increase in shoplifting complaints between 2021 and 2022, part of a rising trend since 2018. 

What are stores doing about it?

Inside pharmacies and big-box stores, it’s increasingly common for shopping aisles to be encased in plexiglass.

Earlier this year, a Walgreens executive told an anti-theft summit in Manhattan that “the locks work.” Well, mostly. A man recently walked into a Walgreens store in nearby Queens and used a blowtorch to open locked plastic cases. Other thieves use crowbars. One downside of the lock-and-key approach is the inconvenience of asking a store employee to open the glass doors. 

“If it cuts down on the retail theft, then maybe it’s not a bad thing,” says Mr. Herrmann, the associate professor at John Jay. “At the same time, that’s when people like me would rely on Amazon.” 

Other stores are employing high-tech solutions such as face recognition cameras. Clothing stores are using ink-filled tags that explode when thieves try to remove them. Power tools sold at Lowe’s will only work once the bar code gets scanned at the cash register.

In June, a Walgreens in Chicago unveiled what media reports described as an “anti-theft store.” Most products are only available for pickup at the counter after customers select and buy them on automated kiosks. Meanwhile, a Safeway grocery store in Vallejo, California, recently pioneered its own tactic: metal gates at the store exit facing any shoplifter trying to escape.

Experts say security professionals need to be taught how to safely deter theft.

“If you see someone shoplifting, you go up to them and you still offer them customer service. You let them know, ‘Hey, sir, you know that those sunglasses you put in your jacket? Do you mind if I hold on to them while you continue to shop?’” says David Rey, author of “Larceny on 34th Street: An In-Depth Look at Professional Shoplifting in One of the World’s Largest Stores.” “You’re not being accusatory. You’re letting them know, ‘I saw what you did.’” 

Are there policy solutions?

A new federal law, the Inform Consumers Act, took effect in late June. The law requires online marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon to verify and share the identity of high-volume third-party sellers on their platforms. It’s a bid to trace organized crime groups that fence stolen goods online.

“If I’m on that Amazon third-party platform, I might get caught this time with my dummy account selling, you know, a Makita power source that I stole out of one of these home improvement centers,” says Mark Johnson, senior vice president of policy at the Washington Retail Association.

The National Retail Federation wants Congress to establish a dedicated retail crime unit at Homeland Security Investigations. Thomas Hogan, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a former district attorney in Chester County, Pennsylvania, says that a more efficient solution is to get tough on crime at a local level. He criticizes a new wave of progressive prosecutors who won’t prosecute shoplifters unless the value of their stolen goods reaches a higher threshold than before. Under California’s Proposition 47, which passed in 2014, stealing anything worth less than $950 now constitutes a misdemeanor rather than a felony. 

“If you decide, and announce, that you are not going to prosecute shoplifting, you’re going to have a lot of people shoplifting,” says Mr. Hogan. 

Others say the numbers don’t support that claim. They point to a 2018 Pew Charitable Trusts study finding that crimes fell in states that raised the threshold amounts for felonies. But the drop in crime rates may be illusory. Many retailers simply don’t report shoplifting crimes below the threshold.

In California, a bipartisan effort may resolve the question of whether raising the felony theft threshold has had an impact on crime. Lawmakers have asked an oversight commission for data, says Rachel Michelin, head of the California Retailers Association.

Is one answer to focus on repeat offenders?

Yes, some cities are trying that. Criminologists sometimes invoke the 80/20 rule: Twenty percent of criminals are causing 80% of the problem. That’s not a precise figure. But New York City police say 327 people accounted for a third of shoplifting arrests last year. As part of an initiative launched in March 2022, Seattle identified 168 repeat offenders, described as “high utilizers” of the criminal justice system. 

“While most misdemeanors are not accepted in our jail system, if they are on the ‘high-utilizer’ list, they will be accepted for a booking,” says Steven Strand, captain of the West Precinct of Seattle’s Police Department. “Then the city attorney will quickly work the case to request the charges and proceed through the court system.”

Result? A year into the initiative, the city attorney reported 750 fewer police referrals and thousands fewer criminal incidents.

In May, New York Mayor Eric Adams unveiled a multipronged anti-shoplifting program. Like Seattle, the city is focusing on serial shoplifters. It’s also dedicating resources to post-arrest treatment options for thieves dealing with substance abuse, mental health issues, and poverty. Some see it as a model path.

“I look to the group that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has pulled together, including local businesses and law enforcement and social service providers, to meet regularly and look at data and come up with solutions and recommendations thoughtfully for reducing this kind of behavior,” says Ms. Krinsky of Fair and Just Prosecution. “That is how we need to approach it.”  

Sushmita Pathak

Aksa Arif visits the women-only park in Old Delhi with her younger cousins, June 24, 2023.

Aksa Arif used to start each day with a stroll through her neighborhood park in Delhi, often accompanied by her cousin. But after a while, Ms. Arif stopped going to the park to avoid unwanted attention and lewd comments from young men. 

A couple of months ago, she found a new haven: Purdah Bagh.

Dressed in a black abaya and teal sports shoes, she and her young cousins take turns riding the swing in the historic Old Delhi park reserved for women and kids. Built during the Mughal era, the park used to be frequented by elite Muslim women who observed the purdah tradition – being behind the veil at all times. Redeveloped as a women-only park in recent years, the lush green space is now a refuge where women of all religious backgrounds say they can be carefree. 

“I can even sit here without my burqa,” says Saba Khan, perched on an open-air exercise machine as her daughter plays nearby. “I feel safe here because there are no men.” 

Parks like this are about to become more common in India’s capital. Delhi’s government is planning to build around 250 women-only parks across the city. Nicknamed “pink parks,” they will have gym equipment, surveillance cameras, children’s play areas, and restrooms. Female security guards will mind the entrance, only allowing women and children under 10 years old to enter. Officials hope the initiative can improve women’s access to public spaces in a city where obscene remarks, pointed stares, and groping are common occurrences.

But urban planning experts are ambivalent and see the parks as a simplistic solution to complex problems of safety and equality. 

“Some spaces for women only would be welcome, but in the long run, we need to make all public spaces safe for women,” says Kalpana Viswanath, co-founder of a crowdsourcing app that maps unsafe areas in cities. 

A double-edged sword

On a recent evening in Purdah Bagh, Reshma Parveen removed her slippers and settled onto a picnic blanket while her nieces ran off to play. “If I have to go to any other park, I have to ask my husband or brother to come with me,” she says, as late-day sun filters in through the trees and birds sing over the clamor of the street outside.

Sushmita Pathak

Reshma Parveen, pictured in Purdah Bagh, June 24, 2023, supports the government's plan to build more women-only parks across Delhi.

In 2012, a brutal gang rape of a young woman on a moving bus in Delhi sent shock waves across the world and made the city notorious for being unsafe for women. Nearly a third of all crimes against women in metropolitan cities in India take place in Delhi, according to data from India’s National Crime Records Bureau. Resident Madhu Goyal says she never takes a cab by herself. She’s even stopped going to India Gate, a popular landmark in central Delhi, to avoid street harassment. Inside regular parks, she has encountered men who are drunk or taking drugs. “We need more women-only parks so that we too can enjoy” the outdoors, Mrs. Goyal says. 

Gender-segregated spaces aren’t new for Delhiites. The first coach of the Delhi metro is reserved for women, and regular commuter Shyamala Kumar says she prefers riding there, even outside of rush hours. A few years ago, Delhi also got its first women-only liquor store. 

But more segregation can leave women with little confidence to negotiate public spaces on their own, says Amita Sinha, a retired professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

“Separate does not mean equal,” she says. “This kind of fragmenting of the public space along gender lines means nobody is a winner.”

It also excludes other vulnerable groups, such as transgender people, notes Syeda Jenifa Zahan, an urban studies researcher at the Polytechnic University of Turin, in Italy. 

“Violence against women is used as a sort of logic to create much more exclusion,” says Dr. Zahan, “and then the actual reason, which is this neoliberal patriarchal system that needs to be dismantled, that doesn’t get done.” 

Instead of addressing the root cause of the problem, protectionist measures are imposed on women, she explains. They are told not to go out at night or to not wear short clothes for their own safety. It’s why most Indian hostels have nighttime curfews for girls, but not for boys. 

Dr. Zahan says it’s possible that in the future if a woman is assaulted at a regular park, she may be blamed for being in a mixed-gender space, instead of going to the park designated for women, thus reinforcing victim-blaming culture.

“There’s an unspoken assumption that a loitering woman is up to no good,” write the authors of the book Why Loiter? Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets. “What women need in order to maximize their access to public space as citizens is not greater surveillance or protectionism (however well-meaning) but the right to take risks.”

Yet despite its pitfalls, Dr. Viswanath says the government’s proposal for pink parks is sparking a conversation about who gets to enjoy public spaces, which in India, are overwhelmingly male-dominated.

Designing gender-inclusive spaces

In her research, Dr. Viswanath has found that there is one thing that makes women feel safe in public spaces more than anything else – having more women around. That can be done, she says, by ensuring that public spaces are well lit at all times and that sidewalks are not broken or dirty, and by providing space for female vendors. 

Some of this work is already being done: In 2019, Delhi made public bus rides free for women, and female ridership has grown since. 

Another urban design concept for building women-friendly spaces is called “eyes on the street.”

“That is basically [asking], ‘When I stand on the street, can I be seen?’” explains Dr. Viswanath. When she first started doing safety audits in Delhi in the early 2000s, she says the city’s bus stops looked different. The area behind the bus stop was dark, and people’s view was obstructed by a metal structure that extended down from the roof of the shelter. Today, that structure doesn’t reach all the way to the ground, Dr. Viswanath explains, so anyone can see what’s happening behind the shelter. 

Good last-mile connectivity is also important to help women feel safer traversing Delhi’s streets, says Dr. Viswanath. 

But while urban design can help facilitate social change, it cannot by itself spark it, says Professor Sinha. That, she says, requires a concerted community effort and political will. 

AP

Tourists cool off at a fountain in Rome, Italy, July 22.

With greater weather disruptions this year, scientists are ever more eager to understand what drives people to keep warming the atmosphere. A study published today by World Weather Attribution group, for example, found a link between human activity and the floods, wildfires, and the record-breaking heat waves now affecting people from Phoenix to Beijing. That link clearly turns the global discussion on climate change toward a deeper dimension. A growing number of experts are asking whether people might be changing their core beliefs.

“The solution to climate change ... [doesn’t] seem to lie in technological innovation or climate modeling (not to negate their importance), but rather, in something within humanity itself,” Jessica Eise, a professor of social and environmental challenges at the University of Texas at San Antonio, wrote in the journal Sierra last month. “Hope? A sense of connection? Of being loved, and loving in return? Could spirituality save us?”

The questions Dr. Eise poses arise from her research into the shifting attitudes among Americans who regard themselves as deeply spiritual despite rejecting organized religion. While only 38% of her subjects think “people are stewards of nature,” 59% think that “people are a part of/one with nature.”  She argues for a rethinking of science on the basis that Earth and all life are united and cared for.

That view coincides with what the Graduate Theological Union, a partner institute with the University of California, Berkeley, calls “green spirituality” – “ways of knowing that are embedded in religion, philosophy, spiritual ethics, moral traditions, and a culture that values the community and the commons.”

In some of the world’s cities most vulnerable to extreme heat, those values are already reshaping responses to climate change. An expanding network of “chief heat officers” is sharing and implementing new urban designs rooted in compassion for those most vulnerable to weather disruptions – children, women, and those without homes. “Social resilience is important for any kind of difficult scenarios that we’re gonna face in the future,” Eleni Myrivili, global chief heat officer to U.N.-Habitat, told NPR last week.

In the aftermath of torrential rains that flooded parts of Vermont this month, environmental writer Bill McKibben wrote a passage in The New Yorker that shows how humanity may be working out this problem by degrees. The incredible warming of these current weeks, he wrote, should “remind us how valuable a breeze is, how remarkable a deep-blue winter day, or how precious the cool that comes when night falls. ... This planet remains stirringly beautiful, and that beauty must be one of the things that moves us to act. And so must the beauty that people can produce” – such as panels that safely harness the power of the sun.

For decades, the fear of climate change led to inaction and blame. A new era may be emerging, one that rests on seeing Earth and all life connected and cared for by the highest quality of thought.