I was in holidays with my son and wife. As usual we like to go visit the local natural history museums. Because that’s the place where my son can see some dinosaurs! This time we were in Aarau, Switzerland. There at the Naturama (1) there was of course some nice big animals. But there was also a lovely exhibition called “Cool Down Aarau”. In it urban planners and other nerds explained how we can change or cities to better cope with higher temperatures, floods and all the shit that will hit the fan in the future.

One of the recommendations that stayed with me was the idea to bring back more greenery and grass. Be it in little holes in the concrete of a parking lot. Or on a roof. Or trees next to roads. Or just as little park within the city.

This additional greenery does a lot of good stuff: it reduces heat, avoid that the rain directly creates floods, looks nicer, just brings a bit of nature back in our cities and apparently can even save lives (2).

Action question

Where in your buildings and service could add more greenery?

Footnotes

(1) The local natural history museum

(2) That’s at least according to a study reported by the World Economic Forum and published by The Lancet that says that “Planting more trees in European cities could reduce heat deaths by 40% by providing shade for people, pavements and buildings”.

Other than that, this reminds me of the principle I wrote a few years ago: “Put some stupid plants to make your workplace better” that showed that having plants indoor reduces fatigue and improves productivity.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.