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Comment by geekam | Hacker News Reader

How to make shady areas safer, esp for women and children?

How about adding shaded areas in general? Here in israel the sun can get terribly hot, shade becomes an oasis that people cling too. A whole sidewalk could be found empty, and the other wide packed of people just because of the shade.

Maybe install solar panels that act as shade during the day and light sources at night. Two birds, one stone.

"Shady areas" in this context refers to unsafe/dangerous areas ;)

I was referring to the hypthesis that shady areas are often dark, and thus we could turn unlit/unshaded areas into shaded AND lit areas, and perhaps reduce crime at the same time.

I see. Interesting solution. Apologies for misunderstanding.

Nice solution.

By the statement of the question that answer is easy: get rid of all of the men. When a boy hits 18 he is killed for the safety of the women and children. Problem solved. But before doing that perhaps reading up on the various sci-fi that has explored this to see how it turns out.

We can already get a hint from real life, in Asian countries that have an artificially high male/female live birth ratio, in part due to China's One Child policy. This is the opposite of your "solution," in that men are favored for survival, but it has serious social consequences, including unreported pregnancies and increased mother and child mortality at birth due to birthing secretly at home, potentially severe social and mental health problems due to large numbers of men unable to marry, increased kidnapping of women for marriage and prostitution, increased HIV infections, the "4:2:1" problem and other interesting phenomena.

When you poke at something as large and complex as "people," you sometimes get what you want, but you also sometimes get what you didn't expect.

This article is worth the read: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMhpr051833#t=article

The 4-2-1 problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy#The_.22four-tw...

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