Warm feeling
An advertising firm in the Swedish capital is helping homeless people come in from the cold.
Homelessness is a global issue but, in the northern hemisphere, freezing winter nights make sleeping rough even more dangerous. To help tackle the problem, Stockholm has introduced a way to guide homeless people to the closest shelter using existing infrastructure: transforming street-level digital billboards into maps that show the locations of emergency shelters and kitchens. When temperatures dip below minus 7C, 53 billboards owned by Clear Channel will forego advertising and instead display where the nearest shelters are, as well as information on how to volunteer and donate to charities. It’s a simple intervention that could save lives – and can be replicated in other cities with ease.