Indiscriminate urination is a widespread problem in urban areas, and often it's caused by a shortage of public toilets in the parts of town frequented by late-night revelers. Designed to provide a just-in-time solution, so to speak, the UriLift is a public urinal that can be stored underground during the day and set to pop up in the evening hours, when it's most likely to be needed.

Each cylindrical, stainless-steel UriLift includes three separate, doorless urinals that can be used simultaneously. While underground, all that remains visible of the device is its circular cover, which is designed to withstand traffic class 45 and comes in 200 colours. To make the UriLift pop up for the evening, the press of a button on the device's remote control is all that’s required; organisations such as the local sanitation department, the police or even a local hotel or bar could be given the job of carrying out this simple procedure. The urinals and drain in the UriLift are connected to the mains sewer, so that interim cleaning is unnecessary; there's also a connection to the water mains, but the device can be supplied with a rainwater-based water tank instead, or for use without water. Lighting and heating are both available on the vandalism-proof device, and Dutch Urilift BV takes care of any occasional maintenance or relocation. Also available are the UriVisible, a non-retractable version of the UriLift, and the UriLady, which comes complete with a suspended toilet seat.

UriLift currently has distributors in Holland, the UK, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, France and Italy, but it seeks new partners for other regions. Time to help beautify late-night hotspots in *your* neck of the urban jungle...?

Website: www.urilift.com
Contact: info@urilift.com

Spotted by: Thane Ryland

More than half of humanity now lives in cities, according to the United Nations Population Fund. This rapid and ongoing change presents a raft of new challenges, many of which create opportunities for resourceful entrepreneurs. Here are five concepts that target consumers' increasing interest in growing their own food in the city:

1. REEL GARDENING — Simplifying the process of starting a domestic garden, South Africa's Reel Gardening provides a strip of biodegradable paper carrying correctly spaced, pre-fertilised seeds. The strips are colour coded (e.g. red for tomatoes, purple for beetroot) and carry instructions for how deep they should be planted in your soil. Just add water!

2. THE WIKI GARDEN — Urban gardeners who haven't even got a bed of soil may be interested in the Wiki Garden from Hawaii. It's a metre-long "growing medium" (i.e. sack) containing compost, worm castings, bat guano and more, plus a built-in irrigation system with a hose attachment. The bags can be connected, allowing for an easily scalable system.

3. CLICK AND GROW — Another alternative is to do without soil at all. Estonia's Click and Grow is a hi-tech growing system deploying aeroponics: the plant's lower stem and roots are contained in an air or mist environment, regulated by sensors and electronics to ensure the plant is fed and watered correctly. The pots even feature a USB port to upload new growing instructions.

4. WINDOWFARMS — Rather than selling a particular product, the Window Farms project in New York promotes the production of hydroponic food gardens in homes and offices, using recycled or locally-sourced materials. The founders aim to build a community to share ideas and engender a DIY approach to solving environmental problems.

5. OOOOBY — Based in New Zealand, Ooooby, short for Out Of Our Own Back Yard, is a social networking community dedicated to connecting local food producers and consumers for trade, networking, and sharing ideas. Ooooby also organises stalls at farmers' markets and other locations through which people can buy, sell and barter local produce and small-scale farming supplies.

Spotters: Catherine Corry, Liz Stone, Kristoff Everaerts, Louisa Redshaw

There's no shortage out there of DIY kits for making casts of a baby's feet and hands, but Otete & Anyo has come up with an innovative variation on the theme that can serve as a lifelong stamp and keepsake.

The words "otete” and “anyo" signify a baby's hand and foot in Japanese, and Tokyo-based design firm Kawamura Hideo Activity has tapped those terms for its original stamps of babies' hand- and footprints. The engraved prints can be used not only as stamps for papers and letters, but also as lifelong mementos suitable for birthday presents, baby gifts and more. Parents or other gift-givers begin by making an ink print of baby's hands and feet in 127-by-89-mm size. They then email those prints to Otete & Anyo, which engraves them in real size. A solid black hand grip makes stamping easy, while a paulownia wood box embellished with the print is used for storage. Baby's name and birthday, meanwhile, are engraved on the back of the stamp for posterity. Launched last week, the stamps are priced at JPY 8,800 each plus shipping.

With a solid, lasting alternative to most baby casts and a globally attractive design and packaging, Otete & Anyo stamps seem likely to do well around the world. Baby and children's products retailers: one to bring to the doting families near you? (Related: Rice babies, weighed to measure.)

Website: www.otetetoanyo.com
Contact: otetetoanyo@kha.jp

In stores this month: a clothes iron for men. Dutch electronics giant Philips felt that men wanted a more robust, heavy-duty tool to tackle hampers of laundry. Something with a larger grip and a more masculine look. So it created the GC4490, which offers 'more power, more steam, more performance'. Philips describes the iron's sleek yet rugged design and stresses its technical specifications, seemingly in an attempt to convince men that they're buying a power tool or new gadget instead of a garment care appliance. Like a new hammer drill, the iron comes in a solid case. It will retail for EUR 79,99.

On the surface, this is just another marketing gimmick. But Philips may have found a real gap in the appliance market. The man-iron is a mirror image of the tools for women we wrote about a few years back. Sure, a woman is perfectly capable of using a hammer that was originally designed for men's larger hands. But comfort and performance might be improved by using one that was designed with women in mind. No reason the same doesn't apply to men and irons. We'll leave the sexual politics debate to other bloggers; meanwhile, this could be the ultimate Father's Day gift ;-)

Website: www.philips.com

A splash of colour and design can go a long way toward beautifying a grey, ugly space, as Carspaze and Style-your-garage have already shown. Now aiming to do something similar for the slums of Rio de Janeiro through large, community-driven murals, the Favela Painting project also goes several steps further by incorporating training and employment for local residents.

The brainchild of Dutch artist duo Haas&Hahn, Favela Painting has already completed two community painting projects in Vila Cruzeiro—Rio's most notorious slum—along with the first portion of O Morro, its current effort to paint an entire hillside slum. Some 34 houses and 7,000 square meters of Praça Cantão in Santa Marta have already been transformed through paint, and the project hopes to return later this year to paint even more of the hillside. In each of its projects, Favela has focused on recruiting local residents to do much of the painting, including training and paying them. In this latest one, local inhabitants were trained through a partnership with Brazilian paint company TintasCoral on everything from different types of paint to safety measures while working on scaffolding.

Dre Urhahn, one of the Favela Painting artists, explains: “This work of art can make a colorful difference in the lives of local individuals, the community and the city of Rio. It has the potential of working as a catalyst in the processes of social renewal and change.”

Favela Painting is supported by Firmeza Foundation, and recently the decorative paint division of Dutch AkzoNobel—which is also conducting a community campaign of its own—signed on as a partner as well.

There are all too many grim, unadorned spaces throughout the urban world. Paint brands around the globe: time to sponsor some community action near you!

Website: www.favelapainting.com
Contact: info@favelapainting.com

Spotted by: Ruben Brusse