Solarpunk Urbanism

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A community to discuss solarpunk and other new and alternative urbanisms that seek to break away from our currently ecologically destructive urbanisms.

Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City — In brief, the right to the city is the right to the production of a city. The labor of a worker is the source of most of the value of a commodity that is expropriated by the owner. The worker, therefore, has a right to benefit from that value denied to them. In the same way, the urban citizen produces and reproduces the city through their own daily actions. However, the the city is expropriated from the urbanite by the rich and the state. The right to the city is therefore the right to appropriate the city by and for those who make and remake it.

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by KittyScholar@slrpnk.net to c/urbanism@slrpnk.net

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Hi! I'm hoping to hear people's thoughts on what my city, New Orleans, would look like in a perfect solarpunk world.

Most solarpunk art (which I love to see!) Seems to be praire/plains or forest inspired, and definitely one of the issues we have that I want to avoid is people bring environmental and ecological policies and thoughts from those two biomes to other ones (because they're seen as kind of default).

So, New Orleans! Lots of interesting challenges to address, including:

-tornados (so we need safe rooms and to withstand them

-hurricanes (there's probably no way to withstand these, instead maybe something that's kind of designed to be refixed once a year, since that's what happens anyways)

-flooding, both hurricane-associated and flash-flooding throughout the year (definitely no basements, honestly maybe no first or second floors either).

-extreme heat (feels-like gets to 120F/50C at least a couple days a year)

-extreme cold (not nearly as bad as the heat, but can be brutal enough that they turn schools into extra shelter for our unhoused for about a week each year)

-end of the river (we're at the end of the Mississippi, so we're definitely more silt than soil)

-swamp (New Orleans is sinking, our ground isn't particularly stable)

-agriculture (I'm really not sure farming is a great idea. It's hard to find local crops that grow in the wetlands--even lists of indigenous foodways focus more on upstate, where traditional planting would work. Can we farm in the wetlands without turning it into a farm?)

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[–] KittyScholar@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Things that I've been thinking about, or were mentioned on my reddit post:

If the homes are built to be easily repaired after hurricanes, they'd be designed to be hurt by them in a certain way. I'm thinking about how cars are designed to crash a certain way. Designed with specific weak points that could be easily fixed, maybe even deliberately biodegradable if it's only gonna last for a year anyways.
If we do that, than the city would definitely have to be more evacuation-focus than hunker-down-focused during major storms. That amount of mass transport wouldn't be easy.
Rural houses in the local fishing villages are on stilts! The first storey is usually around the third storey. It looks super cool, but would probably be filed under disability-hostile. Not sure how to address that in a way that isn't immediately self-defeating, I feel like we definitely don't want our elevators to flood.
I know we have swampy plantswe could be eating! Where are they! I wanna eat them!
Offshore windturbines, both for energy creation and as a windbreak/tidestop
Should it be a a water city? Someone brought up Venice, but I bet it'd look more like the canal cities in Southeast Asia. But then how do we do sewage? And I do wanna preserve Mardi Gras, and I really do think we need some streets for that. I'd probably still rank it above sponge-city, I don't think our sponge would win
Thinking about houseboats and bridges, especially for 'residential city areas'. I'm imagining like those treehouse cities with rope bridges, but also with houseboats!
For high-density living, maybe tall buildings with just an empty bottom three floors? I know concrete isn't ideal, but I'm picturing something like a highschool gym. Just a big empty room. With concrete and high ceilings, it'd stay cool in the summer without needing AC (especially with few windows--I know a lot of solarpunk art loves windows but I think that's for more temperate zones). They could be third spaces, maybe even like an indoor skate park!
In addition to fewer windows than people often think, I definitely wanna bring back awnings over windows. Curtains offer privacy, but window-awnings are much better at blocking sun and heat. They're kinda out of fashion, but I want to bring them back.
I wonder if there's a good way to plan the highgrounds and lowgrounds--maybe high density housing on the highgrounds, and lowdensity houseboats and swampcrops on the lowgrounds? And let them remain flooded?

[–] KittyScholar@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 months ago

            
              Okay now I'm thinking of like Star Wars-style floating cities. Like Cloud City. But obviously floating on water, not air. Might not be super wind resistant, but if it could just float over flooding...But maybe that wouldn't be the most pleasant to be inside the house when that happens. Or maybe it'd be super fun?

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