Skip Navigation
Remote View
Solarpunk Urbanism @slrpnk.net
JacobCoffinWrites @slrpnk.net

What am I getting wrong? Please point out my bad ideas for art of a solarpunk swamp city

I've been thinking about trying to depict some of the ideas from this conversation: https://slrpnk.net/post/12735795, using a sort of flat, diagram-like style similar to this old photobash:

Though a bit more complex. The obvious answer is 'don't build cities in swamps' but we already have a bunch of them, and though I don't live there I recognize that they have a lot of unique cultural and historical value and are peoples' homes, so I'm interested in what a solarpunk-adapted version of these would look like.

At the same time, I know basically nothing about New Orleans or similar areas, have no background in civil engineering, and no qualifications to make this except for the capability to do so using an old version of GIMP. So I'd absolutely love to identify issues, places to make improvements, and things that are missing now rather than once I've spent days chopping up images and finessing them into something coherent.

So what'd I get wrong? What's unworkable, out of scale, or dangerous? What style of buildings or cultural touchstones would you like to see? What kind of plants are missing?

41 comments

  • I think these look great! It’s definitely possible to have elevated cities and this was a common solution for cities in flood-prone areas prior to modern flood-control infrastructure like dams and levees.

    I would look to real world places for inspiration. Many seaside towns reserve the first floor for parking because of possible storm surges. Obviously parking isn’t really needed in a solarpunk city, I would think about uses for this space that can either survive or be easily moved in the case of flooding. Your ideas seem fine although the marketplace would have to be thoughtfully designed to make it portable.

    My city of Sacramento historically was very flood prone (and arguably still is, if the levies fail). An interesting feature of our history is that the entire existing downtown was lifted up to reduce flooding risk—this included buildings, sidewalks, streets. Everything! Kind of amazing, really. This particular strategy does leave some issues—the space under many streets is hollow and basically unused, although maybe a creative use for it exists. It also poses challenges in planting trees and building in spaces above the tunnels since they were only designed for a specific load.

    Older houses in Sacramento also often have an elevated first floor with external stairs which I find charming. Historically the first floor was used for carriages but today people either park there or store other items. So a similar strategy to what you have here, except the space is more enclosed. This works well here because the city is very flat, so even during floods there is little current. Areas with hilly topography or with coastal flooding need open space on the lower floor to allow moving water to pass under without damaging the structure.

    I would also look into “sponge city” concepts with bioswales, rain gardens, etc. Another possible source of inspiration is the chinampas agricultural system in Mexico. This is an extremely productive agricultural system created by alternating deeper ditches/canals with elevated areas. This allows for more ecological diversity to grow different crops. While I don’t think it’s wise to convert existing swamps to this system due to their imperiled status, swamps aren’t particularly hospitable to have in our cities, so this could be another possible strategy to deal with seasonal flooding in existing settlements.

    Climate-induced flooding is going to be a major challenge in the future and I think we’ve really only begun to reckon with this new reality.

    • Thank you, this is really interesting! I don't think I knew about Sacramento being lifted to reduce flooding risk, that's fascinating! I knew there were some places with undercities due to building over old ruins (or undermining themselves with, well, mines) but I this project is really cool! The current issue makes a lot of sense - I've seen the stilted houses in the southeast US, where they mostly seem to use the tall open space under house as a sort of boat/car storage, and with their tides and such it makes sense they'd want as little drag as possible (probably want to tow the boat out of there if you have time). And a more enclosed (but water-survivable) lower floor makes sense for a place where the water just kind of rises up without pushing on the building.

      I love sponge city concepts, they seem like one of those rare multi-win solutions in most of the implementations I've read about so far. This article about how New Orleans are using some of the practices is pretty cool, though given the city is below sea level I guess there's only so much they can do.

      I love the idea of referencing the chinampas agricultural system in spots where its just going to have to be wet. I'll have to read up on this to get a better idea of how to depict it.

      Thanks again!

    • I’m amazed the entire downtown was elevated. Do you know enough about that subject to have an opinion about elevating the Ferry Building in San Francisco? That has to be done for it to survive.

      • I realized I never replied to this. I'm definitely not an expert on this type of work--I would guess it's possible but the question in today's economic system is whether it's cost effective. I don't know the answer to that question.

    • chinampas

      Hi, I've been reading up on chinampas to try to get the details right and I was hoping to borrow some of your tree knowledge. Most sources mention a willow (Ahuejote (Salix bonplandiana)) and a cypress (Taxodium mucronatum) as the trees they used to reinforce/replace the underwater fences for soil retention. I'm sort of doing this picture as if its in New Orleans (for some of the buildings and other details anyways) and I think that's outside these specific trees current ranges. I was wondering: can I swap in any other cypress or willow since there are some native to Louisiana or would some cause problems?

      Here's what I've got so far:

      I'm probably not showing enough alternating layers of plant matter and mud, but I'm hoping it gets the point across. I've tried to find good sources, so far these diagrams are my favorites:

      Some seem to show floating islands or like, a floating top layer with water underneath, inside the reed wall, which seems weird and inaccurate from what I've read. At this point, I mostly just want to get all the trees added, make sure they're realistic, and find some accurate roots to include to show how they reinforce the earthworks. From what I've read it sounds like willow and cypress just kind of put roots everywhere (I'm used to being able to find clearer diagrams for trees like pines and oaks, but have struggled to find good drawings for these. Also might add cypress knees in the waterways where they're really well established, we'll see. Then I'll start cleaning up the image and getting everything to match aesthetically.

      • Great work researching this!

        In term of those trees--Taxodium distichum is very similar to T. mucronatum and will make a great replacement for a New Orleans version of chinampas. Many botanists now consider them part of the same species and it takes an expert to even tell them apart.

        Willows are a more diverse group but in general they all grow well in flooded areas, so I am sure another species will work for this. I am not familiar with the specific species found in that area. I would probably just pick one that has a similar size and structure and call it good enough. Or you could just leave it as generic willows if you want since it might take some experimentation to pick the best species.

        That said, I think other flood-tolerant trees could have their place in this system. Really it's just substantial woody plants that can grow in flooded, disturbed soil. I don't know the species in Louisiana super well since I don't live there but if there are other species that fit that bill I think you could also include them.

  • In an open channel/lake situation like that, you probably want some sort of wave breakers in front of the houseboats. Otherwise a passing larger boat would cause a lot of hazard.

    But I would find a scenario like this with a smaller channel and development on both sides to be more realistic. Maybe search for some examples from Bangkok, which already has quite a bit of what you imaging in that regard. Also their water-busses are way cooler 😎

  • A few things. First of all the dolphins for the house boats need to be much taller. When you have flooding they have to be above the waterline to have the house boats not float about and so nobody rams them, which would be bad for the boat.

    Amphibious public transport is not that great of a solution. Boats can be easily larger then a bus and with proper waterways, which a city would have. In terms of capacity a fairly small boat can easily carry as many passengers as a tram. They also are more efficent without wheels in water. Also you have a problem with doors and other parts which need to be opened often on a bus, since those nearly have to be under the waterline. That also is somewhat true for the ropeway. A ferry connection would be just as fast and can have the same capacity. So a ferry elevate rail interchange might be better.

    • Good point on the dolphins!

      The amphibious public transit idea came from another discussion where someone suggested them so they could double as a fleet of rescue/evacuation vehicles. They basically wanted sturdy buses that wouldn't stall when traversing a few feet of water, and which didn't pose as much risk of getting stranded. I don't know if that makes them any more practical or if a flood-prone city would just maintain a fleet of buses and a fleet of boats for rescue situations. Duckboats would almost definitely be harder to maintain than either one separately, but they might justify the cost if it means they're getting their money's worth by using them normally for public transit?

      I think you're absolutely right that a ferry connection would be easier to set up and maintain.

      • People are making a lot of good points about boats, but on the other had, I know that indigenous people, poor communities, and communities outside main developed areas use boats a lot just fine! I wonder what the difference is--I was thinking about this earlier. Maybe, in a swamp city (not just water, but kinda salty water, which is even worse), we want to go all in one quick biodegradables--stuff that only lasts for a year or two but then is easily composted. Natural materials, and then digging out the canoes or whatever is a community activity! This wouldn't work for emergency vehicles, because they wouldn't be motored and wouldn't go that fast, but it would prevent big waves from like disrupting houseboats like someone said.

        One of the ways that maybe the traditional biomes shown in solarpunk might not translate as well to my city: they really seem to want infrastructure that lasts near-forever, and I literally don't think that's possible here. We're just too storm-battered, too humid, too wet. I'd definitely wanna see what more people think about short-use biodegrades. I know solarpunk hates single-use and waste, but I think maybe this doesn't count if the materials compost well?

        I hate cars and car-centric urbanism, so maybe this is a way to make sure the use of boats doesn't just become the way cars are in New Orleans today--a slower pace of life, you have to paddle the boat. More like bikes than cars that way/

  • I think Helsinki once tried elevated walkways in an entire neighborhood unsuccessfully. People couldn't (be bothered to) find their way when limited to walkways. I can't find anything on the project, but it showed how design is extremely important. In a lot of ways, I find it more logical to keep the pedestrian zones open (remember r/desirepath?) and then route the vehicles around, over and under.

    Anyway if you've ever been to a city with elevated walkways or any other kind of multiple levels, you'll probably find that people stick to whatever is considered ground level for pedestrian travel. Tokyo has plenty of those places and even with escalators, it just sucks to change level.

    I've however seen a functional walkway in Osaka where most pedestrian traffic would be either above or under ground level, but I'm not really sure if it was because the ground level was under construction and wasn't accessible by foot at the time.

    • That's a really good point! People need a reason to use them despite the cool factor. I'll have to think on that.

      I was kind of picturing these as a network of wide balconies/bridges/extra-wide fire-escape type walkways rather than full levels (not that the sketch made that clear) which would mostly be used seasonally. Like they might see some use for shortcuts etc when its dry but if the place floods for weeks or months(?), they'd be important for getting around. During that time the lower streets might be treated a bit like canals and each building an island. I'm kind of trying to imagine designs where what would be a city-wrecking flood today surges up and everyone grumbles about it but otherwise basically goes about their business.

      I don't know how feasible that is, or how well a given society would maintain a public resource that sees sporadic use much of the year, but that's the hope. I'm going to look up the elevated walkways you mentioned, I'm very curious about differences in their implementations and if there are any positive ways to incentivize use of a separate level (rather than just taking the ground away). Thanks for bringing that up!

  • As you say, the obvious answer is "don't build cities in swamps". Before designing anything concrete, you have to decide why you want to overcome that answer - Is it a harbor, like New Orleans or Amsterdam used to be? Is it a cultural heritage site, like New Orleans or Amsterdam now primarily are? Are there natural resources? Is it a hub for locals to access more specialized goods and services, like specialty medicine? Or is it there because people think it's cool and they have enough money to let it exist regardless of sense?

    Whatever the answer, the form follows that function. Build everything on the principles that drive people to want to live there rather than anywhere else.

    So why do you think solarpunk people would choose to build a city in a swamp? And what are the amenities that follow from that need?

    If you are trying to preserve a historic town like New Orleans or Amsterdam despite floods and rising sea levels, then your goal is to defy natural change in order to keep things the same. The natural form for that function would be a massive dyke built around all that you want to preserve, so that everything looks just like you want, come hell or high water. (Lifting historic buildings is unfathomably expensive and would change the original feel, so it's less ideal).

    This is not a solarpunk design because the function of preservation is not solarpunk. New Orleans and Amsterdam weren't built as a place for culture to arise, let alone to preserve some older culture. They were port towns, and they were built with practical purpose. Everything good there arose because working class people from diverse cultures decided to hang out and have fun together, and the same can be done everywhere. If we want to honor the meaning of New Orleans and Amsterdam culture, we let those cities sink into the ocean and focus on having lively third places for the working class in this day and age.

    There are things we can bring with us or rebuild in the old style, but loss and adaptation are natural.

    • I don't disagree - I don't tend to have much sympathy for folks who build in flood planes and end up getting wet, but then again, I'm blessed to live in a region largely free from hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires, volcanos, and floods. I suppose much of the United States wouldn't pass my ''so don't build there, idiot'' test. The folks who do obviously look at those risks differently than I do, consider their needs, their love of a place, a lack of available housing, opportunities, etc, and probably dozens of other factors when making that decision. I definitely understand loving a place and wanting to preserve it.

      I think we've also seen the way culture fragments and changes and is lost when its place vanishes. I don't know that a New Orleans diaspora would be able to preserve or rebuild everything that makes the city special to the people who live there now, and I'm not comfortable just kind of telling them to deal with it, even if it seems inevitable to me now.

      I'm not sure what degree of realism I'm aiming for in this art, even after a doing this series for a year. My outlook on our near term future, (when I let myself think about it) is quite bleak. The postcards are kind of an attempt to focus on the potential for something better, to talk about possible options, and to emphasize the aspects of solarpunk I love and to introduce people to them. I want the scenes to feel aspirational and attainable. And in a place (country/national discourse) where a large swath of the population is fearfully/enthusiasticly examining any leftist media for glimmers of top-down, authoritarian conspiracies, I'm aware that pointing out ways things are going to get bad looks to them like a celebration of the end of their comforts etc. And that that can drive people away from solarpunk and from possible solutions. So I don't know, I guess from a messaging standpoint, at the moment, I'd rather emphasize adapting to changing conditions and reconsidering our current ways of doing things in order to talk about those impending problems and what we'll do in response. I've done some other scenes of deconstruction and rewilding but I try to keep them mostly to cultureless mcmansion suburbs rather than working class cities. I'm not really comfortable shrugging and saying it's pointless to try to preserve what we can of something parts of the audience care about.

      I want to emphasize that I'm talking about the tone of this particular postcard art series, and trying to find my own goals for it, and that I don't think you're being unrealistic, exactly. I'll keep the difficulties of the preservation aspect in mind.

      • Thank you for your thoughtful response. I appreciate you trying to keep your work accessible and comprehensible to casual viewers, and that it's hard to describe a happy relocation, especially in a single image. You've clearly put a lot of thought into the messaging. I personally have difficulty accepting flawed/imperfect/good-enough solutions, and it's nice to have more grounded people actually getting a positive message out there even at the cost of accuracy.

        All of that said, refugees and migrants already exist, and they already face the same struggle of wanting to preserve the culture they have been forced away from. The question of how to make migrations as pleasant as possible and rebuild as much of the physically embodied culture that was left behind as possible is one that is very relevant right now, so I would love to see you make a postcard of a migrant town, if you don't already have one. If you can show how even migration can be a place of solarpunk joy, then suddenly the people of New Orleans do have a realistic joyful future despite the bleak prospect of evacuation.

        Personally, a full diaspora seems like an unnecessary loss. Modern western policies of spreading migrants thinly over as wide an area as possible to prevent them from coming together to celebrate the world they left behind are horrific. Migration is at its most beautiful in a place like 19th-20th century New York City, with the best parts of several dozen distinct cultures being reproduced side by side and then mixing together into something novel and rich.

        If New Orleans had to be evacuated, I wouldn't want its culture to dilute as everyone from there is forced to make the separate choice to let their distinctiveness be subsumed by their peers. I would like a bunch of Little New Orleanses, hundreds of migrants all living together in the same neighborhood celebrating the old culture and mingling with the locals, choosing their own rate of change and having enough mass to make other groups consider their perspective and values and artforms.

    • I’m writing a story about San Francisco, where greedy fucks filled in the parts of the bay to sell more real estate. Now those areas are going to flood. Worse, toxic groundwater will rise there first and make it unlivable.

      To buffer the rest of the city against floods and toxins, I will portray wetlands restoration. What I’m not sure about is how wide an area the wetlands has to be.

      The solarpunk reason to engage with these sorts of swamp cities is that they contain lots of infrastructure and housing that you would hate to lose. Reusing existing buildings is more efficient than building new stuff from scratch, especially high rises.

      • In fiction, you can pretty much always create a reason, and if you have a reason, then that is valid.

        That said, the point of using wetlands as a buffer is that the area is too polluted for long-term human exposure, so you might as well give it to nature. Wetlands do nothing to filter out most pollution, the pollution is either removed through industrial processes or slowly allowed to dissipate out into the ocean. As for how wide wetlands should be - right now that's just the area with an above-acceptable chance of above-acceptable pollution for human habitation or workplace exposure. It depends on where the pollution flows to, how quickly it dissipates and in which ways, etc.

        So allowing human habitation in those wetlands is missing the point that caused our capitalist society to restore wetlands there: liberal environmentalists demanded a quota for natural area, and the polluted land is worthless for other uses, so by making them wetlands you satisfy the environmentalists at minimum cost to capital. The animals and plants suffering from the effect of exposure to pollution is not your problem, as long as it still looks pretty enough for photo opportunities and as long as you fund biologists who Monitor the Situation.

        Hating to lose things can come from a place of sunk cost fallacy. Reusing existing buildings is often less efficient than building from scratch, and the reason it is so often worth it in the present day is because capitalism is horribly inefficient at land use because land ownership is basically an untaxed way to leech money off the efforts of everyone around it.

        However, in your scenario as presented, you're dealing with a neighborhood built by capitalists in the expectation that the neighborhood would be dry land. It seems very unlikely that the capitalists that built it would have paid the extra money to make those buildings able to handle flooding well. This means rotting drywall and insulation, waterlogged concrete, rusting metal frames, essential household infrastructure like fuse boxes and central heating and sewage pumps being destroyed beyond repair in flooded basements, etc. Using these places in spite of that would likely mean either massive maintenance cost or massive health issues.

        It is plausible that in a capitalist society a place like this would be used as a shanty town. In most places in the US, shanty towns are demolished by police because "ew, gross" and because they prefer to send the people that would use them to for-profit prisons. However, it would be on-brand for California to officially endorse the shanty town as a capitalist pseudo pro-housing waffle. Between the lack of functioning infrastructure, the toxic pollution, the building damage, and everything else, quality of life would be pretty bad, but many people may choose it over not having a roof over their heads or becoming a slave to the prison industrial complex or even over the quality/cost of available regular lower class housing in California.

        In a solarpunk society, I find hard to imagine that living in rotting flooded housing would be preferable to deconstructing the neighborhood and building adequate housing elsewhere. Reuse is only good if the cost of reuse isn't greater than the combined cost of disposal and replacement or salvaging and reuse in a different context.

        Maybe it could work if most of the reconstruction efforts were done as a capitalist shanty town. Put one or more decades of capitalism after the flooding, enough that a rich amphibious local culture has arisen, the bulk of the reconstruction costs have already been borne, and pollution has diminished so it's no longer an active health hazard in most of the town. It could be an incrementalist history, where the emphasis on capitalist incentives slowly diminishes over time and people go from living in the shanty town because of work and rent and shelter to living there because of the people and the land, or it could be a revolutionary history, where capitalist structures in the shanty town are finally removed or reclaimed.

        With the first option, you would have to be careful to show that this isn't just the first step of the same cycle of gentrification that has affected successful shanty towns since the dawn of time. Many fashionable capitalist consumer things are cleaned-up versions of poor people managing to survive and thrive 50-100 years earlier. What decisions does society make that show it turning away from the cycle of externalization, exploitation, and commodification?

        With the second option, you would have to be careful to show which parts are capitalist and which are postcapitalist. When they use something that is only sensible because of initial capitalist investment, how is it clear that they wouldn't build it that way today and what other choices they would make? What makes their lives worse than those of people from flooded towns who immediately got a solarpunk response, and why do they choose this place anyway?

  • Hi! Oooh tihs is so cool thanks for playing with this idea with me! Here are some random thoughts, both related to your drawing and not:

    -swamps tend to be really shallow, which is why we have the boatcars

    -here's some native swamp plants people can eat: wood sorrel, thistle, red clover, mulberry

    -maybe a two-tier public transit system? We have streetcars, it'd be a shame to give them up. maybe there's parts of the city that are flooded, with houseboats/amphibious vehicles/big parades (the floats could actually float in the water, and instead of tractors they could be pulled by cute little tugboats. and I think the tugboats should have a little paddlewheel like our riverboats, just for fun), and then parts that are not, with buildings on land/streetcars/walking parades on roads.

    -I definitely think emergency vehicles should be amphibious vehicles!

    -important buildings like a city hospital should be tall and we NEED to have helipads on the roof, both for lifting patients in and for evacuation. So a full rooftop garden wouldn't be a good idea, but I bet a groundcover plant could work for those roofs, maybe one that soaks up a lot of water? Smaller buildings probably want slanted roofs so water doesn't pool. Not sure how to solarpunk slanted roofs--we do alright with solarpanels but they do take a beating.

    -LOVE the gondola in the air! With our heat, definitely would need GOOD window coverings to block out sun and heat. In general, New Orleans should have smaller and fewer windows than in classic in solarpunk--some of our new office buildings are like all-window, you know that new style? And it sucks in the summer

    -NO STAGNANT WATER this is mosquito territory and I hate them both personally and because they're invasive. Gotta keep ALL WATER moving so they don't breed

    -this is random but based on your drawing, I'm really seeing the main city as being like above the ground/water (also a great way to keep people from getting hit by streetcars or falling into the water, easy to have rails on that if pedestrian walkways are more elevated than not.). Thinking about the Highline in New York--if people are walking, I don't wanna put on train on it, but there's such cool plants and seating areas on stuff on that. And I always felt so safe walking on the Highline because it was removed from the cars on the street. I wonder about how we'd drain it during rain--maybe the whole thing could be on a very slght slant that humans don't notice but then all the water drips off into the canal below

  • ::: spoiler I want you to play the FOSS game Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead. You will learn a lot about this kind of thing based on that game's complexity. It is enormous is scope and unlike anything else you've ever played. The game devs do not have a totally solid grasp of fabrication trades in how some elements are used, but when it comes to the ideas of complex survivalists and resource utilization, the game will help you considerably.

    First off, boating is a losing situation in the real world. Boats are super expensive and require a ton of maintenance constantly. You never own a boat; you own a money pit to maintain.

    Similarly, a ropeway or tram requires massive industrial equipment to service and maintain. If the thing does not exist in poor areas, there is a reason. Working in heavy industry would teach you a lot about this. I've done it for a time. Every heavy bearing must be serviced by someone regularly. When that bearing is up high, has heavy loads, and is life critical, servicing and replacing it is a major operation. The economic/environmental footprint of things in this mechanism are massive as well. It really comes down to the metallurgy and precision purity requirements for safety at scale. These are massively wasteful operations because errors and variability cost lives.

    If you live in an area with flowing water, at small scales, it is the cheapest and most powerful form of continuous mechanical power. If I do not have effective flowing water, I would be looking at gravity potential for power by making a water battery. Pump water up using excess solar or other forms and let it fall back down to generate or for other uses. Likewise, rainwater is a valuable resource.

    Places in a major river flood delta typically have unbelievably good soil if it can be accessed. This is not ideal for modern industry scale farming, so you do not see this in the USA around New Orleans, but this is why the Nile was such a massive boon for ancient Egypt, and why the fertile crescent was a thing 10k years ago. Anyone trying to be much more self sufficient would be utilizing the potential for these soils. They would also likely have a small local foundry, forge, and kiln for bricks and pottery. Ways of utilizing the heat from these facilities would be interesting, or indeed the use of solar collectors for heat is interesting.

    As the future approaches, you will likely find that everything in the present is oversimplified. The future is about finding a balance between technology, waste, and utilizing the excess. Eventually, one day, in a VERY distant future, biology is the ultimate technology. Almost everything we think of as advanced technology is possible with biology alone. However, accessing this level of technology will require a nearly complete understanding of all of science. This will happen one day, if we survive ourselves, but that is millennia away.

    All industrial processes used presently have an unsustainable future within less than 100k years. The only way we can survive beyond this relatively short timeframe is if we manage to use biotechnology that can exist well within all of the elemental cycles. This will likely mean space based resource acquisition and processing as the only viable industrial potential. Indeed, I believe planets are not even the future of life and humanity in the very long term as planetary gravitational differentiation is an enormous tax on resource availability, but that is tangential here. My point is that, if you can picture the very distant future clearly, any point between now and then should fall along the line of progression that leads to that future. - Think big; and be a positive futurist.

    • First off, boating is a losing situation in the real world. Boats are super expensive and require a ton of maintenance constantly. You never own a boat; you own a money pit to maintain.

      I just want to back up this statement. OP, this is the exact reason why having a boat is a flex. Nature is constantly assaulting everything man-made in this world, and water is by far the most destructive element in that fight.

    • I'll look into Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead though to be honest, I don't really play games. I might be able to convince my SO who does to take a look though - I sometimes watch them play.

      I've heard the wisdom around boats before, but I was thinking of houseboats because that's a thing some people do IRL, and I like to include different lifestyles in the art when I can. TBH, given some of the drama I've read around rich people trying to get houseboats banned from mooring in public waterways near their private beaches, I was under the impression it was an economical way to live, though that might just be the case in some modern-day ultra-expensive coastal cities.

      Ropeways are something I mostly know from ski mountains (my area is lousy with them) but I was surprised to learn about how much they're used elsewhere for public transit - rich areas like the Alps definitely use them, but they seem to show up a bunch in the Middle East, South East Asia and Central America, where I don't know that they necessarily guarantee rich surroundings (there was a somewhat famous rescue a year or so back in Pakistan when one broke while high over a valley). I don't doubt the mechanical complexity (see: recent accidents), and I'll admit I'm probably too fond of them as a concept for steady public transit that crosses rough terrain well, but I don't know that alternatives like entire train lines or buses would have a lower impact. For all I know they do. I aim to balance the environmental footprint (including largely unseen parts like manufacturing and maintenance) against depicting places people might like to live.

      100% with you on the fertility of the soil in river basins, and depictions of homesteads/uses of heat.

      I respect folks who can picture the very long long term future, but to be honest, even positive depictions of it don't feel very actionable to me. I'm not a scientist, researcher, inventor, so the hundred-thousand-year future feels pointlessly out of reach, especially with how bad things seem likely to get in the near term. I want to make stuff that inspires at least a little hope and ambition for today and tomorrow - and to depict scenes that make people think think, “why aren’t we doing that?” or “could that work?” I think the aspirational goal is the same, I'm just more focused on doing the best we can in the next few years and emphasizing any positive progress over perfection.

      Thanks for all your input, I really appreciate it

      • I appreciate that actionable near term and like to see what you're thinking. My perspective is largely forced by my physical disability; where I am deeply aware of the limitations of the present. While you're seemingly focused on a hope for a better near term, I am looking to a point where problems like mine are not problems at all.

        I think you might find this rather interesting about that future: planets are round... /s LOL jk. The roundness from gravity is part of the differentiation process for resources. Planets are truly resource scarce due to differentiation. The vast majority of resources are inaccessible in the center of the planet. This is actually the primary reason we struggle at our present global wealth and scale. The moment humanity has access to space based resources from just a few near earth objects, everything about resources and wealth will be turned on its head. There are near Earth objects that are known to be planetesimal core remnants. These are already concentrated wealth. The USA's space efforts focus on alpha stupidity, but Japan focuses specifically on space based resource extraction and exploration. While the future may seem bleak, and the implications of space based resources and the upheaval of the present systems will inevitably cause chaos, everything about the present will become antiquated within a couple of decades. The move to space based industry will happen astonishingly quickly. The quick increase in wealth will fuel an age of scientific research and development unlike the present. Moving humans into space will require development of closed loop elemental cycles. The overall implications are enormous. We are on the cusp of accessing that future with large reusable rockets. The car was patented in the 1890's by Benz, but it did not reach the poor until the late 1920's when Ford made them cheaply enough to be accessible. Those that think in terms of increasing accessibility are the ones that change eras, or can under the right circumstances.

        Anyways, these are the more near term ideas that are the next major stepping stone to the future. Planets are prisons of misery. We are presently still in the stone age; the stone age of silicon.

41 comments