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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What am I getting wrong? Please point out my bad ideas for art of a solarpunk swamp city (slrpnk.net)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Generally, the depth that tree roots grow to varies greatly depending on soil conditions and species and isn't very well studied due to the difficulty and destructive nature of such research, so this might not be fully answerable. In most cases, tree roots won't grow very deep in poorly oxygenated, wet soils but I don't have much experience with the roots of these species, so they could be exceptions. Certainly their ability to survive and grow in these aquatic environments that are deadly to other trees suggests that they might be.

Another factor is that if there is a seasonal fluctuation in water level, which would be the case in most places on earth, then the roots can grow deeper during the dry season and might be partially underwater during the wet season, similar to what you've depicted here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Sure, happy to tall trees any time haha. They are a big interest of mine.