Thanks so much, that’s great to hear! And thanks for all your input! Sorry the text is small, I work on a knockoff wacom-style tablet so I get used to looking at it zoomed in and from pretty close to the screen.

Feel free to post it anywhere, I’m always delighted to find out when these images travel around a bit on their own.

Thanks so much! This was a fun one, I always loved these kind of diagrams/wimmelbilder type pictures and had a lot of fun trying to make one.

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

Thanks!! That’s really good to know about Bald Cypress! That was my first guess for selecting trees. I ended up picking them and black willows, just based on range and look but I’ll take your advice and leave the willows generic. I think these chinampas are kind of overgrown at the moment, but I figure the trees don’t cover the entire thing, just the corners. I was able to find some roots to reference (mostly from washouts or other exposed roots) and tried to get the details right for cypress and willow (but I’m not an arborist and had trouble finding info on depth). Let me know what you think!

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.

Hugely in favor of helping solarpunk concepts reach people across language barriers! And very interested to see solarpunk stuff from DACH. Having a community here might help ease them into the rest of the instance too

Best of luck!

Thanks, I’ll definitely include that kind of dock/railings, still figuring out how to add greenery. I might shuffle the buildings around to make some room for a park

Nice! I’ll check that out!

Thanks, that makes sense on both topics, they’re definitely going on the list!

That’s a good list, thank you! I have a couple questions you might be able to answer:

Could you elaborate on the relays? I don’t know anything about them yet (in their intended use or alternatives). Though I am reading up on them.

I know there’s a some benefit in running 12v appliances (intended for campers) with solar panel setups because you don’t have to convert from DC to AC then back to DC at the appliance. Would that work for just using a car’s AC unit to cool a room, or are they built too specific to a car or not efficient enough to justify the work?

Thank you!!

That reminds me - inside the rubber squeegee part is a long thin strip of good quality spring steel. Lockpicking folks like it for making tools, diy gun folks sometimes use them to make the extractor. I honestly don’t know what to use the rest of the wiper for.

This is a great list with a bunch of stuff I wouldn’t have thought of - the transmission reuse is a cool idea!

I think some LED headlights are goood for growing plants. I remember some local news panic piece from years ago about how criminals were stealing headlights for their grow ops. A quick search online confirmed they work fine (probably not worth stealing though) and this post I think suggested a couple other car parts alternative uses I’ll have to go back and get later: https://www.rollitup.org/t/is-it-possible-to-convert-a-headlamp-into-a-grow-light.496815/

Thanks again!

That’s a great example, thank you!

Oh, one more to consider: Reckoning Press is more climate fiction than explicitly solarpunk, but it was one of the things that got me to give solarpunk a chance.

Ecotopia is a fun one because it hits all the notes but predates the genre.

Murder in the Tool Library is a favorite of mine because the setting is awesome and aspirational while feeling real and human, and because the murder mystery plot is a change from the usual ecofiction.

The solarpunk TTRPG Fully Automated! is free (libre and gratis) and has several sections devoted to its setting and worldbuilding that helped me understand a bunch of solarpunk concepts by seeing them in practice and to start thinking much bigger with my own fiction. It also has some good advice on creating engaging plots in an aspirational solarpunk setting where a lot of the usual problems have been solved.

That’s interesting, even going with modern tech, it’s a neat answer to preserving darkness. Military-grade passive night vision with the analogue tubes are ridiculously expensive but you wouldn’t need them just for walking around - simple infrared spotlight goggles are way cheaper, and probably lighter, especially if you remove extra binocular features. They could also be assisted by infrared streetlights if those wouldn’t mess up other animals. Downsides: I don’t think walking while wearing them would be fun, your depth perception and field of view takes a hit with most designs, and slow update of the screen can be disorienting. They’re also more complicated to make than flashlights.

That’s an interesting idea - instead of carrying a flashlight you might carry an RFID transponder. They’d need to not be linked to any personal records (such as purchase) to protect anonymity and prevent tracking. And a personal flashlight might still be useful.

I’m not sure I love the idea of lights flicking on, identifying where I am to someone waiting in the dark. Maybe it would turn on lights for a block length on the street or something? I’m also wondering if the reduced on-off cycling would wear out lights faster and, if so, how replacing them more often stacks up to more energy spent running them all the time.

Still it’s an interesting compromise position on the light pollution situation.

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.

This is a heavy topic with some pretty high stakes but it’s going on my list. You’re right that it’s something worth rendering, it’s art we might need, though TBH I hope someone better qualified than me gets to it first.

If you’d like to discuss how these places and experiences should be represented sometime, I’d definitely be interested. I know I’m usually unqualified to make these scenes (aspirational fiction requires so much more knowledge to do well and solarpunk scenes often involve a terrifying mix of civil engineering, history, cultural knowledge, plant knowledge, city planning, accessibility outreach, vehicle infrastructure, and more) but I’m profoundly unqualified to say much of anything about the experiences of refugees and migrants. That’ll be something to work towards through research and conversation, and perhaps to carefully reference in small scenes in prose fiction etc at first. References to Little New Orleanses and similar neighborhoods seem like a good place to start, with more detail in time.

Thanks for talking about this stuff with me. I really appreciate it!

That’s something I’ve been wondering about - I live in a place with lots of ledge to anchor foundations to (or to get in the way of basements, depending on your situation and budget). I know skyscrapers drive in huge piles for support which I think aims for that supportive material underground? I know from researching bunkers that in other places the ground is kinda moving steadily, which can roll or twist unprepared or poorly designed structures. I’ve seen that New Orleans for example has some skyscrapers but just having them doesn’t necessarily mean building them is a good long term plan and that the ground will support those kind of structures.

This is so cool! Thank you - this definitely gives me a place to start