JacobCoffinWrites @ JacobCoffinWrites @slrpnk.net

I write science fiction, draw, paint, photobash, do woodworking, and dabble

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2 yr. ago

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!

Crom banged out a quick 3d model of his Amphibi_bus idea: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6744397

I had no idea that New Orleans was the origin of those amphibious vehicles, (or that you have a National WW2 museum) that's so cool!

Welcome to the instance! I'm very glad you brought this over here! I'm really hoping to run some of these ideas past folks who know more than I do! I'm thinking about doing some art if I can be sure the details are correct enough.

There's some redundancy with your summary but I thought I'd copy my comment over just in case:

"I really like figuring out scenes/aspects of solarpunk that don't normally make it into the visual art, so I'm glad you're thinking about this and starting a discussion!

Some cities are going all in on 'sponge city' water management techniques, but as far as I know, they're above sea level, often with depleted aquifers under them waiting to be refilled. I have no idea if any of those practices are applicable in New Orleans.

It may be that some areas just aren't practical locations for permanent human settlements, or that they become less-so with worsening weather, and that may be something people will need to make decisions on in the future - at what point is rebuilding just throwing good resources after bad? But there's a tremendous amount of history and culture in these places that absolutely should be preserved, so I'd love to see city designs that can accomplish that.

I've never been to New Orleans but I've seen those stilt houses in other areas in the American south and I think the designs are really cool (concrete reliance aside, but geopolymers may offer an alternative there?). They at least show a recognition that this space is routinely underwater and a willingness to adapt which I think fits a solarpunk ethos.

Rebuilding city structures in a similar way, on stilts or with open bottom floors, could provide some really cool opportunities for common spaces/third places whenever they're dry. Depending on how high the buildings need to be, you could have a decent amount of headroom, room enough for parks, playgrounds, skate parks, parkour courses, anything that can be submerged and washed clean or stowed in the preparations for a storm. It might sound like they'd be dark and grungy but I think they could be really nice, sheltered from overhead sun, with room for a breeze to blow through.

For buildings of extreme historical value, it might be possible to lift some onto raised platforms preemptively rather than wait for rebuilding. I know people move important buildings sometimes so that seems within the scope of human accomplishment.

(Though I'm from a place where our ground is very stable and features a lot of ledge - I have no idea what the ground is like in your area or what it takes to build structures that won't shift, especially once partially submerged (and the ground thoroughly soaked). These ideas might make for cool art/fiction but be completely impractical, I assume folks down there have been thinking about these problems for much longer than I have.)

Another solarpunk option might be accepting a certain amount of encroachment by the water, and switching to canals, ropeways, raised walkways, etc for getting around. This probably still assumes buildings will raised, which still requires a fair amount of changes to the area.

I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else comes up with.

Edit to add my SO's suggestion: city of houseboats/rafts/riverboats. Or maybe a mix of that, the encroachment/canals, and the raised buildings?"

Now that I've been thinking more on it, I have a few more thoughts:

Solar daylighting rigs (the fiberoptic type) could really help with the quality of the under-building spaces. That could be nice for sports areas, market places, etc.

If the sewage system descends from the building and slopes back towards higher ground or wherever they put the water treatment site, it could end up overhead for those low spaces, so we might want a double layer system or something? Composting (maybe even localized anerobic composting/biogas generation?) would be another option I suppose.

I brought this question up on the Fully Automated TTRPG discord and cromlygames suggested a public transit fleet which is built to be amphibious so it can help with mass evacuations in worst case scenarios. His design ideas was "Basically those ducktour buses (former America in Vietnam war amphibious APC), scaled up to London double decker bus. Door height set to match platform height for tram platforms. Assumes roads not blocked with debris or abandoned cars." He assures me the double decker bus design is surprisingly bottom-heavy and tip proof though I think some stabilizing pontoons that swing down might be neat.

And the ones from trigun

There was a brief window where ICE cars, electric cars, and steam cars existed simultaneously and all sucked just about equally

I'm wondering if it's a maintenance thing? Like they need to be able to inspect the former road surface for damage, or contain the plants to avoid roots spreading any cracks they can find? No idea otherwise.

It sounds like LA has been implementing it for a bit and it's starting to pay off

https://www.wired.com/story/los-angeles-just-proved-how-spongy-a-city-can-be/

The solarpunk genre in general might have some good stuff for you - my favorite so far is Murder in the Tool Library, but the Terraformers might be closer to what you're looking for.

Thanks, I'd missed that one somehow - just signed up! https://pixelfed.social/i/web/post/607237425340447357

I've tried posting the image as a response to this comment (I'm guessing you don't want to turn off noscript or whichever adblocker you're running) but it won't upload, possibly because this thread is on lemmy.ml? The good news is I've also uploaded it to a few other places:

• https://jacobcoffinwrites.wordpress.com/2023/09/11/repurposed-parking-garage-photobash/
• https://www.artstation.com/artwork/w05GWO
• https://writing.exchange/@jacobcoffin/111048596538451682

Hopefully one of those will work. If you know of a more fediverse-friendly image hosting solution I should be using, let me know!

I'll look them up now! Thanks for the tip

Thanks! I think there's a wonderful opportunity in this kind of art to demonstrate alternatives! I'm planning one involving a city street next, and I'm happy to try to incorporate any ideas into what I'm planning. Hopefully it'll include a parking garage that's been filled in (kind of ad-hoc and colorfully) with living space, and a street that's been replaced with a bike path and forest, with market stalls in the spaces between the trees. I'll try to hint at a farm or park on the roof of the garage if possible.

Lately I've been thinking about how a city would look if you could take up street and sidewalk, plant trees, and keep just a bike path through the middle. The logistics challenges (maintaining access to buried infrastructure/protecting them from roots, and making sure vehicle-based emergency services like firetrucks and ambulances can get everywhere, handicapped people have options/access everywhere) are keeping me busy but I have a couple ideas for photobashes of solarpunk streets to try out eventually.

It works great but it lifts surface thoughts like a keylogger and sends them god-knows-where

The old radio show X Minus One had an episode about folks songs of the spaceways. That's what came to mind when I saw this

https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/sci-fi/x-minus-one/the-green-hills-of-earth-1955-07-07

I'm not sure if this'll count, but I really enjoyed these Let's Plays using the Alien tabletop gaming system. The GM is an awesome writer with a great knowledge of the setting, and the players are all improv actors so they do a nice job:

https://wiki.loadingreadyrun.com/index.php/Dice_Friends#Heat_Death

https://wiki.loadingreadyrun.com/index.php/Dice_Friends#ALIEN:_First_Law

So I'm going to throw in a pretty eclectic list:

If you enjoy tech noir, I always like to recommend Other Kind of Life by Shamus Young, because it's awesome and somewhat unknown. The tagline/blurb don't do it justice but I recently wrote up a rant about why people should read it here

The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl, Cyril M. Kornbluth is an awesome proto-cyberpunk science fiction story (it's got just about all the elements of a cyberpunk book, but the feel is much more that of a 1950s scifi story, it's kind of fascinating. The story is awesome.

Bolo! by David Weber is kind of fascinating because it's one of the only series I've read with a genuine partnership between humans and AIs, where neither one exploits or betrays the other, and it's in this military scifi book series about tanks the size of small towns. And the scope is huge, from postapoclyptic earth to the rise and fall of several interstellar empires, humans side by side with absurdly giant tanks - it's a trip. The sequel to this one is also good. The others in the series are fun but the ones by Webber have a surprising amount of heart.

By the way, if you like Baen books, you can get a ton of their stories (including Bolo!) in ebook form for free - they used to give them away for free on CDs, and fans collected those files onto websites, and the company has been surprisingly chill about just keeping those book available. This website hosts most of them http://baencd.freedoors.org/ but be warned, it's got graphic design to rival Baen's infamous covers.

Anything by Harry Harrison. A bunch of ebook versions of his stories are available on Project Gutenberg Especially Deathworld if you haven't read it

When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger is a cyberpunk story worth checking out.

Obviously anything by William Gibson, and Philip K Dick (personal favorite, A Scanner Darkly and especially the linked audiobook)

And the Murderbot books by Martha Wells are great.

That's a great idea

A friend wanted to show my SO and I Twelve Monkeys (the TV series) badly enough to buy the whole thing as a box set, so the three of us have been working our way through it, we're in season 2 now - it's been a lot of fun

Thanks! Yeah I don't remember why I didn't do headers, it definitely wouldn't hurt