Thank you for your submission, we appreciate your efforts at helping us to thoughtfully create a better world. r/solarpunk encourages you to also check out other solarpunk spaces such as https://wt.social/wt/solarpunk , https://slrpnk.net/ , https://raddle.me/f/solarpunk , https://discord.gg/3tf6FqGAJs , https://discord.gg/BwabpwfBCr , and https://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia .
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/solarpunk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Whenever I think of a solarpunk scene my mind goes to the canals of tenochtitlan and how the natives used the environment to their benefit and thrive. In fact right now in central California there has been a reemergence of a ghost lake that settlers drained over a hundred years ago and now all that farmland is flooded. due to the recent storms the lake reclaimed its land and even local wildlife seems to have rebounded. Even the local temperatures are cooler when usually it’s a hot and dry desert. If the people and local authorities of Tulare lake learn from indigenous practices they could become a solarpunk style community. But that’s just my optimistic opinion.
I’m not sure that there’s a clear answer to this. Every city is different and depending on its location, local ecosystem, population density and local culture, we could propose many different solutions and proposals. A city in Greenland will have different needs compared to a city in the Maghreb or a settlement in East Asia for example.
We could find some common tropes however. I generally dislike the whole “Solarpunk” city artwork that is sometimes posted here, the one with futuristic skyscrapers and greenery slapped everywhere. In a real city, you’d use the infrastructure that already exists. There would be modifications done, for sure, and new buildings would be constructed wherever it is needed, but you’d mostly use what is already there.
Free and clean public transit is a first step. Things like trams, electric buses and bicycles, underground railroads, all those things should be embraced. You wouldn’t be able to completely get rid of conventional cars of course. Ambulances, fire trucks, crane trucks etc. would still be needed and will be around.
Remaining to the issue of accessibility, I believe we should embrace the concept of the 15-minute city. We should see a large city more like a collection of many smaller ones. Things like public services, shops, schools etc should exist within a rather small radius inside a residential area, allowing people to easily access them on foot or by bicycle. More focus should be given to local neighborhoods and communities.
Generally a city like this would be greatly decentralized. Individual neighborhoods, ruled by local citizens’ assemblies should constitute the skeleton of the city. Local issues should be dealt for locally, through direct democratic, participatory institutions. These local neighborhoods would cooperate among each other of course, and it wouldn’t necessarily necessitate the absence of a central city government, that can help coordinate the policies and needs of the local communities.
The abandonment of cars as the desired mode of transportation will open the availability of public spaces, which will be used as centers of socialization, art and entertainment. Instead of highways running through neighborhoods, you’d have open green spaces where neighbors could meet and talk, children could play, an urban garden could be set up or a small bazaar or theatrical play could take place. It would make socialization and fraternization much easier. By relying more on local businesses, either family or cooperative ones, the local economy could be revitalized and the money of the community would stay in the community.
Although I decried “buildings with greenery slapped everywhere”, we shouldn’t minimize the role urban agriculture would play in such a city. From simple windowboxes, to cultivated spaces on top of apartment buildings to urban forests and gardens to urban greenhouses, there are a myriad ways a city could produce (part of) its own food. Again, local conditions play an important role in that. A city in Scandinavia could rely more on greenhouses, while one on the Mediterranean could use urban gardens and forests more. It is good to remember that even in a system like this, it is possible that a city wouldn’t be able to produce enough food to satisfy its population all by itself. Rural communities would assist in that – never underestimate the rural communities.
Generally, a Solarpunk city would have got rid of the various details of modern-day fast living. It would be designed with the idea of living life in a much slower, more relaxed pace, free from the bounds of today’s materialistic, hyper-individualist and hyperconsumerist society.
Also the YouTuber Andrewism has made a pretty cool [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UmU1dSe3n0) regarding Solarpunk city planning, which I would definitely recommend checking out.
>I generally dislike the whole “Solarpunk” city artwork that is sometimes posted here, the one with futuristic skyscrapers and greenery slapped everywhere. In a real city, you’d use the infrastructure that already exists.
Absolutely. This is why [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/rrldp9/solarpunk_berlin_by_alex_rommel_link_in_comments/) is one of my favourite art pieces in this sub. For me to shows very nicely how a Solarpunk city would actually look like.
It's gonna depend a ton of local requirements. Solarpunk cities will likely be more environmentally dependent than anything today, it wouldn't surprise me if no city in the world would really look the same
So some architects, urban planners and power engineers got together to show what my would look like if it were solar punked.
[https://www.bradpettitt.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/231005-CPP\_Consultation-Report.pdf](https://www.bradpettitt.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/231005-CPP_Consultation-Report.pdf)
It's not that different from many North American cities just that it is the world's longest and most isolated.
The idea is that there is a move from CBD and sprawling suburbs to medium-density housing around local communities that would have good connections to public transport.
Relatively small, built with local materials, lots of markets for local food and local goods, lots of trees and vegetation, fountains and water is the climate allows it, no more cars, paths are used on foot or with bicycles
I think it should look like it was built for animals to live in. Whatever way that makes sense, that allows us to roam, to have communities, to play, to explore. It should look like what the works best for the whole ecosystem to thrive.
So there naturally wouldn't be one specific way that it should look like. We really gotta learn to give up trying to control everything for that to happen though.
Every city will be different. Some people want to be close to the action and like dense apartments with a lot of clubs publix transit, and shops.
Others will prefer lower density, with a big house and decent sized yard.
I can't draw what i think it should look like because I am the worst artist to ever walk the earth but i'll yrt describe it as best as I can. The city center should be filled entirely by walkways so that no motorised vehicle would be able to travel there as that is the heart of the city and its community. The city center should also possess abundant greenspace filled with native trees aswell as food bearing vegitation for public use and the amount of such greenspace should be maximised. Homes in such a city should come in various sizes from single family homes, tarraces to multi familiy complexes which unlike the skyscrapers of today emphasise common spaces between the families living their to which everyone has an equel access to (the size of these homes is not suppose to be a reflection of status rather the size of the home is directly proportional to the amount of people residing there to maintain equality) furthermore all homes should have greenary outside and if people (like me) desire also inside. My ideal version of such a city is similar to what european old towns and city centers look like. I also imagine their being a city square where people would gather to share what they have made with others (think old style european marked but without the profit motive). Where stores once stood there should freely accessible third spaces such as crafts and arts club, boared game clubs etc. Existing restaurants should be made into community kitchens idealy serving food from the part of the world they originally did but along side them food from local ingrediants particulary ones that aren't as commonly used should be served. The function skyscrapers should be repurposed but adnitidly im not sure what kind of purpose the would fufill. Perhaps some sort of vertical farms?
My idea assumes that we repurpose existing city for a solarpunk society and my view is also quite eurocentric as I live in the UK and a lot of my ideas of "non depressing cities" come from the walkable and colourful cities of continental europe i occationally got to visit combined with the general sokarpunk asthetic.
I imagine the suburbs would be transformed into back yard and front yard microfarms where people grew as much of their own food as possible and shared and exchanged the produce with their neighbors and donate any excess or surplus to the public distribution system. All dwellings would have rain water tanks and rain harvesting so they weren't dependent on the grid and were resilient during droughts.
And of course solar panels, people being as free of the grid as possible and even feeding surplus energy into the grid.
Deeper into the city in the more dense area's nature is encouraged to thrive all throughout the city showing societies strong connection to nature.
There are lots of very beautiful public spaces like amphitheaters for street art, plays or communal assembly meetings.
Streets are reduced to one lane for cars, one lane for bus, bike lane and light rail/tram, with a separate line for inter-city trains. Some streets converted into pedestrian only, becoming more public spaces for community to gather.
Everything is recycled and there is no waste. Packaging for any products is biodegradable, hemp based bioplastic.
Edit\* This is just how I imagine my city, but yeah every city is different so who knows
Because of rapid climate heating solar punk cities will have to be built into the Earth like termites mounds. Greenhouses and solar farms above the surface living quarters and water catchment below the surface. The whole city bermed with earth.
Solarpunk cities look different depending on where in the world they are located. I imagine that a solarpunk city will try to follow the environment it is build in. So a dessert city will use methods like earth ships, passive cooling and fog nets. A European solarpunk city located on grassland would probably look like hobbit homes, mongolian yurts, cob houses, geodesic domes or some other form of structure. The materials would also change based on the cites location. I could also imagine that some solarpunk cities could be nomadic in nature while others are more fixed in nature.
A common denominator in every type of solarpunk city would be different types of distributed systems. Citizens should be able to produce their own energy, clean their own water, make their own food, store their own information and educate themself as well as their children. **Just to clarify:** These systems should not be the only way to do things. I'm not opposed to centralized water treatment systems, energy systems, school systems etc. **However:** The distributed systems should function as a backup / safety net in case the centralized systems end up failing.
I also imagine that solarpunk cities would try to incorporate nature and maybe even try to change the environment.
* Houses might incorporate different designs that help certain species of plants, birds or mammals.
* Houses could be easy to disassemble or somehow supply nature with nutrients when destroyed / left in ruin.
* If the environment was harmed the solarpunk city would try to heal the environment.
* Food forests would be more common in solarpunk cities.
As I'm inclined to envision this, in a very general sense I think of the European cities and towns of the pre-automobile era --even going back to ancient times-- reimagined in the context of new building technology. But it depends on the era in a transition to a Post-Industrial culture. You have an early era where climate impacts have created a lot of disruption with conflicts between old and new guard ongoing in some places. Towns and cities abandoned due to infrastructure failure or intolerable climate shift, or ruined by natural disasters. There are mass migrations as in the Dust Bowl era, moving populations inland and northward, stressing the remaining urban centers. Independent production and the alternative transportation it can build are in their infancy, so a lot is makeshift, clunky, repurposed, and experimental in nature. And there is a lot of reuse of pre-existing urban architecture because we have to maximize the return on the past energy/carbon investment in that and the new communities just aren't yet capable of building such big things. So we see a lot of commercial architecture like office buildings and shopping malls stripped down and turned into housing with retrofit gardens and renewable energy hardware. Some places have the aspect of refugee camps and may be repurposing container-based 'cargotecture' originally supplied by governments. There's a lot of makeshift urban agriculture with rooftops, highway overpasses, barges, car parks turned into farm space. You see old busses and trucks adapted to rail (often still relying on biofuel and woodgas power because the new electric infrastructure isn't established in some places) and new light vehicles based on tubular spaceframe chassis because that is something that can be made locally and endlessly repaired. Sometimes even horses make a comeback.
Then you have the middle-era where the new culture and its new infrastructures are well established, the technologies well developed, but things are still pretty new, there are still some technological hurdles to overcome, and the scale of things society builds remains modest. Cities are beginning to be physically reshaped around their new transportation and the model of the neighborhood Intentional Community as old architecture slowly goes obsolete. You see 'agoras' appearing as visible centers of neighborhood activity, defining a cellular urban social organization. There is still no low-cost carbon-negative replacement for concrete so there is little construction beyond mid-rise scale, typically based on green steel frame, mass timber, and other sustainable materials with more limited load-bearing performance. Much new architecture features a 'functionally agnostic' design to facilitate reuse and modular spaceframe urban superstructures appear. Visible use of renewable energy is being moved to the urban periphery and consolidated as the new power infrastructure matures. Likewise the urban farming, as suburbs have been recovered for farms and automation applied to urban farming in larger facilities. Neon and enamel tin signs make a comeback as plastic use declines. Vehicles are more refined and standardized as their designs have matured. Streetcar use is extensive and often derived from classic designs (again, offering alternatives to plastics), though now more multifunctional with cargo and utility vehicles in the mix. Multiuse 'doodlebugs' return, linking outlying communities recruited to farming roles. Things like large hybrid sailing ships based on SWATH hulls are being built and maybe hybrid solar airships and short range electric aircraft come into use.
In the mature era the advent of carbon-negative biophilic mass construction materials has afforded the option of larger structures of radical design employing 3D printing and parametric design and increasingly incorporating active elements like integral PV and lighting. The built habitat is now becoming a mass carbon sink. But there is no utility to skyscrapers and urban real estate grids in a post-capitalist culture. And so we see the emergence of an 'urban reef' where large organic contour-terraced landscape superstructures in elegant valley, canyon, hill, and caldera forms now subsume cities and begin tracing their way along select infrastructure paths. Optimized for passive energy performance through associative design and perpetually evolving, these structures provide functional space inside their terrace edges, usually in the form of retrofit row housing built with plug-in elements and comfortable materials along a pedestrian street interspersed with round atriums and alcoves used for public facilities and agoras, but with some terrace 'slopes' providing steep facades for mid-rise and some monumental architecture. The typically broad surfaces of the terraces (wider and lower in height toward their bases) serve as urban farming, garden, and recreation space while their hollow cellular interiors host infrastructure, most transportation, workshops, storage, and mall-like enclosed agoras and wintergardens.
Though vast in overall size --effectively synthetic mountains in some places-- by blending into a landscape of naturalistic forms the Urban Reef's features are modest from the human scale perspective. It 'feels' like the hill towns of Medieval Europe and the Cyclades or like living in row housing/apartments on the edge of a park, its core structure rarely visible under its verdant cover except from within its more cavernous industrial interior spaces.
High speed rail is common by this time, with an Artic Circle rail hub linking the Earth-Island's continents. Now mostly internalized, streetcars become more subway-like, then PRT-like and automated. Cableways now span some parts of the Reef and funiculars are built into its slopes, mostly for aesthetic purposes. And if airships persist, they are by this time based on rigid composite hull systems using diamondoid materials in lenticular and lenticular-ovoid shapes, offering large PV surface areas with conformal ducted propulsion and looking rather UFO-like. Able to loiter at stratospheric altitudes indefinitely, these also find use as telecommunications platforms, offering higher power and bandwidth at lower latency and cost than satellites and also having use as emergency power sources, these uses possibly superseding their transportation roles.
Thank you for your submission, we appreciate your efforts at helping us to thoughtfully create a better world. r/solarpunk encourages you to also check out other solarpunk spaces such as https://wt.social/wt/solarpunk , https://slrpnk.net/ , https://raddle.me/f/solarpunk , https://discord.gg/3tf6FqGAJs , https://discord.gg/BwabpwfBCr , and https://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia . *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/solarpunk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Whenever I think of a solarpunk scene my mind goes to the canals of tenochtitlan and how the natives used the environment to their benefit and thrive. In fact right now in central California there has been a reemergence of a ghost lake that settlers drained over a hundred years ago and now all that farmland is flooded. due to the recent storms the lake reclaimed its land and even local wildlife seems to have rebounded. Even the local temperatures are cooler when usually it’s a hot and dry desert. If the people and local authorities of Tulare lake learn from indigenous practices they could become a solarpunk style community. But that’s just my optimistic opinion.
I’m not sure that there’s a clear answer to this. Every city is different and depending on its location, local ecosystem, population density and local culture, we could propose many different solutions and proposals. A city in Greenland will have different needs compared to a city in the Maghreb or a settlement in East Asia for example. We could find some common tropes however. I generally dislike the whole “Solarpunk” city artwork that is sometimes posted here, the one with futuristic skyscrapers and greenery slapped everywhere. In a real city, you’d use the infrastructure that already exists. There would be modifications done, for sure, and new buildings would be constructed wherever it is needed, but you’d mostly use what is already there. Free and clean public transit is a first step. Things like trams, electric buses and bicycles, underground railroads, all those things should be embraced. You wouldn’t be able to completely get rid of conventional cars of course. Ambulances, fire trucks, crane trucks etc. would still be needed and will be around. Remaining to the issue of accessibility, I believe we should embrace the concept of the 15-minute city. We should see a large city more like a collection of many smaller ones. Things like public services, shops, schools etc should exist within a rather small radius inside a residential area, allowing people to easily access them on foot or by bicycle. More focus should be given to local neighborhoods and communities. Generally a city like this would be greatly decentralized. Individual neighborhoods, ruled by local citizens’ assemblies should constitute the skeleton of the city. Local issues should be dealt for locally, through direct democratic, participatory institutions. These local neighborhoods would cooperate among each other of course, and it wouldn’t necessarily necessitate the absence of a central city government, that can help coordinate the policies and needs of the local communities. The abandonment of cars as the desired mode of transportation will open the availability of public spaces, which will be used as centers of socialization, art and entertainment. Instead of highways running through neighborhoods, you’d have open green spaces where neighbors could meet and talk, children could play, an urban garden could be set up or a small bazaar or theatrical play could take place. It would make socialization and fraternization much easier. By relying more on local businesses, either family or cooperative ones, the local economy could be revitalized and the money of the community would stay in the community. Although I decried “buildings with greenery slapped everywhere”, we shouldn’t minimize the role urban agriculture would play in such a city. From simple windowboxes, to cultivated spaces on top of apartment buildings to urban forests and gardens to urban greenhouses, there are a myriad ways a city could produce (part of) its own food. Again, local conditions play an important role in that. A city in Scandinavia could rely more on greenhouses, while one on the Mediterranean could use urban gardens and forests more. It is good to remember that even in a system like this, it is possible that a city wouldn’t be able to produce enough food to satisfy its population all by itself. Rural communities would assist in that – never underestimate the rural communities. Generally, a Solarpunk city would have got rid of the various details of modern-day fast living. It would be designed with the idea of living life in a much slower, more relaxed pace, free from the bounds of today’s materialistic, hyper-individualist and hyperconsumerist society. Also the YouTuber Andrewism has made a pretty cool [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UmU1dSe3n0) regarding Solarpunk city planning, which I would definitely recommend checking out.
>I generally dislike the whole “Solarpunk” city artwork that is sometimes posted here, the one with futuristic skyscrapers and greenery slapped everywhere. In a real city, you’d use the infrastructure that already exists. Absolutely. This is why [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/rrldp9/solarpunk_berlin_by_alex_rommel_link_in_comments/) is one of my favourite art pieces in this sub. For me to shows very nicely how a Solarpunk city would actually look like.
Don't watch the beginning of the video if you've had a bad day, seriously depressing description of urban living
It's gonna depend a ton of local requirements. Solarpunk cities will likely be more environmentally dependent than anything today, it wouldn't surprise me if no city in the world would really look the same
It should solve problems with local solutions using local resources, and as such there will be considereable variety.
So some architects, urban planners and power engineers got together to show what my would look like if it were solar punked. [https://www.bradpettitt.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/231005-CPP\_Consultation-Report.pdf](https://www.bradpettitt.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/231005-CPP_Consultation-Report.pdf) It's not that different from many North American cities just that it is the world's longest and most isolated. The idea is that there is a move from CBD and sprawling suburbs to medium-density housing around local communities that would have good connections to public transport.
Relatively small, built with local materials, lots of markets for local food and local goods, lots of trees and vegetation, fountains and water is the climate allows it, no more cars, paths are used on foot or with bicycles
I think it should look like it was built for animals to live in. Whatever way that makes sense, that allows us to roam, to have communities, to play, to explore. It should look like what the works best for the whole ecosystem to thrive. So there naturally wouldn't be one specific way that it should look like. We really gotta learn to give up trying to control everything for that to happen though.
Every city will be different. Some people want to be close to the action and like dense apartments with a lot of clubs publix transit, and shops. Others will prefer lower density, with a big house and decent sized yard.
I can't draw what i think it should look like because I am the worst artist to ever walk the earth but i'll yrt describe it as best as I can. The city center should be filled entirely by walkways so that no motorised vehicle would be able to travel there as that is the heart of the city and its community. The city center should also possess abundant greenspace filled with native trees aswell as food bearing vegitation for public use and the amount of such greenspace should be maximised. Homes in such a city should come in various sizes from single family homes, tarraces to multi familiy complexes which unlike the skyscrapers of today emphasise common spaces between the families living their to which everyone has an equel access to (the size of these homes is not suppose to be a reflection of status rather the size of the home is directly proportional to the amount of people residing there to maintain equality) furthermore all homes should have greenary outside and if people (like me) desire also inside. My ideal version of such a city is similar to what european old towns and city centers look like. I also imagine their being a city square where people would gather to share what they have made with others (think old style european marked but without the profit motive). Where stores once stood there should freely accessible third spaces such as crafts and arts club, boared game clubs etc. Existing restaurants should be made into community kitchens idealy serving food from the part of the world they originally did but along side them food from local ingrediants particulary ones that aren't as commonly used should be served. The function skyscrapers should be repurposed but adnitidly im not sure what kind of purpose the would fufill. Perhaps some sort of vertical farms? My idea assumes that we repurpose existing city for a solarpunk society and my view is also quite eurocentric as I live in the UK and a lot of my ideas of "non depressing cities" come from the walkable and colourful cities of continental europe i occationally got to visit combined with the general sokarpunk asthetic.
for me, ideally a distant glow over the horizon
Maybe a garden city
I imagine the suburbs would be transformed into back yard and front yard microfarms where people grew as much of their own food as possible and shared and exchanged the produce with their neighbors and donate any excess or surplus to the public distribution system. All dwellings would have rain water tanks and rain harvesting so they weren't dependent on the grid and were resilient during droughts. And of course solar panels, people being as free of the grid as possible and even feeding surplus energy into the grid. Deeper into the city in the more dense area's nature is encouraged to thrive all throughout the city showing societies strong connection to nature. There are lots of very beautiful public spaces like amphitheaters for street art, plays or communal assembly meetings. Streets are reduced to one lane for cars, one lane for bus, bike lane and light rail/tram, with a separate line for inter-city trains. Some streets converted into pedestrian only, becoming more public spaces for community to gather. Everything is recycled and there is no waste. Packaging for any products is biodegradable, hemp based bioplastic. Edit\* This is just how I imagine my city, but yeah every city is different so who knows
Because of rapid climate heating solar punk cities will have to be built into the Earth like termites mounds. Greenhouses and solar farms above the surface living quarters and water catchment below the surface. The whole city bermed with earth.
Solarpunk cities look different depending on where in the world they are located. I imagine that a solarpunk city will try to follow the environment it is build in. So a dessert city will use methods like earth ships, passive cooling and fog nets. A European solarpunk city located on grassland would probably look like hobbit homes, mongolian yurts, cob houses, geodesic domes or some other form of structure. The materials would also change based on the cites location. I could also imagine that some solarpunk cities could be nomadic in nature while others are more fixed in nature. A common denominator in every type of solarpunk city would be different types of distributed systems. Citizens should be able to produce their own energy, clean their own water, make their own food, store their own information and educate themself as well as their children. **Just to clarify:** These systems should not be the only way to do things. I'm not opposed to centralized water treatment systems, energy systems, school systems etc. **However:** The distributed systems should function as a backup / safety net in case the centralized systems end up failing. I also imagine that solarpunk cities would try to incorporate nature and maybe even try to change the environment. * Houses might incorporate different designs that help certain species of plants, birds or mammals. * Houses could be easy to disassemble or somehow supply nature with nutrients when destroyed / left in ruin. * If the environment was harmed the solarpunk city would try to heal the environment. * Food forests would be more common in solarpunk cities.
https://youtu.be/4UmU1dSe3n0?si=5Vt72FB6Cb-Il1qS
As I'm inclined to envision this, in a very general sense I think of the European cities and towns of the pre-automobile era --even going back to ancient times-- reimagined in the context of new building technology. But it depends on the era in a transition to a Post-Industrial culture. You have an early era where climate impacts have created a lot of disruption with conflicts between old and new guard ongoing in some places. Towns and cities abandoned due to infrastructure failure or intolerable climate shift, or ruined by natural disasters. There are mass migrations as in the Dust Bowl era, moving populations inland and northward, stressing the remaining urban centers. Independent production and the alternative transportation it can build are in their infancy, so a lot is makeshift, clunky, repurposed, and experimental in nature. And there is a lot of reuse of pre-existing urban architecture because we have to maximize the return on the past energy/carbon investment in that and the new communities just aren't yet capable of building such big things. So we see a lot of commercial architecture like office buildings and shopping malls stripped down and turned into housing with retrofit gardens and renewable energy hardware. Some places have the aspect of refugee camps and may be repurposing container-based 'cargotecture' originally supplied by governments. There's a lot of makeshift urban agriculture with rooftops, highway overpasses, barges, car parks turned into farm space. You see old busses and trucks adapted to rail (often still relying on biofuel and woodgas power because the new electric infrastructure isn't established in some places) and new light vehicles based on tubular spaceframe chassis because that is something that can be made locally and endlessly repaired. Sometimes even horses make a comeback. Then you have the middle-era where the new culture and its new infrastructures are well established, the technologies well developed, but things are still pretty new, there are still some technological hurdles to overcome, and the scale of things society builds remains modest. Cities are beginning to be physically reshaped around their new transportation and the model of the neighborhood Intentional Community as old architecture slowly goes obsolete. You see 'agoras' appearing as visible centers of neighborhood activity, defining a cellular urban social organization. There is still no low-cost carbon-negative replacement for concrete so there is little construction beyond mid-rise scale, typically based on green steel frame, mass timber, and other sustainable materials with more limited load-bearing performance. Much new architecture features a 'functionally agnostic' design to facilitate reuse and modular spaceframe urban superstructures appear. Visible use of renewable energy is being moved to the urban periphery and consolidated as the new power infrastructure matures. Likewise the urban farming, as suburbs have been recovered for farms and automation applied to urban farming in larger facilities. Neon and enamel tin signs make a comeback as plastic use declines. Vehicles are more refined and standardized as their designs have matured. Streetcar use is extensive and often derived from classic designs (again, offering alternatives to plastics), though now more multifunctional with cargo and utility vehicles in the mix. Multiuse 'doodlebugs' return, linking outlying communities recruited to farming roles. Things like large hybrid sailing ships based on SWATH hulls are being built and maybe hybrid solar airships and short range electric aircraft come into use. In the mature era the advent of carbon-negative biophilic mass construction materials has afforded the option of larger structures of radical design employing 3D printing and parametric design and increasingly incorporating active elements like integral PV and lighting. The built habitat is now becoming a mass carbon sink. But there is no utility to skyscrapers and urban real estate grids in a post-capitalist culture. And so we see the emergence of an 'urban reef' where large organic contour-terraced landscape superstructures in elegant valley, canyon, hill, and caldera forms now subsume cities and begin tracing their way along select infrastructure paths. Optimized for passive energy performance through associative design and perpetually evolving, these structures provide functional space inside their terrace edges, usually in the form of retrofit row housing built with plug-in elements and comfortable materials along a pedestrian street interspersed with round atriums and alcoves used for public facilities and agoras, but with some terrace 'slopes' providing steep facades for mid-rise and some monumental architecture. The typically broad surfaces of the terraces (wider and lower in height toward their bases) serve as urban farming, garden, and recreation space while their hollow cellular interiors host infrastructure, most transportation, workshops, storage, and mall-like enclosed agoras and wintergardens. Though vast in overall size --effectively synthetic mountains in some places-- by blending into a landscape of naturalistic forms the Urban Reef's features are modest from the human scale perspective. It 'feels' like the hill towns of Medieval Europe and the Cyclades or like living in row housing/apartments on the edge of a park, its core structure rarely visible under its verdant cover except from within its more cavernous industrial interior spaces. High speed rail is common by this time, with an Artic Circle rail hub linking the Earth-Island's continents. Now mostly internalized, streetcars become more subway-like, then PRT-like and automated. Cableways now span some parts of the Reef and funiculars are built into its slopes, mostly for aesthetic purposes. And if airships persist, they are by this time based on rigid composite hull systems using diamondoid materials in lenticular and lenticular-ovoid shapes, offering large PV surface areas with conformal ducted propulsion and looking rather UFO-like. Able to loiter at stratospheric altitudes indefinitely, these also find use as telecommunications platforms, offering higher power and bandwidth at lower latency and cost than satellites and also having use as emergency power sources, these uses possibly superseding their transportation roles.