I'm planning out a photobash (hopefully part of a set) showcasing options and possibilities for a more solarpunk world. My goal for these is for them to be a more practical and actionable view of a solarpunk society, more than just green skyscrapers or super scifi-looking places. I'm mostly setting these in a post-crumbles setting, with a focus on rebuilding in a more thoughtful and inclusive way. I want to try to illustrate solarpunk concepts and themes directly.
I've done a co-op salvaging technology for reuse, and a high speed railway, and I'd like to take a shot at showing the places where people live next - just a street at a time, so not every scene will check every box, but I'd very much like to source ideas to include while I'm still planning layouts.
I've got a few different elements I'd like to include already (again maybe not all in one scene):
- More colorful buildings, emphasizing buildings as a canvas for art from graffiti to commissioned murals
- Lots and lots of trees. I like the idea of a street/path layout that provides each building with some kind of vehicle access (for firetrucks and ambulances and handicapped people, along with day-to-day things like moving trucks, large items deliveries, construction vehicles) while converting many roads to forested bike and pedestrian paths. At the very least, more tree-lined streets
- Streetcars/streetcar cables overhead (emphasizing public transit)
- options for a Third Place, where people can be outside home or work without having to be customers or tresspassers (I really don't have any of these yet)
- Alternate uses of existing structures and resources; I want to avoid the feeling of a scratch-built or utopian future. I'm currently working on a parking garage converted to living space with colorful facades between the concrete, and a farm, park, or forest (I haven't decided yet) on the roof
- The tech salvage co-op from last time delivering a laptop or running wires, building a meshnet
- Green energy, solar and wind in realistic locations (so not much wind in the cityscapes, I suspect) especially in a setting where infrastructure has been neglected and rebuilt
- Alternatives to corporations, and an emphasis on society being run by and for regular people
- Alternatives to cars; bicycles, rickshaws (pedal-powered and electric),
- Fruit trees, public gardens
If you have any additional elements, ideas for scenes/combos of elements, or specific ways you think things should be shown, and especially practical considerations, please let me know. It's a lot easier to work those in while I'm planning rather than trying to work on it once layers are all tangled and perspectived.
It's been awhile since I did proper full colors and textures photobashes, and I'm still working on the more loose/casual style, but I'm getting a bit better as I go, I'm happy to take ideas.
Also, I'd also like to do some more non-city scenes, rewilding, smaller communities linked by public transit, but don't have any specifics yet.
Agreed about the tagging - if doesn't have to be covert, if there isn't the same kind of urgency, people might be able to do more elaborate designs and experiment more. I've read people talking about the thrill and secret identity feel of tagging, and I feel like that might be kind of diminished here. Like in the streets I've seen IRL that are set aside for graffiti, I don't see as many marker tags, though some folks online and some of the local taggers seem to only hit government property or advertisements, so they might be reluctant to cover another artist's work? In a solarpunk society that style might suffer from a touch of habitat loss.
Either way, I want to show this society isn't one to strangle itself for appearances or property values. People would dress how they want, decorate their spaces how they want. I think there's more punk in 'solarpunk' than I realized before reading more of the fiction and finding this space, and I'd like to show it in these scenes.
Of course it does mean making bonus art to cover walls within the art I'm already making, but if I think of it as environmental storytelling I'll probably come up with some designs.