Hi, recently I've been making these pictures/photobashes of different places in a solarpunk world, trying to demonstrate technologies or other possibilities, or values like reuse that I consider to be solarpunk. I'm working on some cityscapes but I've been thinking a lot about rural places since that's where I'm from, and how they might change with some of the societal crumbles and contractions I feel like are impending. In my grandparents' time, the region where I grew up was lots of small villages, usually bunched up around water and local industry, with farms spread out beyond that. With cars, people have spread out in these sprawling bedroom communities that are becoming ever more dense with people. Gas and groceries were 40 minutes away by car, and I feel like most people I knew drove an hour each way for work.
I wanted to do a scene sort of showing how things might change in rural areas if cars became impractical (due to shortages etc) and how things could be rebuilt better. I have a sense of what I want to include:
- Dense village surrounded by farms and forest, an abandoned mcmansion or large house far enough out to be impractical
- High speed rail access to the village
- Solar panels
- Waterwheels
- Farms
- Algae farming
For the farms, I could drop in bits and pieces of photos of farmland and make it work, I worked on a farm for a few years and feel comfortable enough for that. But I suspect folks who know more about farming, and especially folks who are into solarpunk visions of the future, might have stronger opinions on how it should be done, so I figure now is a good time to ask. What would you like to see? What should be done differently than we do now? Anything from layouts to the size of fields, to specific crops would be useful.
Edit: this'll be in North America, by the way. (Probably northern US States though I haven't picked one) The surrounding trees, general style of mountain, and the buildings will be based on that assumption anyways.
edit 2: here's the current rough draft to give you an iea of the space I'm planning around
Thanks!
I'd like to see this integrated into a process where the wood chips are obtained from a process where they are being produced anyway. I'm a little doubtful about modern attempts at putting a lot of energy for creating wood chips (or also biochar) sometimes with single-purpose processes. Can we use wood chips from other industries? Can we get the biochar from the wood fires in some farms and factories? Wherever they are cutting or planing wood into boards they also produce wood chips. Now I'd prefer they didn't sell these chips off to turn them into horrible furniture plate as it's done now - it's not sustainable and deteriorates after a few years, whereas wood furniture can last more than a person's lifetime. In some solarpunk future I wish every village or village-sized community had forest/trees dispersed between fields, and a saw mill that can turn them into boards, beams and wood chips - I'd rather not travel further than a few km, and also don't want to cut my own wood and chips (I'm old and tired).