Real Solar Punk is Smart Land Use, Not Gimmick Skyscaper Farms

If y'all actually watch the video before commenting you'll realize its a land use video.
Hydroponics and aquaponics are fine and I even showed a normal greenhouse and said that its good, but thats not the point I'm making.

It feels like this is a very divisive issue within sustainability circles. The way I view things, vertical farms and close-by rural farmland are not mutually exclusive and we will in reality need both solutions. Green exteriors of buildings aren't completely stupid either, but those ugly CGs and the few realized examples with trees and bushes on balconies aren't how we're supposed to do 'em.

You can have a vertical farm that is only one story that's why it's called 'vertical' and not 'multi-story'. The industry is still in its early stages but I believe that they can make it work and to do so more environmentally friendly than conventional farming, in a fossil-less energy mix that is. The big advantage is that your resource and product losses can be kept to a minimum as fertilizers, pesticides/fungicides, external water use and imported pest-killing bugs are either not needed at all or at a fraction of the normal rate. The trouble is the price of energy, its content of fossil fuels, solving pollination and the cost of buying land and building on it against the very slim margins on salads, tomatoes and strawberries. I hope that it might even be possible to breed or engineer crops that will mature without needing to be pollinated (like hens lay eggs without being fertilized) and make shorter crops to perhaps one day cut into the industry of field crops like cereal grains and soybeans.

However, the existence of such vertical farms does not necessitate the end of all other kinds of farming. Greenhouses, orchards, agroforestry, food forests and field agriculture will still be necessary. They will complement the vertical farms in the things they do better.

The ugly buildings with short trees on the balconies are ugly and logistically incomprehensible so obviously we shouldn't do them. But just as we all want to utilize the surfaces in our cities and towns better towards; resource capture, socializing, density/amenities/transit/mobility and beautification we should also aim towards more greenery and urban permaculture. That would entail using more but crucially not all open unused surfaces towards plants. From the roof to the walls to the sidewalks and street margins, following the flow towards the gutter (perhaps even replacing the gutter) and following the flow along the street towards the next lowest point shall we place appropriate plants to soak up some of the water let the rest percolate down into the groundwater aquifer.

On some roofs there could be room for 'green roofs' using mosses that aren't actually in contact with the building proper, or we could have rooftop gardens/greenhouses/apiaries. On some building walls there could be climbing plants attached that compared to a few trees on balconies are much better when looking at maintenance and risk analysis.
The streets and roads should not just have green margins with lonely-looking trees of a few imported, quite possibly invasive, species - surrounded by grass lawns that need to be cut using lawnmowers. No, instead the streets and roads should still have those margins but with a design such that the water that flows over buildings and the pavement is redirected towards these green areas. They should be made to have a variety of mostly native plants but also non-invasive non-native plants designed for the purposes of; water catchment and percolation into the ground, shade, urban food forests, and lastly, decoration. Leave the grass lawns for the city parks. The streets/roads should also be designed with the flow of water along the street/road as well. Such that water doesn't pool up in puddles on paved surfaces but rather is always redirected towards green areas or streams, lakes or the shore.

Solar punk really is about finding the most appropriate set of solutions whether or not it is high-tech is irrelevant because solar punk can embrace both high-tech and low-tech solutions at once. For this reason, I feel like a lot of urbanists are leaving out great talking points from urban permaculture from their content. Is vertical farming permaculture? No, but doing it in tandem with rural farmland following permaculture principles close by to cities along with some more industrious farming practices here and there will still help us reduce our encroachment into nature. From there we can do more rewilding; rewetting of wetlands, refreezing of permafrost and reforesting of deforested areas and so on.

Sorry for making an essay!

So your idea of a sustainable future was born 170 years or so ago, and it hasn't emerged yet?

Truthfully, the stream engine was invented in Greece about 3000 years ago.

We can move toward sustainability in cities, but for production must be brought inside. A building can host park space also.

So your idea of a sustainable future was born 170 years or so ago, and it hasn't emerged yet?

Truthfully, the stream engine was invented in Greece about 3000 years ago.

I still support vertical farms because they don't use up land that could go back to its natural state. And vertical farms put the food supply closer to the people who need it.

Yeah I recently had the thought, derived from annoyance of the amount of trucks on the road, that they should have their own highways…then I realized that’s what trains are

Real solar punk is stopping suburbs from turning meadows into the backrooms

Once again the solution is to do what the Europeans do

My brain is hurting, i would try to understand one thing first before making a video criticizing it. He clearly doesn't understand what is hi saying.
The whole point of having a vertical farm is to conserve land/space, and be more efficient about our water and nutrients usage. It's more environmentally friendly and efficient, plus it's also safer. Instead of farming thousands of acers of land, we can instead do it vertically to conserve space. Do ur research before criticizing the concept.

This guy didn't do his research, do u think we plant plats on the floor? He's obviously a Beatle brain

Proves rail transit and bicycles are a scheme to herd others into solar agricultural serfdom.

Solarpunk is what happens when artists and engineers dont talk to each other. It's just a splattering of tech from ancient to futuristic because of "aesthetic." It doesn't make me feel better about the shit future we'll endure. We need to make intelligent decisions regarding the places we use and inhabit NOW.

Green belt the suburbs boom problem fixed!!!!

What about the use of solar-powered drones for sustainable and ecologically-safe delivery of light goods? I worry that the infrastructure needed for trains (while certainly able to be more sustainable than that of cars and trucks) may be less sustainable and ecologically damaging than that of drones. All that is needed for drones is a hangar with amenities and landing pads. Maybe they're harmful to birds though, I dunno how having drones in the sky might effect the migration patterns of flying species, and I assume that the regulation and zoning for areas whete drones can and can't be flown would be a bit tough to come up with and incentivize. I think trains are grest though too, because there's already lots of infrastructure for them (infrastructure that may need to be updated but idk) and you could easily slap on enough solar panels, and CO2 filters, and whatnot to make them zero-emissions, and it's better than having a million trucks in any given area.
In any case, if drones are used, I think they should be used lightly, again because of ecological concerns.

The Japan and Netherland work this

idk man, vertical farms worked on minecraft

Australia is criminally under using our rail network

Yes!

I wonder if anybody knows that wide-scale agriculture has environmental impacts beyond just the fact we have trucks transporting the produce for some reason.

Honestly the biggest difference I've noticed between using public transit in the USA vs Asia is that in Asia I was never worried a mentally ill homeless person might stab me with a rusty screwdriver.

Making only single family homes while shoving all food production into condensed multistory buildings, truly the most sensible future of all.

Or just don't eat meat as livestock use 77% of our farmland, although I agree that we shouldn't have long distance shipping on trucks

I would not throw vertical farms completely away. There might be certain situations where vertical farms can be useful: Vertical Farms allow to reduce the space needed for farmland. Farmland needs tons of land. Thus, it can be useful to find ways to reduce the needed farmland if necessary. Especially the more anarchist or "city state" solutions and ideas can greatly benefit from vertical farming. And this might enable smaller independent communities. (and a greater diversity of different communities.)

To me the interesting thing is how vertical farms were hyped as feel good sciency stories, then taken at face value as a panacea.

Whenever I'm in Philly for PAX the Readington Market is one of my favourite places to frequent.

I really dislike the ai image aesthetic for solar punk all over the internet that includes these futuristic tech based designs as it’s not realistic and we set the wrong example that we’ll only disappoint when the general public are on board with solarpunk but only with the idea of in the future with these cool designs, instead of saying no these things around us already are solarpunk and we need to utilise them now.

Holy fuck how did I not realize in my mind the connection between suburban sprawl and the destruction of rural lands near cities.

my problem is that the definition of Sustainability is overly misinterpreted that having solar panels in the house is the definition of "SuSTaiNaBLE"

"Innovations". What a great video.

This vision is amazing! More please!

I like vertical farm buildings because theyre very pretty, but lets not pretend that its solving social issues.

just build a train

Also, if you want vertical farms, just use electrical energy to make chemicals and feed it to microorganisms. This will allow you to have a lot of high protein materials.

Eh. Sure, use more rail. But suburbs are hardly an impediment. Food doesn't mind a long commute.

Only problem with trains is it corporate owed they dont care about safety. Still need trucks to get them the rest of the way. Also solarpunk is for destroying capitalism just as much as for the environment.

My trouble, as someone in the vastly suburby North East Texas area, is how are we supposed to un-stroad / un-suburb? Over just my own life I have watched the empty spaces that were farms, either active or long abandoned and regrown into trees, get replaced by endless suburb sprawl as master-plan cookie cutter stamp-pads of big box stores and a bucket of strip malls and pad sites are developed at a previously unused exit, followed by all the land as far as one can see being painted in with STARTING IN THE HIGH 400's homes.

Short of an especially effective apocalypse you will never be able to bulldoze these places to realign them or rewild them because the cities that suddenly had their population increase by %1200 can't afford anything that threatens to make the property value arrow not point up and to the right, much less all the investors- I mean residents. All the residents, who had a reasonable desire to own a home and now live three rush-hour hours away from their job, twenty driving minutes from any kind of groceries or schools and an entire dimension away from any kind of public transit at all, down in the center of squiggly little development roads that have Great Natural Amenities that turn out to be a concrete walking path that crosses hundred of roads but fails to lead anywhere outside the main faux gates.

What if we grew crops in our unused front-yards? What if we introduced ponds which collect roof rain runoff?

I will counterpoint that food can be generated efficiently inside cities as well. Havana provee this is the case. It doesn't need a large protion of land area, just greenhouses, labor, and cutting edge agriculture.

That said, we should pursue both city agriculture snd efficient land use and transportation. They are complimentary, both for foodnsecurity and sustainability.

i wouldn't mind if buildings put a little effort to have native plants on their buildings. help the local ecosystem

If there was an apocalypse that reduced the human population then one day 500 years later trains would work again

Soulless suburban sprawl

i agree with this but i could never live in a city i'd rather live on a farm and that cost a lot of money with land value now

We get it, you don't want to live in a suburb. But lots of people do.

You'd have to address why the old farmers chose to sell off their land in the first place.

OMG PINEAPPLE JUNIORS??????

you lack the knowledge of suspressed energy types of free energy and only relate a future solarpunk to the advancement level of today.
What you suggest might be a solution for now tho, so stick to the idea of fossil fuels if u want . . . but an actual advanced cvilisation will not be depended on fossil fuels like oil etc. anymore.

The one thing that most obvious in Dear Alice is that its a capitalist society with branding and it took a capitalist company to commission the work. Also everything is easy with magic energy bottles, antigrav and super cheap robotics. I don't think its impossible but nothing is possible for post capitalists.

The one most obvious thing about solarpunk is that it almost all suburbs when you get down to their proposed designs. Vertical farming predates solarpunk by a decade or so and is very capitalist not post capitalist.

Sorry your lack of research is epic. 1. Vertical farms use hydroponics so the root problem is rubbish. Literally, the excess roots are harvested after each crop from the hydroponic system if they are not perennial. The roots, leaves, etc are dropped down a chute to a composter and/or bio-digester that powers half the lights. There is generally no roots, soil or water in contact with the structure.
2. Vertical transfer of crops use basket conveyer belts not big elevators. The elevators are used for staff, equipment and some specialty crops.
3. Most vertical farms are built in countries that do not have a farming hinterland at all. Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the middle east. In the latter they can build on the desert but often the city does not own the adjacent desert! Also since the structure needs to be shaded and sealed to prevent water loss, vertical farming still works.
4. The loading dock are low traffic the food is packaged and again delivered by conveyer belt systems. Most is consumed within 1 km. It also does not import lots of fertilizer because the on site basement composters and bio-digesters convert all waste into fertilizer. A 1% top up is three or four trucks a year.
5. Rail was abandoned because it is triple handling of cargo. Loading a truck at the farm, then loading the train from the truck, then unloading the train to another truck in the city. These create bottle necks that slow flow. Post WW2 with lots of trucks were cheap/ free; skipping the train became and remains profitable. You do not have or can afford to build new freight terminals in most cities. Most are bankrupt any way.
6. Containers don't fix this. No-one built the rail to road transfer points on the city edge, that was part of the design. Again they are huge bottle necks.
7. Commuter rail and cargo rail compete for track space with the politically powerful commuters winning the political battle. Also freight rail is nosey. No one has invented silent shunting. They get banned from cities at night because of noise pollution. Again trucks are quieter and more flexible.
8. The suburbs are not a hybrid of city and country. They are flexible private houses with integral park space for the kids. High rise, etc, never has safe, legally flexible and adequate green space. This green space is required by kids and green thumbed hobbyists. They also survive war better than the alternatives and are easier to evacuate in an emergency.
9. The vertical farm buildings are built to be corrosion resistant, stainless steel rebar, or basalt, or corrosion pacification. The high corrosion buildings you cite are invariable because of government mandated flaws in maintenance or design. The odds are that photo of rotten concrete was a train station. Everything is grouted anyway.
I corresponded with the inventers of vertical farms from the first months but I'm in Australia where few are built so I could not get in the industry.
Lastly there are people working on long distance conveyer belt systems for both boxes and baskets that may beat both truck and rail in the near future. The same conveyers that sort parcels at an Amazon depot can run in weather proof tunnels and elevated skybridges between terminals, vertical farms and malls, etc.