Hello World, I'm Tomasino.
This is Solar Punk Promps,
a series for writers where we discuss Solar Punk,
a movement that imagines a world where technology is used
for the good of the planet.
In this series,
we spend each episode exploring a single story prompt,
adding some commentary, some inspirations,
and some considerations.
Most importantly,
we consider how that story might help us to build a better
and more sustainable civilization.
If this is your first time here,
I'd recommend checking out our introduction episode first,
where we talk about what Solar Punk is,
why you should care, and why this series came into being.
Today's prompt is The Great Infrastructure Project.
There's a small rural town,
next to whom a great infrastructural project was built.
It was a dam, or a huge solar or wind power plant,
or a gravitational battery, or something of the sort.
Over time,
the corporations and the government forgot about them,
and in order to avoid a catastrophe,
they need to work with unusual,
driven activists who came from all over to help them.
This is a living reality for many small communities around
the globe.
The village of Zhennan Shen in southern Zhejiang, China,
was an idyllic historic location which had fallen into
disrepair due to depopulation from 20 years of migration.
It was chosen for a program called Adaptive Reuse,
because of its beauty and close local location to Lee Shoe
City.
Local government brought in sponsors and worked with the
historical Heritage Group to update and renovate all of the
original houses regardless of their condition.
Space was rented out from locals,
a downtown set of homes were converted to a boutique hotel,
cafes, library, exhibition hall,
restaurants fed by the local farms, public parks,
and more were designed and built in a cooperative mode
called Historic Village plus Crowd Innovation.
Employment rates increased as did tourism.
Farms were given a steadier income,
especially during the off season.
Designers even competed in house renovation competitions
for public prestige.
This village may not be built atop a hydro plant,
but it shares the experience set forth in our prompt.
This type of infrastructure maintenance.
and the revitalization was made possible by a combination
of internal and external communities working together.
In their case,
the goal was the restoration of their infrastructure,
but that won't always be the case.
Your story may be about a town's need for the safe
deconstruction of infrastructure.
The World Wildlife Fund has this to say about Most
categories of infrastructure aren't inherently good or bad.
It's all about context.
The right dam in the right place can provide benefits with
minimal negative impacts to the environment.
But the wrong dam in the wrong place can do considerable
and far -reaching damage.
For infrastructure to be beneficial,
planners must consider the long -term impacts, risks,
and trade -offs.
They must take biodiversity and climate change into
account,
develop a plan for long -term governance and management,
and engage local communities at the earliest possible
stages of planning.
It should come as no surprise that many infrastructure
projects today do not achieve all of these goals.
Without long -term governance and management accounted for
at the beginning of the project,
many projects are left to age, crumble,
or fall as burdens to local communities whose survival
depends on them.
I stated in an article from the Earth Law Center in 2017,
due to the high cost of maintenance and safety,
many of the world's dams get more dangerous as they age.
The Mosul Dam in Iraq and the Kariba Dam in Zambia rank
among the world's most dangerous.
Should the Mosul Dam fail,
it could result in the death of 500 ,000
people and deprive millions more of power and water.
The 58 -year -old Kariba Dam.
could result in 3 .5 million dead,
leave 40% of South Africa without power,
cause untold damage to the surrounding wildlife,
plus the destruction of another nearby dam,
the Kahora Bassa.
According to a paper published by the International
Institute for Environment and Development,
disconnecting from government energy services to develop
independent energy sources, such as micro wind or biogas,
can help build resilience for vulnerable groups.
The paper has a special focus on Vietnam,
where fishermen face particular challenges when the
electricity goes out.
Lack of refrigeration and transportation options can cause
great difficulties and losses getting their products to
distant markets.
The country's power grid as a whole is vulnerable to
disruption and failure from extreme weather and flood
events.
This means that vulnerable populations are dependent on a
system that's prone to collapse.
In Gorakhpur, India and in the Philippines,
local committees provide an opportunity for community
participation in infrastructure design.
After being left out of the conversations for so long and
suffering the brunt of their consequences,
these communities are eager to exert some control over
their lives.
So what does that look like?
Kerry Scott, a social scientist says,
The primary purpose of infrastructure and our built
environment is serving the needs of communities,
delivering better social outcomes and improving the quality
of people's lives.
He later adds,
Integrating social outcomes at the start is a must if we
want to leave a social legacy.
Our prompt today deals with a legacy infrastructure
project.
One which clearly didn't take into account the present
situation.
It must either be maintained or decommissioned safely.
It may require conversion to some new method or function.
That may require technical skills they don't have,
hence the need for outside help.
But do these outsiders have an understanding of this place,
this environment?
Do they know the needs of this community?
One of our opportunities for tension and drama may lay
between the community itself and the newcomers trying to
fix the project.
There may also be tension between these groups and the
government or corporation originally responsible for the
installation.
This two -way or three -way intersection of communities can
be very solar punk,
but can also easily fall into the style of other genres if
we aren't careful.
If, for instance,
the corporation responsible for the project is made to seem
as an antagonist and the local community must.
throw off their oppressor in order to self -govern.
That's just another form of cyberpunk.
The struggle there is about technology being used for
oppression,
rather than it being used to find a sustainable civilization.
Be wary of blending genres in these stories as well.
The atmosphere and aesthetic of solarpunk can easily be
deluded by other genres until it's unrecognizable.
A cyberpunk -solarpunk hybrid will just look like
cyberpunk.
As a writer,
you may want to use that style of relationship between the
communities, but be wary of how you frame it.
Is the community still your protagonist?
Are they achieving the goals through solarpunk ideals?
There is drama inherent to the infrastructure as well.
Adding a time limit on action immediately increases
tension.
So maybe the infrastructure project has an imminent failure
coming.
The outsiders and the community must work together to save
it from disaster,
even though they don't trust each other fully.
The point here is to show some hands -on work with social
stakes greater than just us versus them.
We can also zoom in on the specific dynamics of the
incoming activists and engineers a bit more.
Are they strictly a professional bunch?
Do they set up a separate camp with their own rules,
schedule, and daily order?
Or is it a hodgepodge assortment of skilled people without
a prior relationship, who move into whatever is unoccupied?
Perhaps they have to stay on board with the locals in their
own home.
Or maybe the outsiders are a sect of their own,
determined to save the locals even if they don't want it.
These decisions will affect how your communities must
interact, especially if there is a higher need at stake.
Naturally antagonistic relationships could be forced into
reluctant collaboration due to circumstance.
Such a story would be more difficult to align to the solar
punk aesthetic, but if well done,
could act as a moral lesson and strengthen the ideals.
Finally,
we should consider what daily life looks like in this small
town.
Is life oriented around the great infrastructure project,
or is it just a backdrop?
Perhaps the boom of construction jobs is over,
the children left elsewhere,
it's one of the dying cities where people want to be left
alone.
Have they been asking for help,
but no one's answered so far?
Are they already self -reliant and happy,
or are they working to get there?
This could be a community on the verge of a solar punk
renaissance,
or it could be one that's already well established.
One of the most difficult aspects of speculative fiction is
imagining how everyday life might change due to some un
-punctualization.
related technological advancement.
We're going to discuss this more in further episodes,
but for now try to consider the great infrastructure this
town is dealing with and what it does.
Is it a power generator or does it make goods,
provide a service, or ease a difficult task?
Then take that purpose and scale it up in your mind.
If it was a power generator, now it makes unlimited power.
If it eased a difficult task,
now that task's time is reduced to zero.
Finally,
try to think about how that change would affect the
unintentional everyday things.
For instance,
when the airplane was invented and fast travel between
continents became a reality,
nobody ever envisioned a future where you could pop off to
London for a stag party weekend.
What is the equivalent mundane change in your world?
Have an interesting idea?
Share it with me.
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Come join us and let's start a conversation.
Until then,
I'll talk to you soon on the next SolarPunk front.
Music in this recording is New Unity Donning by Bathroom
Plants from Global Patterns Compilation, SolarPunk,
a brighter perspective.