Imagine floating towers teeming with lush greenery that look out over clean waterways overflowing with wildlife. As you glance down, you realize pedestrians outnumber cars — which fly on renewable energy — and people mill about in community gardens and meeting spaces as plants and solar panels alike drink in sunlight.
Welcome to the dream world of a “solarpunk” city.
Solarpunk is derived from cyberpunk, a genre of speculative fiction that was coined by author Bruce Bethke in 1983 with the release of his sci-fi short story of the same name, which follows a group of young rebel hackers.
From there, cyberpunk spawned a slew of futuristic aesthetics, ideals, and stories. But solarpunk — a term which first sprang up online in 2008 — goes a step further than cyberpunk, and its fantastical subgenre steampunk, by encapsulating not just a style or genre, but an entire social movement.
Jay Springett is the co-administrator of solarpunks.net, a website that curates articles, stories, and artwork that are representative of the movement. Spend a minute scrolling on the site and common themes will emerge: rewilding efforts, gardening methods, rainwater harvesting, visible mending practices, and so much more.
“I have always considered solarpunk to be focused on the practical as opposed to the wishful thinking,” Springett told Built In, a Chicago software company. “And it’s a discussion that’s becoming more and more prominent.”
Visually speaking, solarpunk is packaged in bright, eco-friendly optimism, but beneath the surface, it emphasizes practical, actionable steps toward sustainability and self-sufficiency.
Although “greener” designs are synonymous with the aesthetic, it’s not a style without substance. When architects and interior designers lean into eco-aesthetics while ignoring sustainability and affordability, they fail to capture what solarpunk is at its core.
For instance, a corporate office wallpapered with living plants, or a skyscraper lined with garden balconies, are not inherently solarpunk on their own. Especially when those aesthetic choices outprice employees and building residents.
“If your rendering of the future has no people in it,” Springett said, “it’s not solarpunk.”
Human relationships are at the center of the movement. Unlike its sister genres, solarpunk doesn’t worship or, alternatively, demonize technology — it instead asks how we can utilize tech to improve humanity.
Springett said it’s all about the “possibilities of changing power relations through changing technology.”
In fact, one of the principles of solarpunk relies on decentralizing social media and creating community-centered networks that could survive even the worst natural disasters.
But solarpunk doesn’t steep itself in “climate doom” and nihilism. The entire movement is based on the idea that people are resilient — and the world can be a brighter place — if we build it together.
The artwork and fiction inspired by the solarpunk movement are rooted in a distant future. But Springett said the real movement is happening right now, as people reach out to each other in search of practical solutions for the problems of today.
“The real thing for me within the communities is the dialogue that happens in the comments, on Discord or in Slacks, between authors and fans and other people,” he said.
Community appears to be a common thread of the movement, and Adam Flynn would agree. In 2014, the San Francisco-based artist “wrote the book” on solarpunk — literally.
In “Solarpunk: Notes toward a manifesto,” Flynn said: “Our futurism is not nihilistic like cyberpunk and it avoids steampunk’s potentially quasi-reactionary tendencies: it is about ingenuity, generativity, independence, and community.”
“Solarpunk,” Flynn concluded, “is a future with a human face and dirt behind its ears.”
A version of this article originally appeared in the 2024 Art Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
Header image via Allweather Roof (CC BY-NC 4.0)
