Solarpunk’s Brighter Horizons: Harnessing Smart Surfaces for a Resilient Future

Art Source: The Fifth Sacred Thing by Jessica Perlstein  

By Miriam Inaimi and Ally Pecego  

Imagine this: you let out a satisfactory sigh as your head rests on the cool grass below, an apple picked from the community garden sits bare in your hand. Sunlight filters through the tree canopy hanging above. Sounds of life echo across the main plaza as the rain subsides, leaving the pavement mostly dry thanks to its spongy, porous design. The air feels cool as water evaporates from the vertical forests enveloping surrounding buildings. Tempted by the aroma of freshly baked bread wafting towards you, you make your way to the corner bakery, powered by solar. As you walk over, your eyes catch the colorful native flowers lining the bike trails branching out in every direction, seamlessly weaving through the urban landscape.   

This city isn’t an impossibility. But why is it easier for us to envision a world on fire than a world in bloom? It could be tied to the influence of literature and film. Consider Cyberpunk — a science fiction sub-genre famous for its dystopian depiction of technologically “advanced” societies that contend with systemic inequalities and ecological degradation. Think of films like The Matrix and The Terminator. These popular movies perpetuated a genre that unsurprisingly shaped widespread interpretations of our uncertain future, often evoking feelings of despair, helplessness, and eco-anxiety among viewers.  

A newer genre, Solarpunk, however, challenges the apocalyptic assumptions of Cyberpunk by focusing on the beauty of possibility. In contrast to Cyberpunk, the Solarpunk  movement encompasses themes of sustainability, social justice, community empowerment, and ecological protection. The movement is grounded in a radically optimistic vision of society that consciously nurtures the intersection of technology, society, and the natural environment. Though not as notorious as some Cyberpunk productions, Solarpunk themes are illustrated in some Studio Ghibli films and even the well-known Black Panther franchise. This hopeful Solarpunk narrative can help combat the anxieties of a dystopian future by focusing on solutions rather than failures. In doing so, one can begin to imagine a brighter future and strive to build it.   

✧ Smart Surfaces: Where Imagination Meets Reality   

Imagination fuels the Solarpunk movement. Though it takes some effort to think beyond our current reality, some cities across the country have already begun to design their urban landscapes with Solarpunk principles like community, accessibility, and resilience at their core. A prime example is Rodney Cook Sr. Park in the city of Atlanta. The park provides access to green space and serves as a retention pond with green stormwater infrastructure capable of storing up to 10 million gallons of water, increasing the surrounding neighborhood's resilience to flooding events. Innovative solutions like the “Smart Surfaces” used in this project are vital for protecting people from extreme weather events. Rodney Cook Sr. Park did just that during Hurricane Helene because it was built with community well-being in mind.  

Put simply, Smart Surfaces are urban infrastructures that are reflective, porous, and green. Integrating technologies like Smart Surfaces into cities is key to Solarpunk values, blending today's technology with the timeless power of nature. A few examples of Smart Surfaces and their benefits include  

Image by Miriam Inaimi

• Cool/Reflective roofs: Light-colored rooftops engineered to reflect sunlight, reducing heat gain in buildings. This lowers energy demands, building carbon emissions, and mitigates the urban heat island effect.  

• Cool/Reflective pavements: Reflective coatings applied to pavements to reduce solar energy absorption, lowering surface and ambient temperatures in the area.   

• Green roofs: Lush vegetation growing on top of homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals, that absorb rainwater, reduce heat absorption, and enhance air quality. They increase biodiversity and offer communal spaces to grow food.  

• Porous and permeable pavement: Pavements that allow rain to filter and recharge groundwater, reducing flooding risks and water pollution. These surfaces also provide cooling benefits through higher reflectivity and evapotranspiration, helping lower surface and ambient temperatures.  

• Green stormwater infrastructure: Urban designs such as rain gardens and bioswales that capture rainwater, increase biodiversity, and provide habitats for native plants and wildlife. They also reduce air temperatures and flood risks, sequester carbon, and filter air and water pollutants. They can be integrated wherever space allows, including on road medians, along streets, and in areas prone to flooding.   

• Trees: Our favorite leafy friends that provide us shade from the sun, reduce air temperatures and flood risks, sequester carbon, and filter air pollutants, all while increasing biodiversity.   

• Solar Photovoltaics (PV): Renewable technology that can be seamlessly integrated onto rooftops, bus shelters, and shade structures to generate energy that is fossil-fuel free.    

The challenge is implementing these strategies in an integrated and comprehensive way to maximize their impact at the city scale.    

✧ Cities for Smart Surfaces Initiative   

In 2019, the Smart Surfaces Coalition (SSC) established a network of 40 partners dedicated to accelerating the adoption of these climate-resilient designs nationwide, starting with a benefit-cost analysis in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, and El Paso, followed by a deeper analysis and policy engagement with Baltimore. The success of the first phase of the Coalition’s work spurred the development of the Cities for Smart Surfaces Initiative, providing ten metro areas across the United States (representing approximately 35 million people or one-tenth of the U.S. population) with essential data and education, policy guidance, and federal funding resources to integrate Smart Surfaces.   

✧ Smart Surfaces and Solarpunk: A Shared Vision  

The Coalition’s mission is to boost community resilience from climate threats by redefining how the built environment can benefit people and the planet rather than harm them. Therefore, the adoption of Smart Surfaces should serve as one steppingstone towards a resilient Solarpunk future because of their shared core principles:   

• Sustainable Strategies  

Solarpunk envisions a harmonious coexistence between technology and the environment, inspired by nature's resilience and synergy. This means returning to fundamental ecological principles to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis. 

• Community Resilience   

Integrating Smart Surfaces into urban design and retrofitting existing infrastructure can increase a community's capacity to withstand extreme weather events and flooding. Smart Surfaces help manage stormwater runoff, reduce the urban heat island effect, and provide green spaces for community recreation and biodiversity, aligning with Solarpunk ideals of ecological harmony and communal well-being. Additionally, green spaces can act as outdoor "third spaces" for community building, where community members can gather, connect, and strengthen relationships, a fundamental aspect of community resilience.  

• Equity  

SSC strives to center equity within its work, ensuring that the most vulnerable communities benefit from Smart Surface interventions, particularly low-income communities and communities of color that bear a disproportionate burden of extreme heat, poor air quality, flooding, high energy bills, and reduced livability caused by overabundant dark, impervious surfaces, and tree inequity. These communities suffer from the long-term effects of decades of underinvestment and redlining practices dating back to the 1930s, and to address this, the Coalition prioritizes the adoption of Smart Surfaces in historically disinvested neighborhoods.  

• Collective Action   

Solarpunk is a vision created by and for the community, where everyone contributes their unique strengths to create a better future. The Coalition embodies this spirit by bringing together dozens of partners from diverse sectors, from architects to public health organizations, each offering valuable expertise and resources. This collaboration emphasizes the importance of inclusion and teamwork in building our resilient future.  

✧ Smart Surface Opportunities  

Accelerating the adoption of Smart Surfaces within our communities must be a priority to build a Solarpunk-inspired future. Luckily, it can occur on many levels. Community members can demand that their local governments pursue available state & federal funding to implement Smart Surface technologies to address vulnerability to extreme weather events. For example, the Central Midlands Council of Governments in South Carolina recently received a $8.7 million grant from the EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant to develop a Smart Surface + Solar Fund to install smarter surfaces in the Columbia metro area.   

Advocating for local governmental action that encourages the adoption of Smart Surfaces is crucial for driving this transformation as well. For example, the City of Dallas Environmental Commission unanimously adopted the 2024 Bond Comprehensive Environmental and Climate Action Plan (CECAP), a policy that will guide the $1.2B of the 2024 Bond Program towards carbon-neutral construction and climate action, including Smart Surface measures.   

Grassroots approaches offer another method and are grounded in the needs and voice of the community. Community-based organizations such as Groundwork New Orleans and Healthy Community Services are building a rain garden in New Orleans’ 7th Ward to combat excess flooding with the help of Metropolitan AME Church, an SSC partner. Metropolitan AME Church is managing a series of mini-grants to support Smart Surface implementation in seven churches across the South. This initiative addresses the growing interest among faith-based groups in reducing the climate impacts endured by underserved communities.  

✧ So, Why Solarpunk Now?  

The term “Solarpunk” first erupted onto the scene in 2008, but several pieces of literature as far back as 1973 centered their tales around similar themes. Though the heart of the movement is well-established, it started gaining traction a decade ago after the publication of a short piece tying the soul of Solarpunk to “innovative dissent” against “denial [and] despair.” As we surpass world records and tipping points daily, dissent from the status quo is more necessary than ever to combat the climate crisis, and it may just be the energy necessary to motivate this transformational cultural shift.   

Today’s actions are inspired by our ideas. We need to rethink our current norms that would lead to an inevitable dystopian future, and use our imaginations to envision what could be, just as Solarpunk intends and Smart Surfaces deliver.