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The Priorities

Paweł 'alxd' Ngei

A team of architects and civil engineers working on future-proofing their community need to make a hard decision. They are trying to prioritize the threats, but it’s a gamble trying to balance effectiveness and accessibility. They could make sure that one block won’t get flooded, but another district would need to wait.

Raw Research Notes
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Continuing the architecture and infrastructure again, this time from the perspective of the architects. This can be a pre-solarpunk or solarpunk endeavor, shown as more reactionary in the chaos of everything, or more of a “good practice” after decades of notes and hard decisions already made.

This is NOT a crisis response team. The flood, the headwave, the hurricane are not here yet. You are to make them less threatening, not start evacuating people right now.

  • The “accessibility” means three things: access of an average citizen to the infrastructure (a shelter maybe?), access of poorer / less fortunate residents to protenctions in their district, and of course access of the disabled citizens to things they need, as wheelchair-bound people will really struggle with knee-high floods.
  • Will this mean abandoning districts and forcible relocations, or worse, climate ghettos?
  • Assuming the team has access to all the required data, scientists, meteorologists, city archives: how many different kinds of climate threats can they protect us from? What will help with heatwaves, what with floods, hurricanes?
  • What prices are considered too steep to pay? Are we going to surrender historical sites, places of remembrance? Are we okay with destroying a flood shaft and flooding a nature reserve to protect the population?
  • How does the background of the team members play into that? Who already lives in a “safe”, sutstainable tower, radiating pride and confidence, who clings to their family house in the suburbs, who cannot afford leaving a dangerous building which will not survive the next cataclysm?
  • What time-scale are we talking about? Are we okay with cheaper protections that will last a year, are we going for 5 years, a decade, or more?
  • How do we communicate it to the population, not to appear as despots choosing one group over another?
  • What if we fail, what if we prepared for a flood and an unexpected heatwave rolls over, killing thousands? How do team members deal with guilt, do they accept the blame? Deny it?

Original notes:

Sources:

Author
Pawel ‘alxd’ Ngei
he/them | solarpunk hacker | the curator of SSL | Poland