Solar punk on latest episode of Bluey (The Surprise).
SpoilerLiterature/Fictionsingle unit housing is kinda antithetical to the movement, this is just how a lot of suburbs in Australia and New Zealand look. it's very car centric, huge distances between where you live and work or study.
the only solarpunk element is maybe the drones? but they look like delivery drones, maybe for communal projects, but just as likely a commercial Amazon like application.
having lived in a few old villas like the house pictured, they suck. pretty, but so hard to heat and cool, generally little insulation and high ceilings.
Funny, most of the art that gets posted here has single family homes. I don't think many people here imagine living in an apartment in the utopia.
Must be from places where mid-density housing doesn't exist.
Why is that? I live in an apartment now and love it. When I go to old European cities, I don’t think We should visit the suburbs! I love the housing g over the old shops. Is there a reason or an idea about apartments that explains this? Would that reason still exist in a solar punk world?
People like the privacy of their own yard, garden, etc. No shared walls gives you more control over your home too. It's nice being able to let your pet or kid roam in the backyard, knowing it's fenced off and nobody else will be around to disturb.
Would that reason still exist in a solar punk world?
Yes, I think these factors would still exist, but it's not clear how homes would be distributed in such a world. Maybe, you just don't have a choice because an apartment is what's allotted to you.
I like those things too, just just don’t like them enough to do all the things I would need to to get them, and I like the trade offs I get for not having them.
So maybe another way to ask the question, would be do people love them enough to want them when they have to have a well and maintain their own roads. Cities are for mid to high density and if you want to own your own yard, head out and homestead. The suburbs are being subsidized by car infrastructure and utilities and emergency services paid for by higher density places.
Well now we are getting away from solarpunk utopia to pragmatism. Make suburbs expensive enough that only the middle class and wealthy live in them. I don't think think that is what the movement is aiming for.
The suburbs are being subsidized by car infrastructure and utilities and emergency services paid for by higher density places.
Where I live, the suburbs are largely their own municipalities and take care of their own utilities and emergency services. Taxes are somewhat higher, but it's still much cheaper than living in the city.
Pragmatism yes and no. I think the movement like most has to assume mixed use solutions and that a mi set shift has to occur before and during the shift. For instance the abundance we enjoy might be a utopian dream for our ancestors, but they didn’t imagine it would come at the cost of living away from their extended family and living without the joys of working the land. Today, the general we, don’t dream of living with our families and homesteading (yeah some of us do, and this group might self select for that). So the solar punk dream will come with a new mindset that won’t value what we value, including, I assume, single family homes. It will certainly not value single family cars and all the space and utilities required to make them work. And rich or poor, I’m not sure that homesteads select along that line very well.
I live in a condo and other than 2 shared walls I have everything you listed here. Fenced in yard, plenty of control over my space, I literally never hear my neighbors unless they're outdoors and my windows are open, etc.
That said, taking space for yourself that should be community space isn't really solar punk at all. SFH is car dependent sprawl and that's not really solar punk either. We can't keep suburbia and a habitable planet.
Yeah, that type of unit has become more popular, but its blurring the line between SFH and shared unit. Adding a few feet of empty space between you and your neighbor isn't that significant of a change. Its far more similar to a SFH than an apartment complex with shared outdoor space and multi-level housing.
that should be community space isn't really solar punk at all.
Well that raises the question, how much personal square footage is "too much"?
You certainly won't find a consensus that private backyards are inherently unsolarpunk.
Zoning has made housing over old shops almost illegal. Modern capitalist city planners want all the stores in an area and all the housing in a different area, necessitating “transportation”, when really if my neighbors could all have a small shop on the first floor I could probably walk to all the businesses I need. Globalists and Amazon can’t survive in that environment, but individuals are incredibly empowered to trade locally and own their own businesses.
Bluey lives in Brisbane, Queensland, which is a subtropical environment that has very hot, humid summers and mild winters.
Bluey’s house is not a villa, it is a type of timber house called a Queenslander. These houses are built for the climate and are beloved by locals. Most Queenslander homes are original, constructed of hardwood frames, and many are over a hundred years old. Not many new Queenslanders are built now, because the cost of all the timber now would be too prohibitive.
Queenslanders are awesome. They are built on stumps, which allows airflow under the house and which cools the inside passively. The stumps also elevate the house to prevent damage from floodwaters. Floods are common in Queensland.
Queenslander houses are designed to catch crossbreezes to cool the the house in summer. They have high ceilings and many openings such as french doors, bay windows and huge double-hung windows for this purpose. They also typically have decorative fretwork openings above doors called ‘fanlights’ which allow breezes to travel from room to room. You can see these in shots of Bluey’s house. The pink, chimney-like thing you can see protruding from the roof in the picture is called a whirlybird; it’s a kind of wind-propelled exhaust fan that takes the heat out of the ceiling space — again, to keep the house cool.
They can get cold in winter, but the winters are typically so mild in Queensland that this isn’t much of an issue. We’re lucky if the mercury ever dips below 5 degrees Celsius at night in the middle of winter (not sure what that is in Fahrenheit).
Insofar as Bluey’s house is built for the climate using clever, time-tested techniques to cool the house passively, I guess you could say it’s solarpunk-ish. Rooftop solar is also incredibly popular in Queensland; most houses of this type that you see have panels.
Single unit housing isn’t antithetical to the movement. Only when businesses and resources are concentrated in a city metro hub, requiring vehicular travel to access them, does single unit housing cause an issue. Again, putting people into tiny apartments to be really close to the only place you allow stores is a “efficiency of capitalism”, and one step away from being a battery for the matrix. Humans are happier in walkable areas with more space.
For all those wondering, this is from a "flash forward" episode. The solarpunk aspects are solar panels, more trees, retrofitting existing infrastructure (the old house) and drones.
It's honestly somewhat hard to tell the urban makeup of Bluey's community. They drive a lot, but also often walk, and spend a lot of time at parks. We also often see them walking around commercial areas with small businesses, which are uncommon in American suburbs. Still, it's hard to gauge the density of Bluey's world.
Part of the challenge is that solarpunk often looks a lot like present-day wealthy communities (large parks, calm traffic, neighborhood gardens, schools within walking distance, etc.), but just enjoyed universally. It's somewhat impossible to tell, imo, while watching Bluey whether the show is presenting a nice world or if the Heelers are just rich.
Personally, I think Occam's razor suggests the latter, but it still presents a vision of community connection that I think is positive. The Heelers and their neighbors are clearly very, very, close.
Some might say... suspiciously close .
This isn't solarpunk at all lol
You know, people spend a lot of time classifying things this way, and I think this framework often misses the mark.
Fundamentally, solarpunk is about imagining a future that is A) genuinely better than the present, and B) better because we improve culture, as opposed to just trying to paper over social problems with more technology.
Attempts at this almost always falls short, for the same reason people who have just started exercising don't look fit: most writers and artists lack experience.
I'm curious to see the episode. I can't see much from the this one image, so I'll hold my judgement until I've seen it.
You've described generic utopianism, solarpunk definitely has more specific characteristics that distinguish it from other utopian ideas.
I think generic utopianism is usually (A) but not (B). But I acknowledge that reasonable minds may disagree.
I don't watch the show but if there is anything that gives a kid hope in the future (and they know what's happening) then I'm all for it.
I watch this show with my kid, and it's a great show.
It's funny, because it is fundamentally very classically conservative: two parents raise their two kids in a house. It's mostly notable because the parents are likable and very in touch with their emotions and their imaginations, and go to great lengths to instill those values in their kids.
Which shouldn't really be unique... but it kinda is.
Alright, speaking as a fan of Bluey and also a regular observer to constant debates over what "is" and "isn't" solarpunk, I immediately watched this.
First, I must admit that I was disappointed that the episode isn't about the future. This shot is from the last minute of an episode that is otherwise just about the dad trying to balance playing family and playing a combat game at the same time.
With that out of the way, I want to give some context for those looking for it: in the final bit of the episode, we see a far-off shot of the house fade into what is obviously the future, and then a grown-up Bluey visits her parents before a surprise at the door is revealed to be .
There isn't really any deliberate commentary on the future, although that can be valuable in its own way: the shot we see (and you can see a better image here ) isn't meant to specifically portray an optimistic future, but rather to visually telegraph quickly that we are in the future. So what visual assets do the writers of this popular kids show employ to quickly communicate a jump of many years?
Most noticeable is the emergence of high-rise buildings topped with foliage (which aren't visible in the image above because it's cropped on the sides. After that, we can see that the homes in the foreground have been adorned with solar panels with hexagons (which are well-known as the most futurey shape). Then we have two delivery drones, and the fact that the trees are larger. There is also a somewhat futuristic looking car, but it's honestly not really that noticeably futuristic.
Ultimately, I think it's fairly neutral. It fits the show itself: this is not a show I would describe as consciously progressive, although it is very kind and loving, and seems to appreciate the presence of nature. I think the use of buildings as a way to show a movement into the future is fairly routine, although their particular architecture seems to have a vibe that is more cozy than harsh. This is likely because that's really the visual baseline of the show. I don't think they set out to channel solarpunk art, although I also think that the art style of the show suggests visual tastes that make me suspect that many of the animators are almost certainly familiar with solarpunk art.
Overall, my conclusion is that if you go into this episode looking for a distinctly solarpunk quality, you will be disappointed. That said, if folks want to criticize, they should be aware that the episode in question never sought to present itself as solarpunk.
It’s subtly imperialist (it is a BBC production for small children, after all). I don’t know that the Heelers’ high opinion of the Queen of the England is a common sentiment in Australia and it only adds fire to the theory that they are well off.
The houses are covered in solar panels here which they aren’t in the “now” timeline. That’s great, but nothing else about this picture really says solarpunk to me. It’s missing the feel of “we rethought transit and roads and single family housing because they all contributed to worse lives and/or climate change”.
Have you seen the vineshroom?
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