The Atlas is open

Solarpunk gets treated as a genre of fiction. Stories about futures where technology works for people instead of the other way around. I like those stories, but most of what solarpunk describes is not hypothetical. It’s being built, tested, and lived in right now. Just usually not at a scale that makes headlines.

So here’s an atlas of it.

What’s in the Atlas

The Atlas is a directory of real projects with a solarpunk character. Not science fiction. Things that exist. Twenty-four entries at launch, in six categories:

• Energy — citizen-owned utilities, renewable cooperatives, district heating, community solar
• Urbanism — superblocks, pedestrianised centres, car-free programmes, bike infrastructure
• Nature — daylighted rivers, vertical forests, micro-forests, urban farms
• Making — repair cafés, repair bonuses, open-source recycling machinery
• Community — community land trusts, ecovillages, cooperative housing
• Governance — participatory budgeting, citizens’ assemblies on climate

Every entry links to primary sources: municipal sites, government reports, the organisations themselves. Every claim can be checked. Where a number is a programme target rather than a measured result, the entry says so. I’d rather underclaim than overclaim.

Why an atlas?

A map is a hopeful object. It assumes the territory is worth exploring and that shared knowledge makes it easier to navigate. That’s the stance I want this site to hold. Not “here is the future we should have had,” but “here is the future that is already being assembled, piece by piece, by people who decided not to wait.”

The blog is where I argue about what these projects add up to and what’s still missing. The Atlas is the evidence.

I’ll keep adding entries as I verify them. If you know a project that belongs here, send me the sources. That’s the whole standard: real, verifiable, working. — Solarpunk Atlas