SO[L.A.]RPUNK

On the latest of Demand Utopia: A Solarpunk Podcast, host Justine Norton-Kertson reads a piece they read at a solarpunk reading event in March hosted by Accelerate Resilience Los Angeles. The piece imagines what Los Angeles might be like a solarpunk future.

TRANSCRIPT

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Solarpunk Los Angeles
by Justine Norton-Kertson

The air is crisp, carrying the scent of orange blossoms and wild sage. The hum of traffic is gone, replaced by the soft whir of wind turbines and the laughter of people moving freely through shaded streets. Sunlight reflects off windows coated in solar film, harvesting energy for the neighborhood. Above, a canopy of flowering vines climbs the walls of skyscrapers, cooling the city with leaves that shimmer like green fire in the golden hour.

Los Angeles has transformed. Not through the will of corporations, not through the empty promises of politicians, but through the hands of its people.

The LA River flows again, its banks lined with food forests and solar-lit walkways. Once a sterile concrete trench, it is now the city’s heartbeat, guiding the water, the people, and the future. Bridges, once clogged with smog and steel, are alive with foot traffic, solar rail cars, and murals that tell the story of reclamation. Coyotes and bobcats weave through green corridors that connect park to park, mountain to sea, wild to wild. Monarch butterflies dance over rooftops where gardens overflow with tomatoes, avocados, and spirals of bean vines climbing toward the sun.

The freeways? They no longer belong to cars. Where exhaust once choked the skyline, rolling gardens and bike highways now stretch across the city, shaded by solar canopies that power the homes beneath them. The forgotten corners—empty parking lots, abandoned malls, neglected lots—have been reborn as gathering spaces, community hubs, libraries, and maker spaces where anyone can learn, create, and thrive.

Hollywood, once the playground of the elite, has become something new. A storytelling commons, where the tools of creation are shared, and the stories of the people rise above the static. Open-source VR, holographic theaters, and solar-powered amphitheaters give every voice a stage.

And at night, the city glows—not from neon, but from fiber-optic trees, algae-powered lanterns, and reflective surfaces catching the moonlight. People gather in open courtyards, where the air is filled with music and ideas, and the heat of the day fades into cool breezes from the Pacific.

This Los Angeles—our Los Angeles—is abundant because we’ve reclaimed it. This is a city built for us. Not for the billionaires, not for the landlords, not for the corporations that once drained it dry. This is a city where no one is priced out, no one is disposable, and no one is left behind. Where land is held in trust, energy is shared, and water is sacred.

But make no mistake—this future did not arrive easily. We built it from the ashes of the old. It was fought for. Brick by brick, law by law, vision by vision. It was made by organizers, by artists, by scientists, by dreamers, by those who refused to let the old world choke the new one before it could bloom. We reached down into pavement cracks, planted seeds in abandoned lots, defied those who told us nothing could change. We remembered the truth that cities belong to people—not corporations, not developers, not politicians who barter our dreams away piece by piece.

This is Solarpunk Los Angeles. Not a fantasy, but a blueprint. Not a distant dream, but a revolution already growing in the cracks of the pavement, already taking root in the minds of those who dare to believe in something better.

Tonight is a new beginning.

When you leave here, carry this vision home. Nurture it. Water it with conversations, actions, demands. Tell this story, again and again, until Los Angeles becomes the city we dreamed together tonight.

The future begins in the stories we tell.
The stories we live.
The stories we refuse to surrender.

So, Los Angeles, as you step into the night, let this vision burn bright in your heart:

A city reclaimed.
A city alive.
A city made possible, by you.

This is Solarpunk.
This is our future.

Let’s go build it—together.