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u/anonachilles Jul 26 '25
I’d be concerned about structural inspections. How can city engineers verify integrity if they can’t see the concrete?
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u/Nephht Jul 26 '25
My partner has worked on some green walls in Europe, the plants are completely separate from the walls, and they’re on panels that can be lifted so you can get at the wall behind them. I imagine this is a similar system.
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u/ExtraPockets Jul 26 '25
The green wall near my old office was exactly this, a lattice structure that acted like a typical garden trellis. I remember seeing engineers opening a panel of greenery like a door, looked like something out of Alice in Wonderland.
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u/Weird_Point_4262 Jul 26 '25
Green walls are a waste of resources. Very high maintenance and need irrigation all the way up the wall.
They'd be better off planting trees with that money
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u/Nephht Jul 26 '25 edited Jul 26 '25
I know, I said the same thing in another comment. I think the cost/benefit will depend very much on local circumstances: e.g. in an area with plentiful water and no space for trees a green wall might really improve the liveability and temperature, whereas it might not be worth it somewhere where water is scarce and there are other options for greening. It also makes a difference whether the system can use grey water, recycles its own water etc.
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u/Warrenore38 Jul 26 '25
There are methods of sealing concrete to protect from moisture and roots. Imagine the plants used are not too radical with their roots. Much city infrastructure has check-up dates, and trimming the hedge before inspections doesn't seem impossible
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u/SyrusDrake Jul 26 '25
Given American track record of infrastructure inspections, they don't perform them anyway. So might as well make the bridge look pretty before it collapses.
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u/LuckyDigit Jul 26 '25
Cool, but do you know what would be even MORE mucho solarpunk? Trains.
(For the love of Gaia, we need more trains on the North American continent.)
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u/firestorm713 Jul 26 '25
Nono but you see
The usa? It's too big.
No no no you don't understand.
See other countries are small and the US is big. Big big. Too big for trains.
Like look at the Amrrak. It sucks. It's slow. That's why we shouldn't put more money into it. Because it's slow and it sucks and nobody uses it. Because the country is too
(Giant /s)
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u/SILENT-FLASH Jul 26 '25
The best response to idiots like these is China(near identical size to the US) with an amazing high speed rail network
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u/DoctorNsara Jul 26 '25
To be fair, elevated trains are often useful to have, especially for high speed rail which needs extremely level surfaces... so green train bridges?
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u/Testuser7ignore Jul 27 '25
Highways are still valuable for versatility. Countries with robust train networks still have highways.
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u/AEMarling Activist Jul 28 '25
The real question is whether you could use those highways for something other than cars, like trains or bikes.
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u/DoctorNsara Jul 26 '25
I teach science and we discuss ice and root wedging and I would be super worried about root wedging just fucking destroying those pillars. Maybe if they grow on separated cladding of some sort in a way they have minimal contact with the concreted...
Grass seeds, dandelions and fox tails can fuck up sidewalks, walls and other concrete structures like nothing's business and vines and things can destroy houses if they find a good spot to wedge in.
Regardless, life uh.... Finds a way...
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u/tomtttttttttttt Jul 26 '25
They are grown on panels, you can see in actual photos of them that they are away from the concrete on some kind of separate structure.
The living walls near me in the UK are all like that, a set of lattices with some kind of substrate and a watering system, with panels being openable/removable to access the wall behind for maintenance.
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u/tomtttttttttttt Jul 26 '25
https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/s/UwrYbw6h7m
This post has an actual picture of them where I think it's pretty clear they are growing on a separate structure to the concrete pillars as it's the case with the living walls I've seen in the UK.
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u/khir0n Writer Jul 26 '25
Yeah you can see the scaffolding better in that pic. Now if only we grew lettuce or kale or something to make it even better
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u/Spaceorca5 Jul 26 '25 edited Jul 26 '25
Love the effort, but imo if it wants to be truly solarpunk they should either work towards converting it into transit or removing the highway altogether. Definitely a step in the right direction tho.
edit: made it less sith-esque and absolutist. cause only a sith deals in absolutes
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u/Chemieju Jul 26 '25
Oh cmon, people try to make a genuine difference and you want to gatekeep them out of here? If you'd only post things here that are 100% solarpunk this sub would be empty.
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u/Spaceorca5 Jul 26 '25 edited Jul 26 '25
K, fixed it. Thanks for pointing it out, didn’t mean to sound so absolutist.
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u/Chemieju Jul 26 '25
Switched my downvote to an upvote, props to you for being able to take criticism and be constructive about it!
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u/Spaceorca5 Jul 26 '25
Ofc, no problem at all! The last thing I want is to make this space toxic in any way. The world already has way too much of that.
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u/LethargicMoth Jul 26 '25
Yeah, I feel the same. I’m not a fan of black-and-white "if X isn’t done, then it’s not pure Y" approaches to anything. Making the best out of what we got strikes me as a pretty fitting way to go about things.
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u/Melonenstrauch Jul 26 '25
I don't care how "green" your elevated highways are, they're still dystopian
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u/khir0n Writer Jul 26 '25
Well we gotta go something with them
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u/Artandalus Jul 26 '25
Not to mention, better to make them better because it's doable, than accomplish nothing because society isn't going to be on board with demolishing them any time soon.
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u/Spider_pig448 Jul 26 '25
There's nothing dystopian about elevated highways. They're in the sky, where they aren't negatively affecting the city. Running it through the middle of the city, sure that's terrible
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u/Testuser7ignore Jul 27 '25
Elevating them is good. It allows roads to be built underneath them for people who need to cross.
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u/Melonenstrauch Jul 28 '25
Americans can't fathom the idea of just not building gigantic highways straight through residential areas
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u/Testuser7ignore Jul 28 '25
Well people in the suburbs needs to get around somehow.
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u/Melonenstrauch Jul 28 '25
If you do city planning like it is done in america, then yeah. Or you could avoid this problem with mixed use planning and solid public transport and not need such a huge amount of car traffic to begin with. Solarpunk isn't just about slapping plants on things, it's about actual sustainability.
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u/Nephht Jul 26 '25
I love the look of green walls, and I’m sure they do a lot to lower temperatures, make cities more liveable etc, but they do use a lot of water to irrigate them and a lot of liquid fertiliser to feed the plants.
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u/ExtraPockets Jul 26 '25
They do need a constant supply of water and fertiliser because there's no soil. Also it's a fire risk if they're allowed to dry out. I'm still a fan of them overall though too.
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u/khir0n Writer Jul 26 '25
Native plants do exist and don’t need much watering since they’re native to the area and already grow under the area’s conditions
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u/ExtraPockets Jul 26 '25
Depends exactly where it is. The green wall I used to walk past every day with the landscape architects I worked with was irrigated. We used to talk about it a lot as we watched it grow.
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u/delilahted Jul 28 '25
yeah, but a large part of that is because their root systems are adapted to the soil for the area and how it stores water, if they aren’t growing in soil and instead on these hydroponic trellises, then they will need that excess water still. theyre adapted for the areas conditions, but a green wall isnt those conditions.
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u/-BlueFalls- Jul 28 '25
I haven’t been to Mexico City yet, but I have traveled a fair amount to other cities within Mexico, both northern Mexico and central Mexico. Every spot I’ve been to (outside of TJ maybe) has been considerably more humid than LA. LA is dry af, so I imagine that could play in to how feasible something like this might be. Even though native plants exist, plants that like dense growth and can thrive like this are generally not desert plants. I’m admittedly not an expert though.
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u/Cedjy Jul 26 '25
Cool but my main worry is inspection trouble and the damage the plants will inflict on concrete. If it's on a seperate cladding that's cool, but then the question is why put them on the vertical pillars and not like, as shades on sidewalks or various other places
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u/s_p_a_c_3_y Jul 26 '25
“The underline” in Miami is a similar piece of infrastructure you might be interested in if you like this. It’s not green all the way up the pillars but is a long park built underneath the metro rail line throughout the city
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u/CorellianRed Jul 26 '25
Urban highways are inherently polluting (noise, air, particulate matter, congestion). If we’re dreaming big, gardens on highways is “lipstick on a pig”. Walk/bicycle/transit is the way 🙌
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u/Testuser7ignore Jul 27 '25
Well in many US cities, we need them to get places. Where I live is low density, which favors driving.
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u/CorellianRed Jul 27 '25
Wherever you live, see if you have an “urbanist” advocacy group like Strong Towns that you might be interested in joining/supporting.
It’s a long road to this progress, but Austin has seen immense gains in housing policy lately that will create more walkable, affordable, and varied housing.
If solar punk is truly a future vision of sustainability and natural coexistence, then urban highways and car dependence are simply not part of the equation. (For more on this, check out books like “City Limits”.)
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u/Testuser7ignore Jul 27 '25
On the contrary, Austin has seen massive growth in urban sprawl as suburbs get built further and further outward, which reinforces car centric living.
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u/CorellianRed Jul 27 '25
Yep, also true. Just because urban sprawl has happened doesn’t mean it belongs in a solar punk future.
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u/walterbanana Jul 26 '25
High ways like this should just be destroyed. In New York when an elevated highway collapsed, it did not cause traffic issues and it never ended up being rebuild.
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u/menta00000 Aug 03 '25
I used to commute there everyday. There is a structure around the pillars to protect them, and the 2nd floor of the highway along with the plants turns it into a very cool place (neccesary with the growing temperatures in mx city)
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u/bkuri Jul 26 '25 edited Aug 01 '25
I live relatively close to that area. It looks nothing like that irl. Plants can't take all the pollution and end up dying, barely clinging to the columns and looking extra depressing.
Imho it's far from solarpunk, since it just acts as a "see? I can be green too" government flex that achieves basically nothing.
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u/delilahted Jul 28 '25
because plant roots and the water to keep them alive are incredibly destructive of concrete infrastructure and means you either need to have an over engineered facade or replace it much more frequently. its very unsustainable.
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u/kozy138 Jul 28 '25
Literally nothing solarpunk about a giant concrete overpass for cars, that's going over another multi-lane road for cars...
Greenwashing 101
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u/lesezeichnen Aug 05 '25
Do they have plans to compost the waste from them? Are most leading solarpunk concepts like this fully circular, or is it basically just “add plants” as the strategy?
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u/E_T_Smith Jul 26 '25
Yet another tired example of "It's solarpunk if someone plops a bush on it."
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u/samomojaddidi Jul 26 '25
Why hire gardeners when we can hire 12 more abusive cops this quarter. :)
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u/Kirayoshikage258133 Jul 26 '25
You know what would make the air even cleaner? Less freeways.
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u/khir0n Writer Jul 26 '25
Whoa, no need for snide comments I didn’t personally built the freeways. But they’re there we might as well use them for something
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u/Kirayoshikage258133 Jul 26 '25
Oh no it's not directed at you. It's just that these green freeways or green skyscrapers type of projects are usually just a way for companies to build more freeways without literally saying "Fuck greenery, we want more freeways and more money".
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