Our Mission

Solar C³ities is an international platform with the intention of providing an open-source virtual Hackspace for "Biogas Innoventors and Practitioners" and training and resources for all  those researching, developing and deploying sustainable solutions for flourishing societies.
Our motto is "Yes, you can! Please DO try this at home!"

Our method is "Connecting Community Catalysts - Integrating Technologies for Industrial Ecology Solutions"

Politically we define ourselves as "a loose federation of like-minded individuals who are interested in the kind of problem solving that provides the greatest benefits for the greatest number and diversity of both human and non-human beings."  We share knowledge and material resources so that we may continue our co-evolutionary development and not just survive, but thrive.

We have no overt hierarchy, but rather conduct ourselves in space-time the way jazz musicians do, all following the logic and form of a given song that we all find pleasant to play, but allowing each musician to express him or herself "out of the pocket" through solos, improvisation and harmonies that go beyond the original structure on the chord chart.  You might consider Solar CITIES a kind of experimental  "jazz of flourishing development".  We groove on emergent properties and improv and allow the circumstances and matrix of each project to determine roles and responsibilities.  Our "play book", the charts we use to guide the song, so to speak, is our charter, our mission -- to cooperatively innovate and implement least-cost/most-benefit solutions to the existential problems facing sentient life, seeking the smallest negative externalities and the largest positive externalities.

We embrace tinkerers, bricoleurs, hackers, DIY-ers, open-sourcers... everyone who wants to give meaning to life through meaningful participation in "The Great Conversation", the unending dialog between instantiations of ever-evolving and co-evolving sentience on Earth. We encourage every being to give of themselves to give life a chance and give peace a chance, recognizing, as our hero Buckminster Fuller stated,

“We humans are manifestly here for problem-solving and, if we are any good at problem-solving, we don't come to utopia, we come to more difficult problems to solve.You can't better the world by simply talking to it. Philosophy to be effective must be mechanically applied.You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete"...

One of the models we are working together to force into obsolescence is that of crippling dependency on exogenous sources of energy, food, water and, yes, expertise.  We believe that wth a free flow of interconnected open source information and the right start-up building blocks,  every community can develop a self-sustaining core level of dignity and independence, beginning at the household level and radiating outward in permacultural concentric and overlapping circles.

We start with BIOGAS at the center of any fluorishing society  -- as the missing piece of the sustainable development puzzle.

One  of our fairly unique contributions to the evolving dialog about energy and waste management has been our early embrace of food waste grinders (once called 'garbage disposals', henceforth known as "feedstock preparation devices") as one of  "the most important environmental technologies for the 21st century (T.H. Culhane described it as such during the Q and A at the  National Geographic Explorer's Symposium in 2010 after using them for a year with small scale biogas and composting systems around the world).
 

Another of our contributions has been the innovation of IBC tank based home scale biodigesters for basements, backyards and other urban and suburban uses.   IBC tanks can be found used in almost every country in the world, and make great biogas systems once filled with dirty water and a few hundred kg of  easily obtained microbes (sourced from any animal manure, including your own "humanure" and/or  lake or pond mud).

The fact is, we ARE only ordinary men, and that turns out to be great, because after all we  DON'T live on the Dark Side of the Moon. We live on a planet that spins, and Monty Python reminds us every time we sing their Galaxy song to

"Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving

And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,

That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,

A sun that is the source of all our power.
"

With all that sunshine, we can't imagine why anybody would get all worked up about energy resources, and why any of us would divide us into "us and them" and fight about things so abundant and easy to access.

About Us

"Us and them

And after all we're only ordinary men."
- Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon

So who are we?

We are Solar CITIES.  We are You.  We are he. And she.  And them.  As the Beatles sang:

"I am he as you are he as you are me

And we are all together"

We are a group of hackers, merry pranksters, citizen scientists, bricoleurs, tinkerers, and even a Ph.Do or two who believe that we can collectively achieve a true Heliopolis, a true City of the Sun, if we just "come together, right now... " and "get over "ME".  And get over the "rule of Experts" thing.  Again, from the Beatles, "Expert textpert choking smokers

Don't you think the joker laughs at you? (Ha ha ha! He he he! Ha ha ha!)"

That said, there are actual individuals behind the scenes at the Solar CITIES hackspace ... well, collections of microbes really, making up 90 per cent of the walking, talking, thinking "human beings" who act as scaffolding and spaceship for these individuated microbiomes.  And these folks (or "collectives" if you like) are dedicated their "hive mind" to furthering the cause of bringing true Solar Cities to life -- literally.  The crew behind Solarcities.eu believe that the most reliable and accessible form of solar energy available to human civilization is the storage medium we call "biogas".  Better by far than batteries for many uses, biogas takes the solar energy stored in the chemical bonds of organic materials and makes it useful instantley or eternally for human beings everywhere.

The crew behind SolarCITIES.eu. believes that Solar Cities are only fully achievable by working in tandem with the most ancient life forms on this planet and creating the right conditions for them to transduce sunshine power into combustible methane molecules.  Hence, Solar CITIES commitment to biogas innovation and practice first and foremost.

And who are the crew behind the consortia of microbes working to get the word out about the promise of a solar powered living nanotechnology solution to the world's problems?

You can meet us in the descriptions below.  Meanwhile, we wouldn't be where we are if it weren't for the support of so many of you.  Click here to see the evolving list of our patrons-supporters-donors-and-benefactors who have done so much to get Solar CITIES where we are today and are helping propel us into an even brighter tomorrow!