Solarpunk or Sink: Who Gets To Decide New Orleans’ Future?

New Orleans is sinking faster than we thought. A recent study published in the journal Nature Sustainability positions Louisiana as “America’s coastal ground zero,” a place where the future of climate adaptation is already unfolding. The study argues that coastal Louisiana has entered an era of climate-driven depopulation, where land loss, sea-level rise, and repeated storms are inciting relocation. Another recent study in Science Advances affirms this narrative, finding that approximately 98% of New Orleans residents are at high risk of extreme flood damage. The authors of the former study warn of population loss as those who can afford to increasingly relocate from a city beyond “the point of no return.” But this interpretation of adaptation reads as abandonment. For researchers, policymakers, and outsiders, this reinforces a familiar conclusion: New Orleans is a lost cause. As a New Orleans native, I reject that conclusion. Black people have always been forced into environments meant to constrain us and have always found ways to live, build, and thrive anyway. The science is clear, but the lack of imagination predetermines the fate of the city. In Louisiana, maroon communities in swamps and wetlands were formed by formerly enslaved Africans under the constraints of colonial systems. From 1718 to 1863, they adapted to create free, self-sustaining societies in swamp environments, using ecological knowledge to build elevated structures, navigate shifting water, and sustain life in unstable terrain. Climate change and the housing crisis have only exacerbated the racialized, unfavorable conditions that Black communities have no choice but to adapt to. Structural racism through segregation and disinvestment has long concentrated Black communities in environmentally hazardous areas. This contributes to the climate gap, or the racial disparities in exposure to environmental harm and the capacity to adapt. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Black communities and neighborhoods, located at some of the city’s lowest elevations, were the most impacted. In the aftermath, the public housing developments were demolished, displacing thousands of Black residents under the logic of redevelopment instead of return. The message became clear that the problem has never just been water, but also whose lives are worth rebuilding. So, when experts suggest abandoning New Orleans, we have to ask: Whose city is considered worth saving? What is being framed as inevitability is, in many ways, future-framed environmental racism. But what if we refused that frame? Though the definition of the climate gap insinuates that Black communities have minimal capacity to adapt, we often have no choice. As an architectural sociologist, part of my work examines Black culture and behavior as systems of adaptive sustainability that reduce resource consumption and embrace the natural environment in ways that formal systems rarely account for. Black ecological scholarship reminds us that sustainability has been racialized, privileging certain forms of knowledge while erasing others. The everyday practices of Black life, often dismissed as necessity or informality, are, in fact, ecological expertise. From this lineage emerges what I call Afro-solarpunk, a built-environment design framework rooted in Black ecological knowledge that understands survival strategies developed under constraint as blueprints for climate adaptation. Afro-solarpunk legitimizes Black natural ecological knowledge that originated pre-colonization (such as land stewardship rather than exploitation, and circular economies rather than linear ones), and Black urban ecological knowledge that came from persevering through colonization (such as communal land ownership models rather than private ownership models, and reshaping spaces to meet changing needs rather than treating them as fixed). This is the knowledge that leads to Black households redesigning their homes, from tinting the windows on the west side of the house with foil, to converting offices and dining rooms into bedrooms to accommodate multi-generational living. Afro-solarpunk is also about the intentional integration of technology into daily life in ways that support Black natural ecological knowledge, optimizing living with nature rather than fighting against it. This is exemplified by the regenerative agriculture practiced within Gullah communities, closed-loop manufacturing in the Nkwere community, and Black households that allow rainy-day air to circulate to cool the house down. The climate-imposed threat of New Orleans being reclaimed by water begs the question: What becomes possible when we treat Black ways of living as foundations to build from? Using these strategies and behaviors as a premise, we can begin to imagine energy systems that are shared and decentralized, water systems that adapt rather than resist, and housing that responds to environmental change in real time. Imagine a New Orleans that is accountable to the communities and natural environment it serves. In the context of maintaining life in a sinking city, we already have versions of water-adaptive Afro-solarpunk across the Black diaspora. In Makoko and Ganvie, communities have built entire systems of life on water. The NLÉ Works Makoko Floating School demonstrates how locally grounded, flood-adaptive design can work with environmental conditions rather than against them. New Orleans does not lack imagination. The same people who created jazz, second lines, Black Masking Indian traditions, and dishes like gumbo and étouffée have always designed systems of survival and joy under constraint. In fact, as the only city on the World Monuments Fund’s 2026 Irreplaceable America list, its preservation as a cultural site is critical. What the city does lack, however, is permission to envision technologies and futures that are accountable to its people and its natural landscape. For too long, Black New Orleanians have been conditioned to accept the predicted fate of our city, a fate undetermined by us. Afro-solarpunk is not a supplement to existing climate policy, but a rejection of the premise that adaptation means abandonment and that the future belongs to those with the capital to purchase it; it is a demand that the communities most exposed to climate risk be the ones who design the response. To researchers, policymakers, and outsiders who suggest abandonment as adaptation: Understand that what you are willing to let go of is a living archive of Black innovation. And to Black New Orleanians, this is a call to act. We cannot rely on systems that have repeatedly failed to imagine us fully. We must build our own through ecological practices rooted in who we already are. Afro-solarpunk frames this as an opportunity to return to maroon-age as the city returns to water. New Orleans is sinking. There is no denying that. But we have always known how to live in the places we were never meant to survive. The question is not whether the city can be saved. It is whether we are willing to imagine a future that has already, in many ways, been ours. Solarpunk, or sink? Maddison Wells is a Black New Orleans native, a licensed architect (NCARB), and a PhD student in sociology at Howard University. Her research specialty is architectural sociology, with a focus on how architects’ social identities shape architecture and how architectural design impacts Black communities. She is the founder of neauxlia lab, L3C, a research-based design collaborative focused on race, culture, and the built environment. Add to the Discussion Next City sustaining members can comment on our stories. Keep the discussion going! Join our community of engaged members by donating today. Already a sustaining member? Login here.