ABSTRACT
The scale of deployment of renewable energy infrastructure that is required to meet the challenge of the climate crisis is likely to transform our cities and landscapes in unprecedented ways, impacting our visual landscapes and our social and cultural landscapes. This chapter will explore the opportunities presented by the energy transition, with a focus on how energy developers can learn from best practices for community-centered design within the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. By co-designing energy landscapes with the people who live in proximity to them, we can increase urban solar integration, preserve remote landscapes, and help to accelerate a transition to an energy system that is less impactful on the environment. Participatory design practice for energy development can also ensure a more just and equitable clean energy future by leveraging the many co-benefits of solar power infrastructure when it shares land uses with parks, gardens, canals, riverfronts, and streetscapes. The wealth of proven technologies for aesthetic solar photovoltaic integration within architecture and landscape architecture offers a path to implementation for a far more ambitious deployment of distributed energy within cities than is ordinarily considered by urban planners and real estate developers.
