Billy Tetrud

Billy is building a town. Not a metaphor for one: an actual place near Austin where the streets grow food, nobody needs a car to reach a friend, and the neighborhoods get to try different ways of governing themselves and learn from each other.

On Earth Day at SolarPunk Summit he sat with the MC and told the story plainly. Meridia, as he described it, is a mostly car-free microcity that uses permaculture to maximize soil hydration, with polyculture farming brought into the public spaces so the greenery is both beautiful and productive. He drew the line between solarpunk and its shadow just as plainly: not a cyberpunk dystopia where technology is everywhere and nobody is happy, but technology used when it is good for humanity.

What we love in Billy is that the vision comes with a form to fill out. He is an engineer by trade and a governance writer by devotion, and Meridia is where the two meet: a draft constitution he writes in the open, a calendar of meetups, a co-founder, Stacia Wilson, who carries the community side, and an open door for anyone who wants to live there or help it rise.

If you have ever wished you could move into the solarpunk future instead of reading about it, Billy is the one to talk to.