NY times reports of the ground breaking of Masdar city(literally - 'the source'), Abu Dhabi's own carless, sustainable mini-city fuelled by solar power and new technologies. That is a rendering of a projected aerial view above. The design for this project was provided by Forster+Partners - a London firm specializing in environmentally conscious architecture and urban planning.
Seems that among the 7 emirates of the UAE, Abu Dhabi takes the 'land of the future' mantle very seriously. They have already started constructing a 200 million dollar Guggenheim and feature some of the foremost architectural wonders of the post modern world including a Zaha Hadid bridge that is currently being built. They seem to instinctively understand that being a cultural hub alone will not cut it in the future and have made the leap into sustainable development by funding this little annex/environmental oasis. The real news in all this hype is that a old energy behemoth like Abu Dhabi is investing in a post fossil fuel world in a big way. They understand that this will give them not only a prestigious standing in the current carbon conscious media climate; note their website for the developement that is literally screaming for accolades and also the fact that the city has already won awards for its design, even before a single brick has been laid. They realise that developments like this could also save them from a slow internal decline when fossil fuels run out or from environmental calamity even before that.
The Abu Dhabi government has always been one for planning ahead. It is no surprise that their sovereign wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is currently valued at the 650 - 850 billion dollar range - one of the wealthiest in the world. Back in the seventies they made the decision to use their oil wealth to build up resources for the future. This is similar to the Scandinavians as random retard mentioned in his older post about North Sea oil.
Perhaps they also learnt from some of the urban problems the old city (relatively speaking compared to Masdar) currently faces because population and traffic growth has outstripped the city envisioned by her planners. Despite being one of the best planned cities of the 70s their wiki page lists traffic congestion, a shortage of car parking spaces, and overcrowding among their current woes. The new city will have easy public transport access(always within 200 metres according to the architect's site), zero carbon emissions within city limits and zero waste, sustainable materials, food and water among other amenities and programs.
Even the construction of the multi phase project has been envisioned in such a way as to be energy renewable. The first part is a 40 - 60 megawatt solar power plant to be built by Conergy of Germany which will then supply power for all subsequent construction work.The Masdar city wiki(which typically has more facts and technical data than the building firm's description) describes the various steps that will be taken over the course of the construction to maintain energy and water renewability. It sounds pretty impressive to me. The entire project has the air of atonement to it -one of the world's largest producers of fossil fuels making up for the damage it has caused - and I say that in the most respectful way. Now if only the largest consumer of fossil fuels would match this effort. Not that they are standing still either. MIT is assisting in setting up a university at the city that will do R&D and train people in future alternative energy and sustainability efforts.
2 responses:
the united arab emirates aren't perfect, but god damn i love their sense of unbridled boomtown expansion and innovation. abu dhabi is gonna be just fine in a post-petroleum world if they can manage to develop ideas like these (though inevitably it will be the western firm that profits). dubai strikes me as a slightly different kind of beast, with more a free-wheeling capitalistic bigger-better-taller mentality. kind of reminds me of new york city in its skyscraper heyday.
naturally, planned cities have their inherent population and structural limits, and we'll have to adhere to that if any of these sustainable cities are able to thrive properly. great idea, but likely just a prototype for continued (though denser) sprawl growth in the long term.
Bring on the arcologies! Wooooo!
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