Isn't it ironic: A city whose wealth was built on oil is now constructing a zero-emissions green metropolis next door.
Abu Dhabi, the capital of petroleum-rich United Arab Emirates, embarked on a $15 billion project in 2006 to develop a sustainable utopia unlike any other in the world in a desert on the outskirts of the populous capital city. The initiative began taking shape when construction started last October.
Scheduled for completion in 2016, Masdar city, meaning ‘the source' in English, will completely outlaw cars and any other automobiles within city limits. Giving new meaning to ‘a city above all the rest,' Masdar city will be erected seven meters off the ground by columns to make way for mass transit systems underneath it.
An initiative of the government of Abu Dhabi, the zero-waste city will be reliant almost solely on solar power and use only 20 percent of the power of a modern city of the same size. Other green perks include a garbage recycling program, where trash is used for compost, and the processing of sewage into fuel. To keep things cool in the desert heat, a wall barricading the six-square-kilometer city will block the hot desert wind. Its design will allow the narrow, car-less streets to provide shade and act as wind funnels to disperse cooling breezes throughout the day.
When the city is set for complete habitation, planners are expecting the development to house a research lab, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST), 1,500 multi-national corporations, and 50,000 residents.
Lured to the city to operate tax-free, most of the foreign multi-nationals will specialize in the research and development of green energy and sustainability, employing many of the city's residents. But the city won't be all work and no play: the development will include parks, cafés, movie theatres, factories, fire stations, and schools.
Set to begin instruction this fall, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology is teaming up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to select faculty and design the curriculum. Other partners in the Masdar city project include environmentally destructive-turned-sustainable energy companies General Electric, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, and Mitsubishi.
Designed to produce more renewable energy than it consumes and transform a resource-rich metropolis into one of technological innovation and expertise, Masdar city has most architects and designers skeptical and green with envy-but ultimately hopeful.
"I see Masdar on the one hand as a playground for the rich," said Gil Friend, CEO of Natural Logic, a California-based sustainable design company. "And on the other hand as an R & D [research and development] opportunity to deploy and test out technology that, if things go well, will show up in other cities."
Despite most large-scale, multi-use commercial buildings like those that are planned for Masdar city having failed in the past due to difficulty in generating the optimal amount of energy, the Abu Dhabi project is being monitored eagerly around the world, its success or failure a benchmark for the future of ecologically friendly design and sustainable habitats. Even the Masdar city project director of property development isn't taking this investment to the bank-yet.
"We want Masdar City to be profitable, not just a sunk cost," said Khaled Awad last fall from a real-estate exhibition in Dubai. "If it is not profitable as a real-estate development, it is not sustainable."
If the project does work, U.S. taxpayers such as myself may sit wondering why our government just spent $787 billion on tax cuts and a hodgepodge of state bailouts, education, healthcare and environmental programs without trying to build at least a few of these green cities. At a price tag of $15 billion, it seems quite the bargain these days.
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