Sustainable Cities of the Future Part 1: Masdar, UAE

As a new feature to this blog, I'll be writing a series of special themed posts about different themes, which will be updated every week. My first theme will Sustainable Cities of the Future, and my first city in focus is Masdar City. The following few weeks, I'll post blogs about other future sustainable cities, so stay tuned to the blog, and I'll feed you with more information on environmentally friendly urban planning.

Masdar City, a city located in the UAE desert is planned to become the first zero-emmission city in the world. The goal sounds almost too good to be true, but when you think of the projects that Dubai have been proposing and building the last few years, Masdar City is as good as reallity. The city's first citizens are expected to move in to the first built parts of the city some time later this year, and the city will be able to house no less than 50,000 citizens on a space of 6.4 square kilometers. 

So how will this desert eco-city get its energy? Well as you might have already figured it out, there is quite a lot of sunshine out in the desert, and once you build the world's biggest solar panel field, every ray of light will be harvested and turned into pure electric energy. This energy will not only be used to power the city, but also distillate water from the ocean, since that is the only possible way to get clean drinkable water in such a climate (well that and underground water, but I have my reasons to doubt that there would be enough fresh water from underground sources to quench the thirst of an entire city). So so far, the city has access to limitless energy and water, while having an energy consumption of an amazing zero.

Even though the city creates amazing amounts of energy, it is still being saved from being wasted. The entire infrastructure of the city is made in a way so that only pedestrians can move around in the city. In other words, the cars are kept out to keep the local air clean and further reduce pollution. A pedestrian-only city also allows the city structures to be built closer to one another, resulting in a greater generation of shade, and as you can imagine, shade is a grand gift when living out in a desert! This shade generation furthers the reduction of energy consumption, since it reduces the need of airconditioning, which is rather inevidable when living in such climates.

Hopefully this city will be built without any problems, and when (or if) this happens, hopefully many other cities will follow its example, creating the city with zero emission. This city is a true example of ecologically friendly future city building, that hopefully will show up some day in the future.

Andy