From A Recent Travel Study
Throughout my years of Architecture and Urban design I have been reading about, studying and making presentations on the world’s most Sustainable city. I could'nt have missed an opportunity to explore it when I got a chance to travel the same land - The Masdar City at Abu Dhabi, an experiment in Urban Design. The upcoming city has got many labels to it even before it completion- the Zero carbon city, the SMART city, the ECO city are to name a few.
Boasting to be a“green-print” for how cities can accommodate rapid urbanization and dramatically reduce energy, water and waste, the city was first conceived a decade ago. Planned over an area of 700 hectares, as a mixed used development anticipating a population of around 1 lakh, Fosters + Partners designed it to provide the highest quality of life with the lowest environmental footprint.
They envisaged a futuristic city that combined the principles of traditional Arab settlements with cutting-edge technology- a car-free city scape, with Jetson-style driverless electric cars shuttling passengers between buildings incorporating built-in shades and kitted out with smart technologies to resist the scorching desert heat, and keep cooling costs.
“A Sustainable City enables all its citizen to meet their own needs and to enhance their well being without degrading the natural world or the lives of other people, now or in the future."
Conditions For Sustainable City:
•Sustainable pattern of production –consumption -transportation-settlement.
•Pollution prevention
•Respect for the carrying capacity of ecosystems;
•The preservation of opportunities for future generations.
Aims to be one of the world’s sustainable urban developments.
MASDAR which means Resource (ARABIC TERM) was intended to revolutionize thinking about cities and the built environment. It intended to achieve the vision of a carbon neutral and zero waste-to-landfill development and clean technology cluster with a minimum ecological footprint. The main objective was to ensure a consistent urban development within the Master plan framework, especially at the pedestrian level, by attaining a built environment which encourages pedestrian movement by optimizing the micro-climate of the street.
VISION
Masdar City serves as an open technology platform in a large scale, real-world environment – and in particular, with consideration to the region’s climate conditions and consumption patterns.
Masdar operates through five integrated units, including an independent, research-driven graduate university, and seeks to become a leader in making renewable energy a real, viable business and Abu Dhabi a global centre of excellence in the renewable energy and clean technology category.
The city, combines ancient Arabic architectural techniques with modern technology and captures prevailing winds keeping it naturally cooler and more comfortable during the high summer temperatures.
Objectives of the Project :
- To achieve the Masdar vision of a carbon neutral and zero waste-to-landfill development and clean technology cluster with a minimum ecological footprint.
- To ensure a consistent urban development within the Master plan framework, especially at the pedestrian level.
- To ensure a built environment which encourages pedestrian movement by optimising the microclimate of the street.
- To create a car free development with public transport in close proximity.
- To create a true mixed use development
- To encourage a change in living and thinking that supports the Masdar vision.
Situated on the edge of Abu Dhabi, with future visions of direct linkage to the Airport, it had huge financial support, but when the recession hit its investors put everything on hold. As one approaches Masdar today one can see the grandeur of its futuristic Architecture and landscape. But no sooner than you make it to the entry you realize that just a fraction of its planned footprint is developed which is less than 5% of the original six square km “greenprint” moreover the completion date has been pushed back to 2030.
What stands of Masdar is the city's CORE which is anchored by the large square-ish building that is the Middle East headquarters of Siemens. As many as 300 other firms such as GE’s Ecomagination and Lockheed Martin also have an official presence – though mostly they are just a hot desk.
Sustainability goals
The core of Masdar City is in place, an innovation engine. The city is growing its neighbourhoods around the Masdar research university dedicated to energy and sustainability.Harnessing the sun’s rays, Masdar uses clean energy generated on site from rooftop solar technology and one of the largest photovoltaic installations in the Middle East.
In its smallest footprint- The six-storey headquarters uses only one-third of the energy of comparable office buildings in Abu Dhabi – thanks to air-tight insulation and high-efficiency elevators. The design rejected overhead lamps, to encourage use of natural lighting, and called for solar water heaters on the roof. A 45-metre Teflon-coated wind tower helps channel cooling breezes down a shaded street equipped with a grocery store, bank, post office, a canteen, and a couple of coffee shops.
By UAE standards, both the Siemens and the Irena buildings are state-of-the-art in terms of optimising energy use – but it’s less clear how they stack up globally. The UAE uses its own ratings system which does not readily translate to more familiar green building standards.
People
Population:
40,000 residents + 50,000 commuting
= 90,000 peopleIn addition, the agency’s 90 or so staffers are the only occupants of the six-storey, 32,000m space.
Fewer than 2,000 people work on the campus, according to tour guides.
Only 300 live on-site, all graduate students of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, who are given free tuition and accommodation.
Transport
Public Rapid Transits (PRT), a system of transportation featuring compact, driver-less
„podcars” in Masdar. In Masdar where the streets will be
entirely free of automobiles, a network of these compact
electric taxis will provide clean, quiet transportation to
the city‘s residents, employees and commuters. The Public
Rapid Transits model is depicted as shown below.
The pioneering autonomous transport system - which was originally supposed to stretch to 100 stations - was scrapped after the first two stops. Advancements in autonomous cars has also made the infrastructure for the city’s autonomous transport system seem useless and cumbersome. The system would have shuttled people to and from designated stations, which would no longer make sense as personal driverless cars become more widely available. Meanwhile, the jet-set transport system was overtaken by technological developments in the auto sector. The expensive purpose-built system no longer made sense in an era when zero-emission electric cars were widely available.
Today, Masdar’s future is unclear. City officials claim that the city will still be developed, albeit not exactly as planned as the authorities are unlikely to roll back the project all together- although it will not be carbon neutral as per its initial sustainability goals. They are saving face by hinging on the argument that Masdar caanot be seen in isolation as a city and that it needs to be looked within the context of the other renewable energy holdings of the parent company. Among Mubadala’s other holdings, Masdar Clean Energy as a family company is supplying much, much more clean energy than what is being consumed in the city.
Far from its completion and its dream to become a Zero Carbon city, it stands with vast tracts of undeveloped land, its office blocks are barely occupied and the streets lie deserted all through the day. Chris Wan, the design manager says “As of today, it’s not a net zero future, “It’s about 50%.”
Masdar is part of an evolutionary process that has lessons which can be adapted to other urban spaces in the Gulf region and beyond. It’s still a city of possibilities unfulfilled, but not a total failure since we can look forward to it.
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