a car-free, solar city?
There seems to be no shortage of ideas for new cities out there, but this one is a little surprising. One of the newest innovations, according to a report by the New York Times, is for the construction of a 2.3 square mile city encased by walls that will exist without cars and powered solely by the sun. Perhaps surprisingly, this city will be created in the United Arab Emirates, in the center of the energy producing world.
Masdar City is being designed by Foster+Partners of London. That is Norman Foster who gave the world London's gherkin skyscraper. It is what should be a very interesting experiment. The city will be just slightly smaller than historic Venice, a comparison the designers and financiers will no doubt hope will be made regularly. The city evokes a utopian vision where: "Water will flow from a solar-powered seawater-desalinization plant. Produce will come from nearby greenhouses, and all waste will be composted or otherwise recycled."
There is more information available on this project in the Times dot-Earth blog, but it would probably be helpful to remember that the U.A.E. is also the country that produced a series of artificial islands in the Arabian Gulf that from the air looks like a map of the world. Grandiose architectural vision is in no short supply.
Masdar City is being designed by Foster+Partners of London. That is Norman Foster who gave the world London's gherkin skyscraper. It is what should be a very interesting experiment. The city will be just slightly smaller than historic Venice, a comparison the designers and financiers will no doubt hope will be made regularly. The city evokes a utopian vision where: "Water will flow from a solar-powered seawater-desalinization plant. Produce will come from nearby greenhouses, and all waste will be composted or otherwise recycled."
There is more information available on this project in the Times dot-Earth blog, but it would probably be helpful to remember that the U.A.E. is also the country that produced a series of artificial islands in the Arabian Gulf that from the air looks like a map of the world. Grandiose architectural vision is in no short supply.
posted by marc at
12:02 PM
1 Comments:
I saw this article in the NYTimes too and it really sparked my thinking... what an innovative use of wealth. Also, the UAE is currently soliciting proposals from the 3 top ranked schools of public health in the US (Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and UNC) for detailed plans to improve the environment. This is such an interesting and exciting development, with huge potential benefit for improving the environment in the UAE and hopefully improving the image of the United States in the Arabian Peninsula. Several of my professors in the Dept of Environmental Science and Engineering as well as the Dean of the School of Public Health presented UNC's idea of how to address UAE's environmental problems... now we wait to see which school is awarded this challenge and opportunity. Like Masdar City, what creative and progressive thinking about how to use oil wealth.
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