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THE CITY OF THE FUTURE
|FOCUS | THE CITY OF THE FUTURE
A journey to sustainability - the UAE’s Eco-utopia
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asdar City, also known as
Mthe City of the Future, is one of the world’s most sustainable urban communities and the first ever human settlement with no negative environmental impacts- zero waste, zero carbon, car-free, fed by recycled water. This planned city project, being constructed beside Abu Dhabi International Airport, was designed to be a hub for clean tech companies, a low-carbon development made up of a rapidly growing clean-tech cluster, business free zone and residential neighborhood with restaurants, shops and public green spaces.
The design of the city, from a distance, looks like a cube and Arabesque patterns have been used on the terracotta walls. The plan was to house up to 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses. A mix of electric vehicles and clean-energy vehicles will be used for transportation within the city. Believe it or not, there are no light switches or water taps in the city. Movement sensors are used instead, to cut consumption of light and water by more than 50%! On top of that, the city is powered by a 54-acre field of 87,777 solar panels, in addition to panels on roofs. Living in one of the hottest places on our planet, this smart city has created yet another extraordinary discovery. The
city remains around 15 degrees Celsius cooler than the surrounding area because of its unique design – the 148feet high wind tower which helps push cool breeze through the streets. How futuristic!
The settlement is designed to be at least 40% more energy and water efficient than conventional buildings. Each structure is being built by low-carbon cement as well as other locally sourced and verified materials, and 90% of the construction waste was placed to be recycled and reused.
A very ambitiously devised project called Masdar City is the most expensive and most grandiose experiment of today that also entails urban planning. Abu Dhabi, the largest of the United Arab Emirates, first announced the project in 2008. Today more than 535 companies from six continents have operations based in Masdar City, including Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Schneider Electric, Siemens, and Etihad Airways.
