Ecocity Plans Offer Promise
The success of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi can and should be replicated elsewhere, according to the Gulf nation's Minister of Environmental Development.
Masdar City is one of many high-efficiency developments begun in the early 2000s. Unlike most of its competitors--in particular the expansion of Shanghai touted by the Chinese government as a "zero-carbon-footprint" project--Masdar City has managed to live up to its initial plans. Total energy consumption for the city of 500,000 is approximately equivalent to that of a typical U.S. suburb of 20,000. All of the energy for Masdar comes from renewable sources, including wind, tidal power, and primarily solar-thermal power.
Abu Dhabi, unlike most of its neighbors, has weathered the fragmentation of the global energy market reasonably well, largely by moving aggressively away from any energy production-related industries over the course of the last decade. A partially government-owned company, Masdar Partners, is now offering urban redesign services globally.
A discussion of the early plans for Masdar City, and its implications for other urban centers, can be found at http://superstructgame.org/StoryView/198.