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When Sheikh Mohammad Bin Zayed stooped to lay a stone in the ground on February 11, it signified more than the inauguration of yet another poorly built, concrete-heavy Middle Eastern city.
By kicking off the $22 billion Masdar City project, due for completion in 2016, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi further promoted claims by the United Arab Emirates to be the most forward-thinking and sustainably built and managed nation in the world.
Nothing about Masdar, located in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, wants for ambition. Designed and developed by a clutch of the world’s leading engineers and architects, it is being promoted as the world’s first zero-carbon, zero-waste city, powered entirely by renewable energy sources.
Covering 6 million square metres, and boasting schools, universities and a renewable energy institute, Masdar will be entirely car-free, and boasts that no inhabitant will need to walk more than 200 metres before encountering some part of the transportation network, at the heart of which will be a world-class rapid transport rail system.
