Masdar City: A model of urban environmental sustainability

In recent years, various proposals have emerged for the construction of “eco-cities,” specially designed communities with an explicit environmental focus that often incorporate technologically sophisticated building design, comprehensive master-planning, renewable energy sources, and efforts to achieve resource self-sufficiency. This trend, however, is subject to intense criticism among some proponents of sustainable urbanism, on grounds ranging from the purported social exclusivity of eco-cities to the claimed incompatibility between a sustainable mode of living and continued economic growth in the contemporary Western model. Masdar City, an eco-city presently being built in the United Arab Emirates, serves as a useful case study in this debate, with such unconventional features as an underground network of tunnels for electric cars and an aim of developing a zero-carbon electricity supply. After examining the Masdar project in particular, and the scholarly context surrounding sustainable urbanism in general, this essay offers a new method for evaluating the environmental and social effects of eco-cities. Using the dual concepts of an “experimental” approach that favors a diverse collection of initiatives for ecologically conscious urban planning and a “human-benefits” perspective that emphasizes inhabitants’ quality of life, the paper concludes that, despite its disadvantages, Masdar City represents an important advance in the field of sustainable urban design.