Masdar: The City of the Future?

'One Day all Cities will be like this' 


The self proclaimed city of the future is located on the eastern fringes of Abu-Dhabi, rather ironically next to the UAE capitals sprawling Airport.


Masdar is a new urban extension designed by the British architect Norman Foster and has being designed with the welcoming principles of sustainability and livability at its heart;  when complete it will be home to between 45,000 and 50,000 people; although not large the project is designed to act as a blueprint for how we can develop our cities in a more environmentally conscious age. The desert of Abu-Dhabi offering the perfect location to build such an ambitious project from scratch.

Masdar City Plan (http://www.masdarcity.ae/index.aspx)

The city will be home to a number of principles which Foster hopes will define the city of the Future, notably an underground personal rapid transport system; leaving the ground level free for pedestrians. Despite its location in the UAE which in recent years has seen Dubai and Abu-Dhabi construct some of the worlds most outlandish structures, Masdar takes its inspiration from a more traditional form of design with buildings of a scale more friendly to humans, located around narrow streets. This should promote low energy usage and ensure the City has a low carbon footprint. In a recent Interview Lord Foster uses the example of Copenhagen as a tightly knit metropolis which has twice the population density of Detroit but uses a tenth of the energy of the American City.


Foster also believes that a higher urban density correlates to prosperity, citing the examples of some of London's most prosperous areas such as Kensington and Chelsea also being the cities most sought after districts.  


In this instance I find Lord Fosters views slightly simplistic, he only has to visit his home city of Manchester to see highly dense areas such as Moss Side among its most deprived, while leafy areas such as Didsbury and Chorlton are more prosperous. 


The issue here is not simply density, it is the quality of the housing stock and the public realm on offer in these areas. Kensington and Chelsea are lucky that they contain a substantial amount of high quality housing at a strong density, which in turn has encouraged businesses and money into the area. 


It is refreshing in a way that Masdar looks to the pre-car city for inspiration, which is ever more important in nations such as China and India, where car usage and urban expansion are growing hand in hand. While I have long  and increasingly felt that even here in the UK our towns and cities are becoming unfriendly places for pedestrians; something which isn't helped with new housing often located that far away from any facilities, it is impossible for people not to have a car if they want to simply visit a local shop. This needs to change, not least before we forget how to use our legs and our kids all succumb to asthma and obesity. 

Masdar City, October 2009 (Google earth)

As for Masdar construction work is well under way (above) and the city is scheduled for completion by 2025, I hope by then we are not still looking at its design as the ordinary but the start for a new chapter in the way we view the city across the globe. 


I fully recommend visiting the Masdar City website for more information about the project: http://www.masdarcity.ae/en/index.aspx