The Masdar Initiative is an ambitious and well-intentioned plan to address the issue of sustainable development for urban cities. When I opened article and read on the first page that “Masdar will be the world’s first zero carbon, zero waste, zero car city. At the cutting edge of technology and design, Masdar incorporates advanced energy and water saving techniques modeling the sustainability practices of the future,” I was surprised to see that a project of this scale existed (1). It made me very curious to read more.
Masdar seems to have many features through the use of technology that addresses the economical and environmental aspect of sustainability that the article explains well. There were two features of Masdar that I really liked in particular. One is that the city will rely independently on renewable energy for 100% of its electricity demands. I knew very little about Abu Dhabi when I opened this article. However, the one thing that I do associate with Abu Dhabi is oil, and oil, along with other fossil fuels, have many negative associations with environmental issues such as carbon emissions and unsustainability. It is great to see that Masdar is using a diverse range of renewable energies such as wind, photovoltaics, and thermal solar to supply it energy needs in an environmental friendly manner that also helps the country’s image and commercial development. The second feature that caught my eye is that Masdar will be car free, the world’s first. The fact that the City will be designed to accommodate walking and biking as its main forms of transportation will lead to many health and social benefits. The Personal Rapid Transit is a system that I hope New York City can implement as it can serve the same purpose as our current MTA while being more environmentally friendly. Of course, implementing the PRT system in New York City can be difficult due to the differences between the two cities in terms of physical size, number of residents, and the current existence of the MTA in New York City.
While my initial impressions of Masdar were filled with curiosity and delight, my conclusion about the Initiative as a “model city” for the world is that it can not be in that position. The lack of equity and economic accessibility is a tremendous flaw that, in my opinion, on its own makes Masdar unqualified to serve as a model city for the world to emulate. The article states that due to the $22 billion cost of creating Masdar, “only wealthy people will be able to reside permanently in Masdar” (6). With increasing urbanization, a greater percentage of the world population, especially the poor or less wealthy, are going to be living in cities that need to be environmentally sustainable in order to accommodate our finite supply of fossil fuels and to mitigate the amount of harmful pollution. A “model city” needs to to be accessible by everyone if it wants to inspire future progress towards sustainable cities.
Overall, despite lacking the essential characteristic in order to be a model city, I think the principle behind the Masdar Initiative and some of its technological ideas are definitely worth emulating.
