I thought this was a very interesting project and initiative. One aspect that I enjoyed was that people from all backgrounds can benefit from the City and participate in its development. For example, graduate students would partner with businesses and participate in the construction of the city, and small business owners would be able to start up their own businesses. I wondered, though, how the country was convincing people to relocate into this city. The issue of income inequality in the city that came up was interesting. Although the city is sustainably amazing, it appeared that the same could not be said for it socially. Perhaps this issue could be tackled once the city is further developed. Another paradoxical-type issue brought up is that the funds for the city came from oil and gas export revenues, which is very ironic as these resources produce greenhouse emissions yet fund such a sustainable project. Personally, I thought this was not okay and that there should be an alternate source of funding.
The initial statistics on the success of the City were overwhelming, specifically with regards to the change in net demand for various resources and the $25 billion in fuel costs saved. I was waiting for a part that depicted the effectiveness of the city, so this part was really satisfying to read. Then, when they went into how they exactly went about creating these achievements was really awesome as well. For example, they used mirrors to focus sunlight in order to create steam. That’s just awesome and innovative, yet so simple that it makes me wonder why we wouldn’t normally use something like that in the first place. Then there were steps that were just mind-blowingly creative, like orienting the city a certain way in order to optimize sun & shade. It was really cool to see how such small details that the architects carefully thought out were able to impact the mechanisms of the city so greatly. Many social effects came about from the structure of the city as well. For example, the shaded streets would encourage further human interaction. This was another example of such a small detail that is so effective yet simple. I also thought it was impressive how not only the products were sustainable, but the processes, as well. For example, in achieving sustainable water, the city would get its water from a desalinization plant outside the city. However, transporting this water would be conducted via solar power, which goes to show that the process of achieving sustainability in this city is wholesome. Overall, I thought this was a very interesting city with numerous amazing processes and achievable goals. However, some aspects of it are questionable, and we have to wait and see how these concerns will play out as the city becomes more and more developed.
