Rise of the Carbon-Neutral City

Several ambitious plans around the world envision green cities, but such projects raise as many questions as they promise to answer

Perhaps the mother of all sustainable architecture projects, Dongtan on Chongming Island in China will be powered by wind, biofuels, and solar energy.

by Matt Vella

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In the windswept deserts of Abu Dhabi, construction is under way on a green oasis planners say represents one of the most ambitious urban building projects ever. On Feb. 7, the United Arab Emirates-funded consortium behind Masdar City, a zero-carbon, zero-waste, self-contained community meant to house 50,000 people, finally broke ground, launching the first of seven building phases to be completed over the next eight years. All told, the $22 billion megaproject will include cutting-edge solar power and water treatment systems, nonpolluting underground light rail, and a small research university operated in conjunction with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Foster & Partners-designed Masdar project (BusinessWeek.com, 12/13/07) is no doubt a bid to diversify the UAE's petroleum-rich economy as well as green the country's image. But more important, it is the latest in a growing list of high-profile, high-promise, environmentally friendly city design projects around the world. With mounting concerns over global warming and exploding urban populations, the race to design and build the model "green city of the future" is on. The sites proposed are of such scale and complexity that they represent a major new front in green innovation.

Equally ambitious projects to build entirely new, sustainabilitly-focused cities are cropping up on nearly every continent. Well-known architectural firms such as Charlottesville, Va.'s William McDonough & Partners and London's Arup have signed on to create massive green projects in China, which will effectively test the ability of engineers and urban planners to manage that country's staggering and often environmentally ravaging growth.

Avalanche of Innovation

In a similar vein, the governments of Costa Rica, Norway, and even Libya have announced grand, state-sponsored development plans that promise some version of carbon neutrality—offsetting greenhouse gas emissions, often by producing clean, renewable energy. Smaller private and public developments throughout Europe and North America abound, powered by everything from solar energy and hydrogen fuel cells to even human waste.

"These sites—even the more experimental projects—matter because they set 'stretch' goals," says Ann Rappaport, a lecturer in the urban and environmental policy department at Tufts University. Rappaport says the most ambitious plans are likely to quicken the pace of technological and architectural development in much the same way corporations that set stringent green goals for themselves in the 1980s and 1990s learned the most, even if they did not always meet initial goals.

"Frankly, we need an avalanche of innovation," adds Alex Steffen, the co-founder and executive editor of Worldchanging.com, a leading environmental blog and nonprofit. [See also Cities: A Smart Alternative to Cars, (BusinessWeek.com, 2/11/08). "Such projects serve to push the boundaries of green practice and expand our sense of what's possible," he adds, suggesting the practice of urban design stands to gain from the trend.

Innovation Doesn't Have to Be Expensive

Developments such as Masdar and Arup's $1.3 billion Dongtan project on Chongming Island, off the eastern shore of China, certainly have advantages over so-called in-fill projects, or plans that attempt to retrofit existing buildings and cities along green principles. According to Khaled Awad, director of property development at Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co., which is overseeing Masdar, starting from scratch allowed the city's designers to position the development's layout such that its wind turbines can generate as much clean power as possible. [Hear Awad speak in Putting Masdar on the Map, (BusinessWeek.com, 2/11/08)]. That's not a luxury afforded to an existing city whose plan may have been laid out hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago.