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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Have you seen the green desert?

Norman Foster's utopia is designed for the Masdar Initiative in Abu Dhabi to be the "world's first zero-carbon and zero-waste city."

The project has a 6 million square meter sustainable development plan mixing planning used for walled cities with technology to achieve zero carbon and zero waste. Foster + Partners, master-planners of the initiative, and Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, the main drivers for the work, hope the project will also be a center of new thought on energy production.

According to Foster, “the environmental ambitions of the Masdar Initiative – zero carbon and waste free – are a world first. They have provided us with a challenging design brief that promises to question conventional urban wisdom at a fundamental level. Masdar promises to set new benchmarks for the sustainable city of the future.”

The city will be car free and pedestrian-friendly thanks to compact street planning and a maximum distance of 200 meters to the nearest transportation and/or amenities hub. Thanks to carefully planned growth and resource production (with wind, photovoltaic farms, and fields surrounding the area), the city plans to be entirely sulf-sustaining.

Read more on the Masdar Initiative

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