Carbon neutral cities: what will work – and what will not
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, according to an article in Business Week magazine, US.
In addition, in the windswept deserts of Abu Dhabi, it continues, construction is under way on a green oasis planners say represents one of the most ambitious urban building projects ever. On February 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 Foster & Partners-designed 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.
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.
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.
But the engineers, planners, and architects behind Masdar, Dongtan, and other new cities say there are enormous technological and practical advances to be made via new projects that can be applied to retrofit projects—and other industries. They say the extensive international partnerships required to complete such projects have a generally positive impact on the global sustainability community, encouraging more information sharing, including which design strategies work most effectively and—more crucially—which do not.
These articles are available online, together with a series on green design principles
