Not a laughing matter?

Rob Wagner, editor

For the past year there has been quite a bit of scepticism among the suits in the construction industry about the practicality of the much vaunted Masdar City. The city is supposed to be the be-all, end-all zero-carbon project that promises to revolutionise how cities are to run in an eco-friendly manner.

As Construction Week Assistant Editor Jamie Stewart asks: Is Masdar City the beacon of progress or one big petri dish on a budget pumped with steroids? Or is it in the most modest terms the projects’ publicists can conjure up: A giant leap for mankind.

I’ve been inclined to fall on the side of the sceptics because, well, the goals seem a bit too lofty and the language used to describe it a bit over-ripe.

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I talked recently with Marwan Khraisheh, the provost at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (Mist), as did Jamie, who also discussed the project with Khaled Awad, director of property management for Masdar City.

Let’s just say that between our discussions with Khraisheh and Awad and Jamie’s onsite visit, I am softening my view a bit about whether Masdar City can be a success. Does that mean that I believe that Masdar City will truly be a zero-carbon community? No, of course not. That’s impossible.

Let’s face it. Abu Dhabi is not the poster child for energy conservation. How can it be if it is to sustain itself in the middle of the desert and still provide services, accommodations and jobs to thousands of people? But give it credit for attempting the impossible. It may not grab the brass ring, but Abu Dhabi government officials are doing everything in their power to achieve a level of success.

And here’s why it will be a success by any definition. Mist is backed by perhaps the most prestigious research institute in North America.

It has the endorsement and support of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and all of its attendant expertise in the field of energy conservation. As essentially an auxiliary branch of MIT, Mist will use the ever-growing Masdar City, which will eventually be home to 50,000 people, as an open laboratory to develop policies and technology to focus on renewable energy and sustainable technologies.

As most of us know who have been exposed to biological or technological research even at the secondary school level, a failure ultimately means progress, if not success by a different measure.

That doesn’t mean that I expect Mist students and researchers to fail in their quest for eco-perfection, but the fact that Mist will occupy 6% of the city’s 6.5km2 area and use the city as its own hands-on lab, tells me that it is destined to achieve many if not most of its goals.

Construction industry leaders and environmentalists will follow Masdar’s progress through the project’s completion date in 2016. Over the next seven years we can expect to see huge advances in developing zero-carbon communities thanks to the visionaries who launched this project.