Against the Odds, Eco-Cities Moving Forward

Eco cities sound like the stuff of science fiction yet in this Treehugger report, countries from Korea to Australia are starting to make headway in shaping the architectural vision of eco-sustainable cities. Even in Singapore where land reclamation has been the main way population expansion on the tiny island, it has been rumored that the government is exploring the real possibility of building underground or underwater cities. Now that would be incredible!

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Against the Odds, Eco-Cities Moving Forward
www.treehugger.com
by Jesse Fox

It doesn’t take a world financial crisis to sink grand plans for sustainable cities. Even before Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, some very ambitious eco-city projects were unceremoniously buried, while others simply fizzled out. However, crisis or no crisis, the number of eco-city initiatives popping up lately around the world continues to grow.

Masdar Gets Sustainable City Center

Probably the most high-profile eco-city out there is Masdar City, already rising out on the edge of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Late last month, according to Architecture and Design, a plan was selected for Masdar’s city center.

The plan, by Australia-based firm Lava, contains an interesting solution for moderating Abu Dhabi’s harsh desert climate: “solar umbrellas.” Supposedly modeled on sunflowers, these strange devices will actually open up during the day to collect solar energy and provide shade, and close at night.

Masdar is going to be a seriously futuristic place. LAVA’s downtown envisions the following list of green features: “adaptive building façades with angles that can be altered to offset or optimise solar glare, materials on wall surfaces that respond to changing temperatures and contain minimal embedded energy, underground water storage, interactive light poles, interactive and heat sensitive technology, as well as roof gardens for food production, energy generation, water efficiency and the reuse of organic food waste.”

But perhaps the most innovative aspect of the design is that it’s actually outdoors. As LAVA’s designers note, the air conditioned shopping mall has come to replace public space in the Middle East in recent years. Masdar’s new center will instead be an open plaza.

New Eco-City in South Korea

Meanwhile, Foster + Partners, the firm behind Masdar’s master plan, recently won a competition to design a new city for 320,000 people on two islands northwest of Seoul. Incheon Free Economic Zone would be built around a light rail line, integrate rooftop agriculture and serve as a national center for sustainable industry.

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