Carbon-neutral cities of the future?

Question

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90042092

"Narrow streets and shaded walks would reduce the need for air conditioning. The city would be oriented northeast to minimize the amount of direct sunlight on buildings' sides and windows. Solar panels and solar collectors ..."

And a ban on cars.

Your thoughts?

Answer 1

"Narrow streets and shaded walks" err... like the ones in old cities before the rise of the cult of the motor car! hooray!

glad to see them using their oil wealth constructively, and i hope the (to me bloomin obvious) idea of actually planning a new development will catch on.

china have a good new scheme at dongtan;

http://www.arup.com/eastasia/project.cfm...

edit;

you're welcome amy.

i've been enjoying your questions, very thoughtful.

Answer 2

Most cities are already pretty environmentally friendly, given their high density, public transit, and multi person residences. However, if there was a city that really went above and beyond, I'd move there in a second. (once I'm done with college that is.)

Already planing on moving to Chicago, which is fairly eco- friendly.

Answer 3

At least someone is investing massive gasoline profits to move forward.  Shame it isn't ExxonMobil.

It's odd that urban planners in the U.S. keep copying the same dysfunctional pattern of separating people from jobs, with no connecting mass transit.

By not innovating and building cities such as that one, by protecting legacy builders and ways of doing things, the U.S. only falls further behind the rest of the world.

Answer 4

I think:

poor, poor, people... more and more people are brainwashed by Al Gore and his junk every day...

poor, poor, people, you really need to get out of CNN and look at the facts.

Answer 5

Great, as long as I do not have to live there or pay for it, but you can have a great time there.

Answer 6

Yeah they've got some really cool ideas for this city.  I particularly like the utilization of solar energy (which is certainly plentiful in Abu Dhabi) to power the personal transport vehicles and ban internal combustion engine cars.  Also the reuse of 80% of the water.  Super cool.  I just wonder how much the construction costs will be for the city.  Probably pretty massive, but still, super cool ideas.

Answer 7

Most of the worlds cities sprung up over years with little to no planning for energy efficiency or even quality of life.  While it's hard to "rearrange" a city once it's built, it would be pretty stupid in this day and age to build new cities without implementing energy efficiencies and designing them to be more human friendly. It's nice to see such forward thinking, especially coming from the Middle East.

Cars puttering around, idling at intersections, honking horns, spewing exhaust, etc. definitely do NOT help make city living enjoyable, nor are they necessary.  When starting a city from scratch it's pretty easy to design in clean quiet transportation system that make life better for everyone.  Leave the cars at parking lots outside the main city area.

Answer 8

If it works,more power to them. But remember,people in general like to have a large yard and 2 cars in the garage,especially if those said people happen to have families already.Most of the low density development we see around us today happened during the Baby Boom years when having larger families was considered the norm.