Postcard from Abu Dhabi: On the Road to Masdar City, a Desert Ecocity in the Making

Masdar City, the world's first zero-carbon city under construction.

Last month saw the 11th edition of the International Ecocity Conference Series that was first held 25 years ago in Berkeley, California and since has traveled to cities across every continent of our beautiful planet, save for Antarctica. As a long-time friend and team member in various capacities of the series' conveners, Ecocity Builders, I've been able to attend the last four summits in San Francisco (2008), Istanbul (2009), Montreal (2011), and Nantes (2013). When Abu Dhabi was announced as the 2015 host two years ago at Ecocity 10, I remember feeling a mix of excitement about the prospect of visiting a place I had never been to and mystery about an area of the planet I knew very little about.

As it turned out, I wasn't alone on the latter. Almost every time I mentioned Abu Dhabi to friends, the reactions ranged from blank stares to "oh, you're going to the place with the indoor ski resort!" Well, Dubai is not that far off — 80 miles northeast along the Persian Gulf Coast, to be exact — but mentally placing the famed ski resort in Abu Dhabi is perhaps a bit like thinking Disneyland is in San Francisco. Yes, it's all California, but only someone who has never been there would think every city and town is right out of a Beach Boys song.

Come to think of it, there were more beach boys (and girls) in Abu Dhabi than on a normal (foggy) day in San Francisco...

Here's the lowdown: Abu Dhabi and Dubai are each one of the seven constituent emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a country located on the southeastern end of the Arabian Peninsula on the Persian Gulf. The more populous Dubai often gets the most attention for its (admittedly) daring architectural stunts, but Abu Dhabi (meaning "Father of the Gazelle" in Arabic) is the largest of the seven Emirates (covering almost 90 percent of the UAE's total land area), the capital, the country's political and industrial hub, and the historical and cultural center.

Human habitation in the region dates back to at least 5500 BC, but the current industrialized geopolitical entity simply known as "The Emirates" wasn't founded until 1971, when Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan of the Al Nahyan family was able to bring together different indigenous Bedouin tribes to form a new country, stepping into the vacuum between the waning colonial appetite of the British and a growing global appetite for hydrocarbons. As one of the world's largest oil producers with about 9% of the world's oil and 5% of its natural gas reserves (94 percent of them in Abu Dhabi), the late Sheikh Zayed oversaw the rapid urban growth from what used to essentially be nomadic settlements into two of the world's major cosmopolitan areas. While initially planned for 40,000 then 600,000 inhabitants, Abu Dhabi city proper had grown to a population of 1.5 million by 2014.

Which brings me to the second response everyone had upon hearing we were going to hold the Summit there: "What's so "ecocity" about a place owing its very existence to the overabundance of non-renewable resources?"

It's a fair question, albeit one that we would all be well-advised to ask about our own places of residence. Especially those of us in the western-industrialized world need to remember that much of our current standard of living has been the result of our disproportionate use of fossil fuels, both quantitatively and for the most sustained period of time. Yes, the UAE currently has the largest per capita Ecological Footprint in the world, but it's hard to argue that Los Angeles, Las Vegas, or even the much celebrated "green" city San Francisco (with an ecological footprint 6 percent higher than the average American's) are in a position to stake the moral high ground in our common endeavor to bring human civilization back into some semblance of harmony with Earth's natural ecosystems. Not even eco-conscious Western Europe can showcase a single country whose per capita ecological footprint does not exceed its biocapacity.

So here's what I tell people as to why it was a great idea to hold the Ecocity World Summit in Abu Dhabi:

There are currently no fully realized ecocities in the world, only cities with varying degrees of "ecocityness" in different areas, along the 15 conditions laid out by the International Ecocity Framework & Standards initiative (IEFS). The good news is that this means everyone is in the same boat, mid-journey, trying to get to a better place from where they are, depending on their own unique circumstances and according to each city's means. Ecocity Builders is committed to facilitating the process for any city willing to take the leap towards becoming more ecocity-like, educating along the way and helping to exchange knowledge and experience between urban stakeholders across the globe. And as initiatives like Eye on Earth or the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative (AGEDI), projects like Masdar City (more on that later), or the UAE's commitment to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals show, the leaders as well as the communities of Abu Dhabi have been serious about stirring their urban ship into more sustainable waters for some time now.

While Ecocity Summits are never just about the host city, it became abundantly clear in the run-up to and during the conference, which was aptly themed "Ecocities in challenging environments," that these hosts would leave a lasting impression on all of their visitors.

What follows in this post and subsequent ones I plan on writing over the next few weeks are some of my personal impressions of a week that went from curious to inspiring to jawdropping; my own One Thousand and One Ecocity Nights, if you will. I will kick it off with my visit to Masdar City, an aspiring ecotropolis on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi's somewhat fluid city limits, in the middle of the Arabian desert.