Monday, February 11, 2008

Jaime Lerner: Sing a song of sustainable cities


http://www.ted.com With maverick flair and a strategist's disdain for accepted wisdom, Jaime Lerner re-invented urban space in his native Curitiba, Brazil. Along the way he managed to revolutionize bus transit, awaken green consciousness in a populace accustomed to litter and blight, and change the way city planners and bureaucrats world-wide conceive what's possible within the tangled structure of the metropolitan landscape.

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Anonymous said...

Work on first carbon 'free' city begins
By Tory Shepherd
THE world's first carbon-neutral city will be built in Abu Dhabi.

Masdar will be a car-free, zero-waste metropolis that will house up to 50,000 people. The $22bn project is scheduled to be finished in 2016.

Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan presided over a ground-breaking ceremony on Saturday.

The city will use a fraction of the power of normal cities, and that power will come from clean, renewable sources such as solar power.

Planners hope to achieve zero waste through the reduction, re-use, recycling and recovery of waste material.

Masdar City will be designed to ensure residents do not need personal vehicles. Instead there will be an emission-free public transport system.

Water will come from a desalination plant.

Masdar chief executive officer Dr Sultan Al Jaber said the city would "lead the world".

"We are creating a city where residents and commuters will live the highest quality of life with the lowest environmental footprint," he said.

"Masdar city will become the world's hub for future energy.

"By taking sustainable development and living to a new level, it will lead the world in understanding how all future cities should be built."

The 6.5 sq km city is expected to create more than 70,000 jobs and attract sustainability experts. It will also contain the world's first graduate school dedicated to renewable energy.

It it estimated it will save the equivalent of $2 billion in oil over 25 years.

The Masdar project is an initiative of the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, which is owned by the Abu Dhabi Government.

The city Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is already home to 900,000 people.