The promise and the performance of the world's first two zero carbon eco-cities

Abstract

In recent years two major attempts have been made to develop ‘eco-city prototypes’ the Dongtan City in China and the Masdar City near Abu Dhabi. Both attempts have revolved round the premise that advanced post-modern technology, innovative urban planning, reliance on renewable energy, and emphasis on ‘total’ reuse can combine to achieve ‘zero carbon–zero waste’ existence. The plan of the two cities had also integrated strong business interests into the system, aiming to make ‘zero carbon–zero waste’ a kind of catch-phrase or a fashion statement that would enhance the value of the real estate the two eco-cities were planning to offer.

The paper recapitulates the objectives that were set and assesses the present status of realization of those objectives. There is an already substantial and widening gap between the promise and the performance in both the cases; the review identifies the gaps and the possible reasons of their occurrence. It is highlighted that the expectation of a zero-waste existence is inherently flawed because the Second Law of Thermodynamics makes it impossible to attain.

The paper brings out that no ‘eco-city’ concept can be translated into reality unless and until the inhabitants of the eco-city are prepared to voluntarily and consistently observe certain restrictions on resource consumption and to sacrifice some of the basically illusory but highly fancied ‘comforts’ which drive consumption in conventional habitations. It follows that many of those measures that are sought to be introduced in the eco-cities to make them cleaner and greener can very much be implemented in existing cities if only the same extent of voluntary participation from the lay public can be invoked that is expected in the ‘eco-cities’.

Introduction

Living within fully closed material cycles—in other words living in a way that incoming solar energy is the only source of all energy consumed and no material is ‘wasted’—is an enchanting dream. This dream was initially, and still is, pursued by space scientists [1], [2], [3], who aim to create human-centric mesocosms or ‘life-support systems’ within spaceships [4], [5], [6]. The hope has been that such mesocosms would enable human beings to live for several months or years on spaceship even when there is no possibility to supply them with the life's essentials from the earth, and when solar radiation is the only external source of energy available [3], [7].

The tides of environmental consciousness that began sweeping across the world from the late 1960s onwards generated interest in the protection of the earth's ecosystems and the dream of ‘zero waste’ existence began to be pursued for terrestrial living as well [8]. But before mankind could develop a single truly ‘zero waste’ technology it is being challenged by the existing-threatening rise in global warming. This has led the catch-phrase to be modified into ‘zero waste—zero carbon’ existence.

Whereas attempts to set-up ‘zero emission’ buildings—such as the Adam Joseph Lewis Center at Oberlin College, Ohio, [9] ‘zero emission’ villages—such as the bioenergy village Juhnde, Germany [10], [11] and low emission townships—such as the New Songdo City, South Korea [12], [13] have been made from time to time. The Dongtan and the Masdar City projects have distinguished themselves by the scale of ‘clean living’ they had aimed to achieve when they had begun.

This paper charts the history of the two eco-cities. It begins with a recapitulation of the eco-city concept and then discusses the two eco-cities from the point of their conceptualization to the present state of their development.