Urban eco-modernisation and the policy context of new eco-city projects: Where Masdar City fails and why

Introduction

With the expansion of urban fabric across the world, and the threat of what scholars such as Merrifield (2012) term planetary urbanisation, the environmental, social and economic performances of cities are becoming increasingly influential in shaping the present and future of the planet. Concerns over the unsustainability of contemporary patterns of urbanisation have been raised across a variety of disciplines, raising important questions with regards to the interconnections between the evolution of cities and the transformation of societies, economies and environmental systems (see, for instance, Urban Age Project, 2007, 2011; World Bank, 2010). More recently, the study of urban sustainability has highlighted the emergence of projects for new master-planned cities alleged by their developers to embody an equilibrium among economic, social and environmental concerns and represent a paradigm of sustainable city-making. Broadly grouped by both developers and academics under the term eco-city, these projects have been the subject of several case studies (Crot, 2013; Cugurullo, 2013a; Datta, 2012; Pow and Neo, 2013; Wu, 2012). What this body of research shows is that the development of projects for new eco-cities is becoming a global urban trend. New settlements labelled as ‘eco-cities’ are emerging across heterogeneous geographical spaces, becoming part of a phenomenon which is gradually shaping how urban sustainability is globally understood and practiced.

At the time of writing, critical studies on the eco-city phenomenon have made important contributions to the understanding of how sustainability is interpreted in new eco-city projects. Joss and Molella (2013), for instance, in their analysis of Caofedian, note how sustainable urbanisation is conceived and practiced as part of a process of technological development in which urban sustainability becomes urban technology and vice versa. In a similar vein, Shwayri (2013) highlights the role of technological innovation in Songdo, and connects the genesis of what was designed to be the first ubiquitous city to the intention of the Korean government to create an exportable, high-tech model of city-making. Chang and Sheppard (2013), in the cases of Dongtan and Chongming, position the projects at the intersection between urban sustainability and green capitalism, showing how the eco-city was imagined to be a driver of both economic self-sufficiency and globalism. From a political-ecologist perspective, authors such as Hodson and Marvin (2010: 311) reflect on the elitist character of eco-city projects, and define eco-cities as ‘ecological enclaves’ in which protection is granted only to small sets of actors, and the burdens of climate change and resource scarcity are unevenly distributed.

However, much of the literature on alleged ‘eco-cities’ treats these projects almost in isolation from their policy context. Although there are studies which consider the political milieu surrounding eco-city initiatives (see, for example, Chang and Sheppard, 2013; De Jong et al., 2013), scholars in urban studies have tended to pay marginal attention to the impact that local policy agendas have on eco-city formations. What the works of authors such as Brand and Thomas (2005), Whitehead (2003, 2007), Raco and Lin (2012), suggest is that conceptualisations and strategies of urban sustainability are formed in and by specific loci whose socio-political, economic and environmental dynamics lead to the production of ad hoc policies. Urban sustainability projects are strongly embedded in broader policy agendas tailored around particular spatial realities: agendas which provide the framework through which sustainability is interpreted and put into practice to (re)design urban environments.

The argument advanced in this article is that projects for new eco-cities are not standalone urban experiments, but rather tiles of a broader context-dependent policy mosaic. The construction of new cities such as Masdar City, Songdo and Incheon, is part of policy agendas which are designed according to specific geographical contexts. In these terms, the genesis of these settlements can be understood only by (a) deconstructing and contextualising the development agendas of their region of origin, and (b) looking at the regional policy targets, seeing how eco-city projects are used to meet them. Most importantly, this article contends that ideas of sustainability cultivated and implemented by eco-city developers are shaped by local policy frameworks whose analysis is revelatory of how new eco-city projects interpret and address urban sustainability.

On the basis of the above considerations, this article uses Masdar City, a supposed eco-city currently under construction in Abu Dhabi, as a case study to explain the rationale of an eco-city project in relation to its policy context. First, the article discusses the methodology employed during the fieldwork, and the theory and criticism of ecological modernisation, which frame the analysis of the data. Third, it examines the context of the Masdar City project and explores the past and present of Abu Dhabi from a socio-political and economic perspective, emphasising how, today, four major challenges (resource scarcity, population growth, climate change and the Arab Spring) are undermining the stability of the emirate’s institutions. The fourth part introduces the contemporary development agenda of Abu Dhabi whose economic and urban targets, including the development of an eco-city, are discussed in depth across two sections which show how sustainability is interpreted and integrated into policy priorities. The article then analyses the implementation of Masdar City, revealing the mechanics of the project and explaining how the new city seeks to meet local policy targets by providing a real-life environment where stakeholders can develop, test and commercialise new clean technologies. In this part of the article, the analysis digs into the conceptual underpinnings that drive the Masdarian practices of sustainability (environmentalism as consumerism, in particular) and exposes their limitations. The article ends with a critique of the Emirati eco-city project, and develops the concept of urban eco-modernisation to capture how urban agendas redolent of the logic of ecological modernisation have produced a city with weak social and environmental performances.

Research design and experience

The argument of this article is built upon data collected during nine months of fieldwork. ‘Context matters’ was the underlying idea at the basis of the research experience. As the following sections illustrate, the Masdarian understanding and practice of sustainability has been shaped by several contextual factors connected to the geography and political economy of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Developing an understanding of the ideas of sustainability cultivated and practiced in Masdar City, therefore, demanded a socio-political and economic exploration of the Emirati territory: a task which was pursued, from September 2010 to May 2011, via in-depth empirical research. The core of the fieldwork took place in the emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. From a geopolitical perspective, Masdar City is part of Abu Dhabi. However, geographically, the new city is close to the northeast borders of Abu Dhabi and approximately 100 km from Dubai where a number of key actors (developers, planners and architects, in particular) were based.

The article benefits from two main research methods. First, the analysis of the policy context of the Masdar City project draws on a critical documentary and discourse analysis of key policy documents produced by the Government of Abu Dhabi and two local councils: the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council (UPC) and the Abu Dhabi Council for Economic Development (ADCED). The pool of documents takes into account more than 20 publications including Abu Dhabi’s economic and planning agendas and material produced by the developers of Masdar City, the Masdar Initiative, such as economic and environmental reports and master plans. Second, the article refers to 19 semi-structured and 15 unstructured interviews conducted with policymakers involved in the development of the Emirati policy agenda, members of the Masdar Initiative, and planners and architects from Foster and Partners, responsible for the design and master-planning of the new settlement. The interviewees were selected according to their position and role within their respective organisations. Members of the UPC and ADCED, for example, were interviewed in order to shed light on the links between the development of Masdar City and the development of the economic agenda of Abu Dhabi, while representatives from the Masdar Initiative and its main business partners (Siemens, Schneider and Mitsubishi) were interrogated about the conceptual underpinnings and mechanics of the Emirati eco-city project. Owing to the authoritarian political and civil climate that surrounded the field research (see Freedom House, 2011), anonymity was granted to all participants in order to protect them. Therefore, in the following sections, interviewees will be referred to by their role (such as ‘spokesman from the Masdar Initiative’) as a way to maintain their privacy.

The eco-city phenomenon through the lens of moderate relationalism

The article’s theoretical basis is positioned within recent ontological and epistemological debates on space and its production. More specifically, the article engages with theories of relationality: a corpus of works which has set in the 21st century an established theme in the social sciences, particularly in geography and urban studies (see Jones, 2009). The core of relational thinking is based on the idea that space is open, unfixed and constantly in the process of becoming (Massey, 2005). For advocators of relational approaches, such as Amin (2004, 2007) and Thrift (2004), topography, understood as a form of spatial representation in which spaces are depicted as structured and closed entities marked by fixed boundaries, fails to portray the multitude of mobilities, interconnections and circulations underpinning spatial formations. Through relational thinking, space stops being categorised according to bounded hierarchies. Instead, it is stretched beyond pre-given political boundaries and associated with images of an increasingly globalised world, criss-crossed by heterogeneous flows of material and immaterial beings (such as ideas, capital and persons).

This article recognises the value of relational thinking in urban studies and acknowledges the impact of globalisation on the eco-city phenomenon. Internationally, projects for new eco-cities appear to manifest similar traits in terms of ideas, planning and policy strategies, architectures and sponsors. As shown in the work of Rapoport (2014a: 4), the development of large-scale urban projects such as new eco-cities is framed by master plans produced by a homogeneous network of international engineering, architecture and urban planning firms: a condition leading to the cultivation and implementation of ‘a fairly uniform and consistent set of ideas for enhancing the sustainability of urban development’. Across geographical locations, technology, in particular, emerges as a common denominator among eco-city initiatives. As emphasised in recent surveys, ‘eco-cities are most often conceived of or delivered primarily in terms of technological innovations’ (Joss et al., 2011: 4). More specifically, master plans for eco-cities feature the implementation and integration of clean technologies, such as wind turbines, concentrated solar power stations, automated transport systems and smart grids, designed to produce renewable energy, minimise energy waste and, ultimately, reduce the environmental impact of the new settlements.

In this sense, the eco-city phenomenon reflects one of the most international manifestations of the ideology of sustainability: ecological modernisation. Also referred to as eco-modernisation, ecological modernisation rejects environmental concerns as antithetical to economic priorities, and advances technological innovation as the equaliser of economic growth and environmental preservation (Andersen and Massa, 2000; Harvey, 1996). In eco-city initiatives, the array of high-tech clean devices varies from project to project, mostly according to regional environmental specificities, such as climate, hydrologic cycles and soil qualities. What homogenises these projects is the perception and employment of technological development as an environmentally friendly medium of economic regeneration and/or extra-capital absorption. More specifically, the cutting-edge technology employed by eco-city developers is both a commodity which can be commercialised through emerging, global clean-tech markets, and a tool of decarbonisation meant to decrease the carbon emissions that the urbanisation of capital surpluses and the construction of new settlements generate.

The parallel between the eco-city phenomenon and the thesis of ecological modernisation can also be observed in the criticism that surrounds them. From a social justice perspective, for instance, Caprotti (2014) denounces the stark inequalities that characterise the development of eco-city projects whose material incarnations depend on injections of migrant labour and deny access to low-income workers. Similarly, Pepper (1998) critiques the technocratic character of eco-modernisation whereby scientific and economic experts put a price on the environment, tending to exclude large community segments. In her review of the eco-city as an urban planning model, Rapoport (2014b: 142) highlights how, in eco-city projects, ‘economic concerns consistently take priority over environmental ones’, mirroring the secular divide between the preservation of natural environments and the preservation of capitalist economies. In a similar vein, Foster (2002) raises concerns over the ecological potential of eco-modernisation strategies, pointing out that ecological modernisation does not change the traditional capitalistic patterns of production and consumption, and thus replicates the same environmental issues intrinsic to capitalism.

From a relational perspective, eco-city projects inspired by the thesis of ecological modernisation can be seen as formed by networks of ideas, capital and actors eluding conventional topographic categorisations. However, the studies of geographers such as Jones (2009), Paasi (2004) and Whitehead (2003, 2007) show that the recognition of the impact of liquid, global networks does not necessarily imply the neglect of fixed geopolitical entities such as states and regions. Specifically in relation to strategies of sustainable urban development, the work of Whitehead (2007: 7) demonstrates that ‘states continue to provide important legal, moral, political and cultural contexts within which different forms of sustainability are emerging’. Adopting what Jones (2009: 487) terms ‘moderate relationalism’, this work interprets eco-city initiatives as the product of syncretisms: processes characterised by a dialectical relationship, which merge local and international elements, forming the soil where ideas of urban sustainability are cultivated and implemented. The aim is to show, through the lens of moderate relationalism, that the understandings and practices of sustainability of new eco-city projects such as Masdar City, depend upon context-dependent policy agendas which apply the thesis of ecological modernisation to urbanisation, in order to tackle local political, economic and environmental challenges. In the next section, the article begins to empirically verify its theoretical propositions by looking at the geographical context of the case study.

The context of Masdar City

The geographical focus of the article is Abu Dhabi: the largest and most influential state of the UAE. Abu Dhabi is located on the southern cost of the Persian Gulf, in an area rich in oil and natural gas. Vast reserves of petroleum were discovered in the 1960s and gave to the local political forces the financial power to achieve independence in 1971, after almost a century of British rule. Capitalised by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, oil triggered an economic boom which, under the hegemony of Sheik Zayed, led the country to unprecedented conditions of wealth for the local population. After the death of Zayed in 2004, his son, Sheik Khalifa, further developed the oil industry and positioned Abu Dhabi among the top ten global oil producers. In 2008, it was calculated that the export of oil was generating an average of US$90 billion per year (Abu Dhabi Government, 2008). Part of this revenue was translated into a series of regional and overseas investments supported by one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds: the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Over the years, the country has built a global portfolio of financial assets, acquiring stakes in Barclays, Virgin Galactic and Manchester City Football Club, for an estimated total of US$300–875 billion (Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, 2013; The Economist, 2008). The benefits of this golden era were equally spread among the locals. Policymakers developed a strong welfare system, thus granting to the nationals (around 15% of the total population) luxurious standards of living. In 2008, GDP per capita increased by 20% and, despite the global credit crunch, there was no apparent sign of recession in Abu Dhabi (International Monetary Fund, 2013; World Bank, 2013).

Politically, Abu Dhabi is characterised by an authoritarian government which, because of the absolute power of its ruler, the sheik, falls under the category of sultanism: a system in which everyone is subject to the unquestionable authority of the leader on whose discretion politics operates (Linz and Stepan, 1996; Weber, 1964). In Abu Dhabi, UAE nationals have few or no political rights, and live in what, after Ali (2010), can be described as a gilded cage made of generous economic benefits and incentives. The situation of the nationals is diametrically different from what is experienced by most of the expatriates who form the bulk of the labour force of Abu Dhabi. Originally from the Indian Plate and Southeast Asia, the majority of migrant labourers, as pointed out by several organisations monitoring human rights (see, for instance, Human Rights Watch, 2012; The Guardian, 2013), live and work in poor conditions characterised by low levels of political, economic and physical security. This consistent share of the total population of the emirate, it has been reported, often work in dangerous environments, such as unsafe construction sites, for an average of 14 hours per day, receiving extremely low salaries compared with those earned by workers with Emirati citizenship.

Today, after decades of economic and political stability, Abu Dhabi is experiencing a situation of transition, dictated by four key, interconnected challenges: natural resource depletion, population growth, climate change and the Arab Spring. First, as a result of the exponential exploitation of the local oil reserves, the economy of Abu Dhabi, largely founded in the production and export of oil, may gradually deteriorate over the next five decades. This is not the place to enter the peak oil debate, but it is worth emphasising how several recent studies suggest that oil scarcity is more than just a conjecture (Chapman, 2014; Leeb, 2004). Moreover, even if unproven oil reserves might still be found in Abu Dhabi, as noted by The Economist (2012), the interests of oil companies are now shifting towards the Arctic regions which, because of global warming and the shrinking of the ice caps, are becoming more and more accessible. Second, owing to injections of foreign workforce, the total population of the emirate is expected to triple by 2030 and reach 3 million (UPC, 2008, 2013). This is a critical issue inasmuch as Abu Dhabi does not possess enough natural resources, fresh water in particular, to sustain this growth. A growing population would imply an increasing reliance on desalination which, in turn, would lead to an increasing consumption of oil whose exhaustion appears only to be a matter of time. In addition, this problem could be further exacerbated by climate change. As Luomi (2009) observes, because of climatic shifts, Abu Dhabi could face migrations from countries prone to disasters: migrations which would further impact on the regional scarcity of natural resources. Finally, with the revolutionary wave shaking the political foundations of Middle Eastern countries, the Arab Spring, Abu Dhabi’s governmental institutions are now under threat. To date, Abu Dhabi has not experienced any major public demonstrations. Emirati citizens have little or no incentive to go against the royal family as that would mean putting their wealth at risk. However, the collapse of the oil economy would imply the end of the welfare system and, today more than ever, the sheik needs a new development vision in order to preserve the status quo.

Economic Vision 2030

In order to face the challenges examined in the previous section, the government of Abu Dhabi has designed a long-term development agenda: Vision 2030. The agenda was politically imposed by the sheik in 2008, and presented to the local population as the dying wish of Sheik Khalifa whose post-mortem authority continues to exert a strong influence over the nationals. It is divided into two parts linked by an overarching policy framework which sets key development targets and strategies. The first part, Economic Vision 2030, focuses on the economy of the emirate and introduces the concept of sustainability, framing it from an economic and environmental perspective. The second part, Urban Planning Vision 2030, addresses the urbanisation of the region and defines what planning strategies the emirate will adopt over the next 30 years, including the development of new urban settlements such as Masdar City.

The bulk of Vision 2030 consists of Economic Vision 2030: a policy roadmap, designed by a multinational taskforce, ‘to guide the evolution of the Abu Dhabi economy through to the year 2030’ and ‘build a sustainable economy’ (Abu Dhabi Government, 2008: 1, 17). The concept of sustainability underpins the entire agenda and the adjective ‘sustainable’ is used extensively to define the type of economic development that Abu Dhabi appears to be targeting. In Vision 2030, sustainable becomes a synonym for profitable and economically viable, and is associated with policy strategies capable of generating profit. In the document, the adjective ‘sustainable’ always precedes the word ‘economy’ and is used to indicate a form of economic development which can be sustained or, to put it differently, maintained and kept in existence for an undetermined amount of time. As discussed in the previous section, the economy of the emirate is founded on oil, a resource which policymakers expect to end in the near future. For the developers of Vision 2030, a form of economic development based exclusively on oil is therefore unsustainable and needs to be supported by alternative business activities. Following this framework, in the Emirati agenda, economic sustainability is portrayed as a diversified economy in which heterogeneous economic sectors act in concert to maintain high levels of GDP per capita. Hence, the key target of Economic Vision 2030: the development of additional strands of the economy, capable of facilitating a regional transition to a post-petroleum society. In policy terms, this target is translated into major investments in R&D and in securing strategic partnerships with multinationals such as Schneider and General Electric, to develop and install state-of-the-art clean energy sources (solar power plants and geothermal stations, for example) in the emirate. In addition to targeting energy security, investments in R&D also seek to diversify the local economy and grow a new economic sector based on the development and commercialisation of clean technologies.

From a discursive perspective, Economic Vision 2030 manifests evident traits of ecological modernisation. In the document, environmental protection and economic development are not seen as oppositional, but rather as complementary. According to local policymakers, in Abu Dhabi ‘the protection of the environment is being given the utmost importance alongside economic growth’: a line of thought which is expected to be realised through the production of new clean technologies meant to simultaneously regenerate the Emirati economy and decrease its carbon footprint (Abu Dhabi Government, 2008: 89). However, technological innovation is only the first (and most superficial) level at which Abu Dhabi’s eco-modernist logic can be observed, and to understand how ecological modernisation operates on the ground informing the genesis of Masdar City, the focus of inquiry has to move towards the built environment where the production of technology becomes the production of space.

Urban Planning Vision 2030

The economic role that Abu Dhabi assigns to the built environment is manifested in Urban Planning Vision 2030, which represents the urban incarnation of Vision 2030 and the policy context of the Masdar City project. Urban Planning Vision 2030 recognises a deep interdependence between economies and cities. As stated by the local planning council, ‘sustainable economic growth requires co-ordinated economic and planning strategies’: a line of thought which is translated into an organic plan of urbanisation based on a double planning strategy (UPC, 2008: 14). First, Abu Dhabi’s Urban Planning Vision targets already existing urban areas and aims to regenerate them through the integration of clean technology. This is evident in the plan to reshape the fabric of the main urban conglomeration of the emirate which, following the Manhattan model, lies on an orthogonal grid. The intention of the government is to demolish the central area of the grid and build a city centre. Described by the UPC (2008: 103) as ‘a monumental planning initiative’, the new district has been designed as a 45 km² space inscribed in three concentric circles. The idea is to implement new buildings and retrofit existing ones using cutting-edge clean devices designed to decrease the carbon emissions of the built environment and improve its efficiency in terms of energy waste. Second, Urban Planning Vision 2030 consists of ambitious projects for the development of new master-planned settlements, such as Masdar City (see Figure 1), built from scratch to facilitate large-scale technological installations (smart grids in particular).

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Figure 1.

Masdar City (May 2015).

As in the case of Economic Vision 2030, in Urban Planning Vision 2030 the concept of sustainability is a central theme. According to the UPC (2008: 5), ‘Abu Dhabi aspires to provide citizens with a more sustainable urban environment’ and seeks to develop ‘a framework that will create sustainable communities for future generations’. Sustainability is again understood in economic terms. In Urban Planning Vision 2030, the objective is the same as for Economic Visions 2030 − namely, the creation of an economy which can be kept in existence for the foreseeable future – and the built environment is interpreted as the medium to achieve this objective. Urbanisation, in the shape of new cities and regeneration programmes, is pursued to provide all the physical and socio-economic infrastructures (such as laboratories, office space, research centres and financial institutions) essential to developing high-tech devices by which clean energy can be produced and, more importantly for Abu Dhabi, new economic sectors can be cultivated. In this sense, Urban Planning Vision 2030 presents the same echoes of ecological modernisation as its economic counterpart, Economic Vision 2030, with the addition of a peculiar factor: the urban. The creation of new urban settlements and the regeneration of existing ones or, to put it differently, the urbanisation of the region, is how eco-modernisation strategies are practiced in Abu Dhabi. It is in this policy context that the article now explores the Emirati project for a new eco-city: Masdar City.

The Masdar City project: Mechanics

The policy priorities of Abu Dhabi discussed in the previous two sections can be observed in practice by looking at the Masdar City project: the flagship development of Vision 2030 and the realisation of the policy tenets of Economic and Urban Planning Vision 2030. The aim of expanding the local economy by using the built environment is the kernel of the Emirati eco-city project. Masdar City is a US$20 billion, state-funded project consisting of the construction of a new master-planned settlement which is claimed by its developers, the Masdar Initiative (2015: no page), to be ‘the world’s most sustainable eco-city’. Originally designed by the London-based, international studio, Foster and Partners in 2007, Masdar City, once completed, will cover 6 km² and accommodate a population of approximately 50,000 people. However, the nature of the new Emirati city is more economic than social. Described as a ‘business’ by several representatives of the Masdar Initiative interviewed during the fieldwork, Masdar City is a commercial enterprise designed to generate profit through a synergistic process of technological and urban development. This section now examines the machinery of the business underpinning the Emirati eco-city project in relation to the local development agenda, to then shed light on the most problematic aspects of the Masdarian understanding of sustainability.

The Masdar City project is officially promoted by the Masdar Initiative as one of the key tools employed by the government to implement Vision 2030. According to recent publications released by the developers, Masdar City will ‘grow the non-oil sector’s share of the emirate’s economy’ and ‘encourage investment in areas that generate intellectual property gains’ (Masdar Initiative, 2012: 10). These objectives are pursued through two main, interconnected strategies for which the built environment is the common denominator. First, Masdar City seeks to contribute to Abu Dhabi’s economic growth and diversification by developing a new economic sector based on the research, development and commercialisation of clean technology. The plan of the Masdar Initiative is to create a clean-tech hub where emerging companies, established corporations and research centres converge to develop and launch new clean-tech products such as smart grids, photovoltaics, automated transport systems and low-carbon building materials. Companies like Siemens, Schneider and Mitsubishi, can rent portions of the new city and install state-of-the-art laboratories to test high-tech devices in co-operation with the Masdar Initiative. Once a partnership is forged, the Emirati company shares its expertise through its teams of engineers, planners and market analysts, and, together with its partners, it identifies high-demand clean technologies and uses the new city to develop them.

The city provides all the infrastructures necessary to deliver clean-tech projects. After having been designed and manufactured, products are integrated into the urban fabric of Masdar City and their performance is tested using the entire city as a laboratory. ‘We want to do it [testing] in a real-life environment’, commented a representative from Siemens – one of the key partners of the Masdarian venture – in an interview. The representative explained how the new Emirati city gives to companies such as Siemens the opportunity first to collect data on their products in the environment for which they have been designed, and second to showcase them using the company buildings as showrooms. The flow of data is constant and companies monitor their prototypes in real-time. The collection of data is computerised and automated: a process which makes Masdar City a laboratory that never sleeps. In a similar vein, Masdar City is a showroom that never closes. Given that, in Masdar City, the urban and the tech are intrinsically connected to each other, potential buyers, developers and investors can observe the portfolio of the Masdar Initiative and its partners by simply walking around in the city.

The new city grows together with the business partnerships of its developers. Headquarters and offices are built to accommodate new companies, and a plethora of heterogeneous urban infrastructures (ranging from streets and buildings to power and water supply networks) are constructed to accommodate their research portfolios. A company such as Siemens, for example, working on smart grid technologies dictates the layout of Masdar City by installing the physical components of the smart grid (roof-mounted solar panels, meters, voltage regulators, sensors, optical fibre cables, automation systems, generators and electrical substations) into the physical structure of the settlement (see Figure 2). This planning mentality, in which business and urbanism are indistinguishable, leads Masdar City to be an ever-changing urban space whose design has to constantly adapt to the agenda of the Masdar Initiative and its business partners. The implementation of new high-tech devices implies the implementation of new urban fabric and, as a planner from Foster and Partners confirmed in an interview, the master plan of the city is kept flexible on purpose to make sure that, in Masdar City, urbanisation and technological development can always be synchronised.

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Figure 2.

Solar panels roofs in Masdar City (April 2011).

Eventually, the products created in Masdar City by the Masdar Initiative and its business partners are commercialised and sold worldwide, thereby generating substantial returns for the owner of the project: Abu Dhabi. As a manager from Schneider put it when questioned about the commitment of his company, ‘it’s a win-win situation’. For the manager, companies like Schneider need living laboratories such as Masdar City to assess the performance of their new products in real-life environments and build a competitive advantage over companies that test their technologies in traditional, indoor laboratories. Masdar City, on the other hand, seeks to attract multinationals to Abu Dhabi and develop with them what now is an embryonic non-oil sector of the economy. In this context, the eco-city is a project where ‘eco’ does not stand for ‘ecological’ but for ‘economic’.

Second, as a project pivoting around the research and development of new high-tech devices, a key objective of Masdar City is to stimulate an economic sector, that of clean technology, capable of generating intellectual property gains. The products developed in Masdar City are associated with a series of intellectual property rights such as patents and industrial design rights. All these rights are investable assets. Individual investors and brokerage firms can buy a share of these assets in the expectation of long-term gains, betting on the potential success of the products to which the assets are linked. It is important to remember that clean technology is a growing investment area. As reported by the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management (2012), in 2011 global investment in renewable energies and technologies increased by 17%, thereby setting a new record. Most of the investments (more than 50%) were based on photovoltaics and came from a variety of different geographical locations, marking a global turn in the clean technology market. Masdar City, as a clean-tech urban development promoted as the model of its kind, aims to locate itself and its products at the centre of this market, and attract global investment in clean technology to expand and diversify the economy of Abu Dhabi.

The Masdar City project: Conceptual underpinnings

The way sustainability is understood and practiced in Masdar City is a reflection of Vision 2030. The new Emirati city follows the policy priorities set in Economic and Urban Planning Vision 2030 and interprets sustainability as profitability, feeding into the overarching aim of diversifying the economy of Abu Dhabi. One interviewee, a spokesman from the Masdar Initiative, stated that the purpose of Masdar City is to ‘make sustainability commercial’. As explained above, this is done by developing and commercialising clean technologies via the city. Besides being a power source designed to generate clean energy, Masdar City is a generator of revenues which expands the economic portfolio of Abu Dhabi, thereby sustaining the local economy and, as a state-funded project, itself as well. The Masdarian understanding of sustainability interprets urban development purely in economic terms. In the Masdar City project, the city is seen as a tool to produce profit, and the sustainable city is seen as a tool which can keep producing profit for the foreseeable future. Interview data confirmed that, since the early stages of the project, the ideas underpinning Masdar City have been cultivated upon economic objectives. ‘Masdar City should not be treated as a charity’ claimed a manager from the Masdar Initiative in an interview. ‘It has money given to it by the government, and the government expects to see a return on investment’. The manager stated that behind every single step of the project, there are meticulous economic calculations and, ultimately, nothing gets approved unless (a) it is within the budget and (b) it is remunerative. This golden rule applies to a number of elements of the Masdar City project, such as planning strategies, architecture, materials and technologies, and, according to the manager, this is the reason why Masdar City is an example of sustainable urban development. For him, the new city is sustainable inasmuch as it is ‘cost-effective’ and ‘economically viable’. ‘I am paying my cost and I am making money’ he argued, capturing the essence of the Masdarian philosophy.

However, the fact that the Emirati eco-city project has shown to have the potential of being economically profitable does not necessarily make Masdar City sustainable. There are three main problems to consider. First, the focus of Masdar City is too much on the economic aspects of sustainability, and social and environmental concerns are either underdeveloped or, worse, ignored. The politics of Masdar City is a politics of expediency, where the ends justify the means: a politics which, following a Machiavellian rationale, is ready to sacrifice the environmental and social performance of the new city in order maximise the economic one. The aim of the Masdar Initiative (2011: no page) is to quickly build an ‘unmatched platform for the commercial-scale demonstration of sustainable technology’, and scarce consideration is given to some of the most crucial socio-environmental challenges that stand in between the developers and the implementation of their eco-city project. Water supply, for example, is a major environmental issue, inasmuch as Masdar City is located in a region affected by water scarcity. Over 90% of groundwater in Abu Dhabi is saline and the remaining percentage is not enough to sustain the growing urban population of the emirate. As a result, Abu Dhabi relies on desalination: an energy-intensive process which requires the combustion of vast amounts of fossil fuels. In the future, Masdar City is supposed to receive water from desalination plants powered by Masdar City itself through its photovoltaic power stations. However, as a planner from Foster and Partners admitted during an interview, the new city will be able to generate enough energy to sustain itself only after having being completed. Therefore, as of this writing, Masdar City relies on off-site energy sources and, more specifically, on Emirati oil and gas. Oil, in particular, is what guarantees a continuous flow of fresh water to Masdar City. In addition, it provides the majority of the energy that the Masdar Initiative needs to build a city from scratch. Paradoxically then, Masdar City is promoted as a green city despite the fact that black is the colour of the element that sustains its implementation.

Second, the way sustainability is expressed in Masdar City associates environmentalism with consumerism. The environmental attention of the developers is put almost exclusively on CO₂ whose reduction can be capitalised through the development and commercialisation of clean technologies designed to decrease the carbon emissions of urban environments. As a result of this profit-driven selection of environmental targets, a plethora of other important themes (ecosystem services in particular) are cut off because they are perceived as unattractive from an economic perspective. More problematically, the extreme reliance on technology as the solution to global environmental problems reiterates the very origin of those environmental problems. The Masdar Initiative encourages its customers to consume technologies or, put simply, products whose commercialisation requires intense processes of extraction, production and distribution. In order to be made, material goods such as smart grid devices necessitate ingredients (metals, minerals, plastics, etc.) which are extracted from the ground or derived from petroleum. In addition to exploiting the stock of resources of the planet, the process of extraction is extremely carbon intensive (not to mention its immediate negative impact on ecosystems) and adds to the carbon emissions that are generated when materials are assembled into products and products, in the shape of commodities, are distributed across the world.

Third, the economic targets of Masdar City are shaped to the advantage of a small percentage of the population of Abu Dhabi. The revenues produced by the new city flow directly to the royal family and indirectly to the Emirati citizens through a broad welfare system. The remaining 85% of the population (made up of expatriates) is left, physically and economically, outside the city. In addition to being excluded from the economic benefits that Masdar City generates, most of migrant workers are also excluded from the built environment of Masdar City. The new settlement has been partitioned according to an urbanistic rationale which leaves the majority of the urban space to high-income workers. More specifically, 80% of housing space in the city will be taken by the Masdar Initiative and its business partners, while the remaining 20% will be left to low-income workers. Besides penalising the most vulnerable groups, such distribution of space does not follow an equal temporal progression. As a planner from Foster and Partners remarked in an interview, the Masdarian ‘20% policy’ in favour of low-income households is still nebulous. To date, priority has been given to building high-standard accommodations for the members of the clean-tech companies working with the Masdar Initiative, and little attention has been paid to the implementation of social housing. This planning mentality makes Masdar City an elitist and, ultimately, socially unjust project whose environmental and economic benefits appear to be unequally distributed among the population of Abu Dhabi.

Conclusions: Urban eco-modernisation

In this article, the lens of moderate relationalism has highlighted the multifaceted nature of Abu Dhabi’s project for a new eco-city. Masdar City is a syncretism produced by the Abu Dhabi Government’s metabolisation of local challenges, through the thesis of ecological modernisation. The process, supervised by a multinational taskforce and realised by a state-owned company, is tailored to the challenges faced by the ruling class and feeds into a broader policy agenda which seeks to regenerate and expand the local economy through the regeneration and expansion of the built environment. By developing, integrating and commercialising clean technologies, the Emirati eco-city project capitalises on environmental concerns to generate profit. Built to be a laboratory and showroom of clean-tech products, the new city is funded and used by Abu Dhabi to establish non-oil businesses serving the dual purpose of diversifying the economy and producing alternative energy sources. In these terms, Masdar City is sustainable inasmuch as it manages to sustain the economic and political system that it draws on. However, redolent of the eco-modernisation logic, the project is severely undermined by an internal tension between economic interests and environmental concerns: a tension which ultimately shatters the sustainability potential of the new city.

The examination of the Masdar City project reveals the contradictions that the thesis of eco-modernisation generates when put into practice via urbanisation. The city is treated as a commodity and its development is dictated by the logic of the market. Behind the implementation of the Emirati alleged eco-city are not ecological analyses studying the biophysical environment that surrounds Masdar City, but rather market analyses studying the economic environment that surrounds the clean technology market. Challenges to the sustainability of Masdar City, such as the water and energy supply chains, that affect the environmental performance of the new city, are not tackled. Instead, they are perceived by the Masdar Initiative as obstacles and simply ignored or bypassed. Ideas of economic feasibility and profitability shape the understanding of what has to be sustained, and those aspects of city-making that cannot be turned into immediate sources of profit are excluded from the agenda (see also Cugurullo, 2013a, 2013b).

Materialising the fears of critics of ecological modernisation such as Foster (2002), Masdar City replicates the same patterns and mistakes of the conventional capitalist city where what cannot be capitalised is ignored, and what is meant to solve environmental problems (technological development) reinforces the same dynamics that caused them in the first place. In addition, the economic benefits of the project are not equally distributed and what is sustained is an undemocratic regime, to the detriment of social justice. However, as demonstrated in this article, the issues of what can be termed urban eco-modernisation are (re)produced in Masdar City, but do not originate in Masdar City. The unsustainability of the Emirati eco-city project comes from the policy agenda of Abu Dhabi, Vision 2030, which is crafted around the economic interests of the local elites. What the Masdarian experience shows is that, in order to develop sustainable cities, governments first need to develop policy agendas that equally target economic and environmental development to the advantage of the whole population. Without such conditions, any so-called ‘eco-city’ will be the utopia of the few and the dystopia of the many.