Lusail
.jpg)
Lusail (also known as Lusail City ; Arabic لوسيل, DMG Lūsail ) is an urbanization project north of the city of Doha , the capital of Qatar , in the municipality of ad-Daʿayan .
History and planning
The planned city is being built on a previously barely built-up area of around 35 square kilometers, starting on the West Bay Complex Canal in northeast Doha. The area extends seven kilometers north of the coast and runs up to five kilometers inland. 200,000 people will live on this area, a further 170,000 people will work and finally 80,000 visitors and tourists will be accommodated. The resulting urban complex with 450,000 people exceeds Doha's current population. However, once the hydraulic engineering work is complete, the remaining land area of the project will have shrunk to 21 square kilometers.
To this end, extensive land movements have already been carried out since 2007. The new lagoon city will consist of large blocks of land and bodies of water, internal connecting canals and some medium-sized offshore islands. Here, too, similar to the artificial island The Pearl , which has already been realized to the south, the planners attach great importance to as many properties as possible with direct or as close as possible to the coast or shore.
In contrast to The Pearl archipelago, which is located two to four kilometers to the south , Lusail City is "modeled out" of the naturally grown coastal section. The new water areas are dredged from the coast inwards (west) out of the desert land, so that the upstream areas that have been left standing and partly increased with the excavation and new islands are on naturally grown subsoil, which increases their stability and waterline stability and is more cost-effective .
The project is being developed by the state-controlled developer “Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company” and is being marketed in several phases. Their concept is based on the assumption that such a test- tube city will only be in demand if the most important urban functions can be accommodated in a balanced and needs-based manner. The planners intend to bring large (including state) and smaller administrative companies as well as trading companies and retailers, visitor-attracting leisure facilities, a theater, sports facilities and recreational areas, educational institutions, leisure harbors and waterfront luxury hotels into a lively urban context. After the FIFA World Cup 2022 has been awarded to Qatar, the largest stadium will be built in Lusail with the Lusail Iconic Stadium . There are also around 22 hotels that will be available until 2022. These central facilities are rounded off by an external ring of residential quarters on mostly low-rise, green areas with private homes and apartment buildings as well as a neighborhood-related social infrastructure and attractive leisure areas.
The city is to get a total of around 350 medium-high skyscrapers, of which four very high skyscrapers (70 to 80 floors) are to crown the waterfront area in a central location .
Construction progress
By mid-2013 the project was already well advanced: the immense land design work and hydraulic structures were almost complete, especially the areas and islands of the future entertainment city near the water ; However, some of the future lagoon areas will still be blocked off without being flooded in order to be able to better handle internal developments and construction traffic. The marina to the south was opened as the first construction project on June 1, 2011.
According to the latest plans, the infrastructure, with the exception of the public rail-bound transport, should be largely completed by 2015, so that private investors and state developers have enough time to erect many of the buildings by the major event of the soccer World Cup in 2022. The final completion of this very ambitious large-scale project is likely to take until the 2030s.
Districts and role assignments
The entire complex is divided into ten functionally oriented districts:
- Marina , the harbor bays lying inland on the great canal,
- Entertainment City , a 100 hectare island area with all kinds of event buildings,
- Corporate Office Park , a low-rise complex for corporate offices,
- Fox Hills will host the central convention center,
- Waterfront planned as a prominent continental high-rise location on the coast side,
- Boulevard takes on the central shopping function with a shopping center,
- Palm Allees is the name given to the high-ranking residential quarters further out,
- Golf , the golf course with all-round upscale villa development and golf resorts,
- Island Resorts are luxurious tourist hotels on some offshore islands,
- Corniche , the islands with the marina will be connected with bridges as a strolling route.
Sustainability concept
In this regard, the announcements remained rather vague, concrete commitments on environmentally relevant data, the energy balance, etc. are not yet known. The will to build the new city according to progressive standards is evident. So z. B. the buildings are assigned to different sustainability categories, whereby the highest categories should be given preference.
Traffic concept
Lusail will be accessible by rail, road and water. The road connection follows the generous high-speed traffic routes customary in the country, the area distribution will also take place with wide boulevards. Stationary traffic in the center is directed to underground parking areas with a total of around 7,000 parking spaces at four intersections.
As part of the generous rail transport concept for Doha, Lusail will be accessible by underground and S-Bahn . A tram system is also planned for urban local traffic . Starting in 2018, a total of four lines are to go into operation over a total length of 33 kilometers. At the beginning of 2014, a consortium including the French group Alstom won the tender for the construction of the route network. A total of 35 Citadis railcars are planned.
Lusail should also benefit from its location in the vicinity of the water: water taxis for loads and people could handle a considerable part of the traffic.
criticism
In 2018, the human rights organization Amnesty International criticized precarious and exploitative working conditions in Lusail. The construction company Mercury Mena is said to have systematically withheld wages from migrant workers since 2016. According to the construction company, unreliable business partners are responsible for this.
Web links
- Website of Lusail (English)
- Lusail City - Development Profile (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Blickpunkt Straßenbahn, issue 4/2014, p. 132: Qatar.
- ↑ Football World Cup: Amnesty again points to untenable conditions in Qatar. In: derstandard.at . September 26, 2018, accessed October 11, 2019.
Coordinates: 25 ° 30 ' N , 51 ° 29' E