Masdar

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مصدر
Maṣdar
Maṣdar (United Arab Emirates)
Maṣdar
Maṣdar
Coordinates 24 ° 25 '45 "  N , 54 ° 37' 6"  E Coordinates: 24 ° 25 '45 "  N , 54 ° 37' 6"  E
Basic data
Country United Arab Emirates

emirate

Abu Dhabi
ISO 3166-2 AE-AZ
surface 6 km²
founding April 2006
Construction site 2012

Masdar ( Arabic مصدر, DMG Maṣdar  'source' or 'origin') is an interrupted urban development project in the United Arab Emirates . The core of this project is Masdar City, a planned eco-city in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi , construction of which began in February 2008. The International Organization for Renewable Energies (IRENA) has its headquarters there.

Concept of the eco city

The project, which has been announced as a “CO 2 -neutral Science City”, is to be supplied entirely by renewable energies . For example, the water supply is planned with solar-powered desalination plants . Overall, there should only be an energy consumption of 25 percent per capita compared to today's consumption. In addition, the entire city will be based on strict sustainability guidelines so that it will be CO 2 -emissions-free and, thanks to consistent recycling, will be virtually waste-free. Fresh air corridors and parks are to pervade the construction areas and drastically lower the temperature compared to the city of Abu Dhabi.

Masdar is being built around 30 kilometers east of the capital Abu Dhabi, bordering Abu Dhabi International Airport to the west . The mega-project, covering an area of ​​six square kilometers, is designed for 47,500 residents and around 1,500 companies and institutes from the ecological sector, and no point in the city should be more than 200 meters from a public transport stop.

The initiative is led by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (ADFEC) and Sheikh Muhammad bin Zayid Al Nahyan . Initiated in 2006, the project was planned for first occupancy from 2016.

In spring 2010, however, various media reported for the first time about time delays and financial problems. The construction work had lost its pace and determination, and completion was not expected before 2020. In 2016, completion was expected in 2030.

Research and development location

The planned city will also be the site of a new university, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology . It should be the first university in the world that is exclusively dedicated to the complex of ecological sustainability based on renewable energies. The university has been moving into the first facilities since 2009, and a third of the students will live in the Masdar area and be practically involved in urban planning and construction as part of their study programs. It is also expected that the companies and their institutes based in and around Masdar will have to gain new types of experience in the course of the construction projects, apply special technological processes or generate new, ecologically usable knowledge that they can market on the growing world market for sustainable systems.

It is the declared intention of the Masdar initiators with this pattern urbanization that's very high in the United Arab Emirates energy consumption can be counteracted to demonstrate. Masdar City is to be largely independent with its own solar power plant and a ring of wind turbines.

The planning of Masdar is done by Foster + Partners from the United Kingdom . Many companies and institutes from all over the world are already involved in the design and construction, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , General Electric , Siemens (Middle East Research Center with around 2000 workplaces), BP , Shell , Mitsubishi , Rolls-Royce , Total SA , Mitsui , Fiat , BASF , RWTH Aachen , Bosch Solar Energy (formerly ersol Solar Energy) and Conergy . The cost of the project is put at 22 billion US dollars .

The idea of ​​the eco-city is copied from traditional Arab settlements: where little sun can penetrate, the climate remains bearable. The tightly placed, shade-giving construction method can avoid what all modern high-rise buildings in warm zones are doomed to: they have to be cooled down with enormous expenditure of energy. In addition, the initiators believe that the low alley construction, despite all modern technology, best meets the human need for a public space with personal communication. The novel architecture of many areas of the city, which was partly designed by the star architect Norman Foster , is characterized by a partly organically shaped aesthetic . In addition, the proven idea of local cooling is by wind towers revived in a modernized form: Some large buildings are for huge Modern Wind Towers grouped around, combined with all sorts of ecological energy recovery techniques.

Last but not least, the large-scale Masdar project is also about the large-scale creation of a laboratory situation to clarify the question of whether humans are fundamentally able to adapt to ecological requirements or whether they refuse to adopt a sustainable lifestyle. As all environmentally harmful factors are to be banned from Masdar, there will be no fossil fuel vehicles inside the settlement - these must be left outside the walls of Masdar and the journey continued with public transport designed for sustainability.

traffic

Station for driverless cabin vehicles

The smooth traffic in the model city is planned with different, coordinated public transport, each assigned to a level. So-called Personal Rapid Transit networks (PRT networks) from the Dutch company 2getthere are being installed locally in the underground of Masdar and two other districts of Abu Dhabi . This is an electrically motorized individual transport in which the user arrives at his chosen destination in an automated cabin without waiting. The system has been tested under Masdar City with ten cabins since August 2011, but with only two stations. The use of separate freight transport is also part of the program. The cabins are boarded or loaded at stops secured with separating doors and move over floor-level guide barriers at up to 40 km / h on the traffic deck.

Masdar will be the first city in the world to use a PRT network for a car-free city. Cars are not allowed on the (ground floor) streets, the podium level . They are only intended for pedestrians and cyclists. At a higher level one is elevated train ( light rail transit , LRT) plan that combines Masdar with other parts of the city and the airport. A regional train is also planned below the PRT level.

Construction progress, economic framework

According to initial plans, Masdar City should be completed in 2016; however, it has been known since January 2010 that overall completion will be delayed at least until 2025. 13 buildings had been erected by 2017, which corresponds to around 5% of the construction work. It is questionable whether the project will ever be finished, but Masdar Managing Director Sultan Ahmed Al Jabar is sticking to the project, which is now (2017) to be implemented by 2030. After all, a 10 MW photovoltaic system was created with an area of ​​over 22 hectares, which together with the 1 MW roof systems of the institute generates around 19 MWh annually. Work on the foundation of the headquarters of the eco-city has been going on since May 2009; the Masdar Institute of the Technical University opened in the 2010/2011 semester with 170 hand-picked postgraduate students. In 2016, 300 students lived there for free, while fewer than 2,000 people work on campus. It can be heard from the project environment that the important urban development part of the project is in the balance. The main obstacle is the lack of planning security as a result of the country's autocratic leadership. Agreements can be revoked at any time by the ruling family of the emir .

criticism

Critics criticize a milkmaid bill for the concept of a CO 2 -neutral eco-city using the example of Masdar City. As the city through the Clean Development Mechanism to be funded, it means that the money saved greenhouse gas - emissions Masdar as so-called Certified Emissions Reductions be certified and sold. The buyer can then emit the emissions for his part. To calculate the reduction, a city is assumed as it would "normally" be built in this region. The difference between the estimated emissions of this hypothetical city and the actual emissions of Masdar is certified as a reduction performance. Since the United Arab Emirates is the country with the world's second highest per capita emissions (28.2 tonnes of CO 2 per person in 2007), the bottom line is that Masdar will also cause a particularly large number of greenhouse gas emissions per inhabitant.

literature

  • Gerhard Martin Burs: Media Presentation in Contemporary Architecture: The Example of the United Arab Emirates. Transcript, Bielefeld 2016, ISBN 978-3-8376-3343-6 , pp. 273-314.

See also

Web links

Commons : Masdar  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Spiegel Online: Green Eco-City in the Desert , February 9, 2008
  2. ↑ Daily Green: Eco-City Masdar City stopped for the time being ( memento of the original from March 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , March 12, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dailygreen.de
  3. ↑ Carina Pachner, news.at: What the eco-city can do in the desert , November 24, 2016
  4. ↑ Fast Track to Abu Dhabi's future . National (ae) 30. August 2008.
  5. ↑ a b Suzanne Goldenberg: Masdar's zero-carbon dream could become world's first green ghost town. February 16, 2016, accessed January 31, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Dr. John Mogge: The Technology of Personal Rapid Transit (PDF; 1.2 MB). MASDAR Program Team, January 2009.
  7. ↑ Allplan: Masdar City - Abu Dhabi: An urban utopia in the desert . ( allplan.com [accessed on January 31, 2018]).
  8. ↑ energy_factsheet-final-jan_8, _2017.pdf
  9. ↑ Martin Woker: Branding in the desert sand . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , January 23, 2013, international edition, p. 7.
  10. ↑ Abu Dhabi's Masdar Initiative Breaks Ground on Carbon-Neutral City of the Future . Thomson Reuters, February 9, 2008, accessed July 7, 2009.