Oil wealth into world's first sustainable city

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/21/climatechange.energy

Desert state channels oil wealth into world's first sustainable city
Lord Foster designs car-free, solar-powered project for 50,000 people
John Vidal in Abu Dhabi
The Guardian, Monday January 21 2008

In an expanse of grey rock and dust in one of the harshest environments on earth, the United Arab Emirates is about to build what is being described as the world's first sustainable city, designed by British architect Lord Foster.

The site is far from promising. Miles from a polluted sea, a fierce sun raises temperatures to 50C (120F) in the summer, and there is no fresh water, no soil and no animals. But tens of billions of petro-dollars will be poured into these seven square kilometres of desert on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi.

Called Masdar - "the source" in Arabic - the walled city is intended to house 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses. It will have no cars and be self-sufficient in renewable energy, the majority of which will be solar energy.

The formal unveiling of the desert eco-city will be made today at a summit on future energy sources in Abu Dhabi, attended by the UK business secretary, John Hutton, and Prince Andrew.

"It's extremely ambitious," said Gerard Evenden, senior partner in Lord Foster's architecture practice in London, which has had a team working on the design for nine months. "We were invited to design a zero-carbon city. In this harsh place we needed to look back at history and see how ancient settlements had adapted to their environments." The buildings will huddle together as in a casbah, and will be cooled by wind towers which will collect the desert's breezes and flush out hot air. No building will be more than five storeys high; the city is to be oriented north-east to south-west to give the optimum balance of sunlight and shade.

It will feel closer to many cities built in the age of the cart and horse. Most roads will only be 3 metres (10ft) wide and just 70 metres long to develop a micro-climate and keep the air moving; roofs will allow in air and keep the sun out in the summer. No one will be more than 200 metres from public transport, and streets will give on to colonnaded squares and fountains.

"We are definitely not imposing a standard international architecture in Masdar. We are aiming to find a balance of light and heat," said Evenden. "It's only really hot for three months of the year, but at other times it's humid."

It is every architect's dream to build a new city and Foster's team say they started from scratch. The idea has been to reduce the amount of energy needed to build it and to live there, and then to let solar energy take over.

"We will start with a large solar power station which will provide the energy to construct the city. Some 80% of all the roof space will be used to generate solar power, and because we expect technology to improve as we are building it, we hope we will later be able to remove the power plant. We could 'borrow' energy from outside, but we are trying to prove it can all be generated in the confines of the site," said Evenden.

The architects are also planning some hi-tech gadgetry. The 50,000 inhabitants, and everyone who works there, will move around on one of three levels. A light railway will whizz people to and from Masdar to Abu Dhabi's forest of glass and steel towers; a second level is reserved for pedestrians; and a third for "personalised rapid transport pods," described by Evenden as "little vehicles like driverless personal taxis which run on tracks or magnetic discs in the road. It's a tried technology. They are in production in Holland, and used to move containers around in Rotterdam port," he said.

No clues have been given about the city's cost, how it will be socially organised and who will live there, but money is clearly no object. Abu Dhabi, the capital of the Emirates, is vying with neighbour Dubai to be the most dazzling Gulf city and the environment is seen as the new card in the deck.

With at least $1trillion (£500bn) invested abroad and sitting on nearly 100bn barrels of oil, Abu Dhabi is the richest city in the world. Its 420,000 inhabitants are theoretically worth about $17m each, and they are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions per capita than any other population in the world.

This week Abu Dhabi is expected to announce a $500m deal to manufacture thin-film solar panels to make Masdar a centre of the global solar energy manufacturing industry.

"This will be the global capital of the renewable energy revolution. It's the first oil producing nation to have taken such a significant step towards sustainable living," said Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, director of WWF's One Planet Living initiative, which aims to develop sustainable communities. But critics said Masdar is a fig leaf for the rest of the Gulf, heartland of the world's fossil fuel extraction.

"The numbers must be put into perspective. They are spending welcome billions of dollars on renewables but trillions are still going into climate-changing oil economies. The future is the sun and renewables but there is no time to wait for this revolution," said Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth.

How will it work?

Zero carbon 100% of energy supplied by renewables - photovoltaics, concentrated solar power, wind, waste-to-energy and other technologies

Zero waste 99% diversion of waste from landfill, reuse of waste, composting

Sustainable transport Zero emissions from transport in the city

Building As much as possible using recycled or certified materials

Water Per capita consumption to be 50% less than average. All waste water to be reused. Drinking water to be desalinated with solar energy

Equity and fair trade Fair wages for all workers who are employed to build the city

Abu Dhabi begins work on Ferrari theme park

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071103/lf_afp/uaeitalyautoferrarileisure_071103181816

Abu Dhabi begins work on Ferrari theme park
Sat Nov 3, 2007

Abu Dhabi on Saturday began work on building the world's first Ferrari theme park, another step in the wealthy Gulf emirate's ambition to become a global centre for leisure, sport and culture.

A ceremony was held for the laying of the project's first foundation stone on Yas Island off the coast of the capital of the United Arab Emirates, project developer ALDAR said.

The 250,000-square-metre (62-acre) park is set for completion in 2009.

It will include a motor circuit which is to host the emirate's first F1 Grand Prix in the same year, as well as roller coasters, multi-media theatres and automobile displays, ALDAR said in a statement.

An investment group owned by the government of oil-rich Abu Dhabi in July bought a five percent stake in Ferrari for 114 million dollars.

Warner Brothers announced in September it plans to open its own theme park in Abu Dhabi, which is already developing a satellite Louvre museum and staged its first international film festival earlier this year.

Abu Dhabi is one of seven emirates that make up the UAE, which also includes Dubai.

The booming city-state of Dubai has its own grand cultural aspirations. It already hosts an annual international film festival that is attended by high-profile Hollywood stars.

Earlier this year, Cirque du Soleil announced it would stage a permanent show on a huge artificial island off Dubai, and Universal Studios plans to build a theme park in the emirate at a cost of more than two billion dollars.

Dubai strike threatens building boom

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071028/ap_on_re_mi_ea/dubai_labor_unrest_4

Dubai strike threatens building boom
By BARBARA SURK, Associated Press Writer
Sun Oct 28, 2007

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Thousands of South Asian construction workers went on strike Sunday over harsh working conditions in the latest threat to a spectacular building boom already endangered by a falling currency and labor shortage.

While laborers have long complained about working conditions in this Gulf city known for its avant-garde skyscrapers, luxury dwellings and archipelagoes of artificial islands, their recent action comes as contractors are struggling to find workers to complete their ambitious projects.

Dubai is home to the world's tallest building — the Burj Dubai, expected to be completed in 2008 — and the first Armani luxury hotel. Authorities report an annual average growth rate of 12 percent over the past decade, largely driven by construction.

The boom has been possible due to plentiful investment from oil-rich neighbors and armies of non-unionized south Asian workers whose fear of deportation, until recently, kept them from voicing discontent over low wages.

"The cost of living here has increased so much in the past two years that I cannot survive with my salary," said Rajesh Kumar, a 24-year-old worker from the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh who earns $149 a month.

The laborers ignored the threat of deportation and refused to go to work, staging protests at a labor camp in Dubai's Jebel Ali Industrial Zone and on a construction site in Al Qusais residential neighborhood.

They demanded pay increases, improved housing and better transportation services to construction sites. On Saturday, workers threw stones at the riot police and damaged to police cars.

Emirates' Minister of Labor Ali bin Abdullah al-Kaabi described workers' behavior as "uncivilized," saying they were tampering with national security and endangering residents' safety.

They could have registered their complaints peacefully but instead "turned themselves into rioters," he told state news agency WAM. Those who damaged public property will be deported, the labor minister said.

Companies, however, do not want more workers to leave as they struggle to find enough to complete existing projects following an overwhelming response to a government amnesty program to persuade illegal laborers to leave.

In June, the government offered, no questions asked, a free one-way plane tickets to illegal workers hoping to leave. They have since been swamped by 280,000 workers who, fed up with a rising cost of living and low wages, were ready to go home.

A booming economy in India also means that many there no longer see the need to travel to Dubai and the Gulf, said Bernard Raj, managing director of the Dubai-based Keith International, which supplies Indian workers.

"In the past, when we go for recruitment of workers we were able to choose whomever we wanted. Now the turnout of candidates is very low," he said, estimating that at least 40 percent more workers were needed for the city's projects.

With the usual labor markets like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka drying up, labor companies are turning to less traditional places like Tibet and North Korea.

At the root of the problem is the Emirati Dirham's close connection to the U.S. dollar, which has seen it plummet in value, further decreasing laborers' already low salaries.

Kumar and his fellow workers said they asked their employer, Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises, for a pay increase several times, but management was not willing to address the issue.

"We were left without any choice but to stage the protest," Kumar said.

Other workers said similar requests to the other main labor company, Al Mussa Contracting, were unsuccessful.

"I can not save anything," said Sunder Raj, a 32-year-old worker who at the end of the month has nothing to send to his family in India from his salary of $162.

"We are working hard for nothing and there is no way for us to continue like this," said Mohammed Hussein, a Bangladeshi worker.

K.V. Shamsudheen of the Pravasi Bhandu Welfare Trust, a group that helps workers, said it is the unskilled labor force that has been especially hard hit, with many no longer able to send money home.

"The low exchange rate of dirham against Indian Rupee left laborers without any savings," he said. "The only way for the UAE to attract workers is to set competitive salaries and assure better living conditions."

While Mohammed al-Shaiba, a UAE-based labor analyst, criticized the strikes, saying they could only harm an economy gripped by a labor shortage, he acknowledged that the government had to do something.

"Now it's the right time to set a minimum wage," he said, adding that government should require companies to pay workers at least $272 a month.

"If they allow a strike today, tomorrow there will be another one," he added.

Dubai tower becomes world's tallest building

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Dubai_tower_becomes_world_s_tallest_07212007.html

Dubai tower becomes world's tallest building: developers
Saturday July 21, 2007

Burj Dubai, a tower rising in the booming Gulf emirate, has become the tallest building in the world at 512.1 metres (1,680 feet), surpassing Taiwan's Taipei 101 which is 508 metres (1,667 feet) tall, developers Emaar said Saturday.

Burj Dubai, or Dubai Tower, now has 141 storeys, more than any other building in the world, Emaar Properties said in a statement.

The skyscraper, scheduled for completion in 2008, is one of a string of grandiose projects taking shape in Dubai, which is part of the United Arab Emirates.