Dubai Building The Ultimate Sustainable City

Dubai (United Arab Emirates) - Dubai is building perhaps the world’s ultimate sustainable city. Xeritown is the country’s latest project and is a 60-acre town composed of dense urban clusters and built along a north-south axis that will take advantage of the cool breezes that blow in from the ocean.

The designers, X Architects, feel that the climate, environment and Dubai landscape has inspired them to develop this project so that the cool sea breeze is funnelled into the town centre thus blocking out the hot desert winds.

Ahmed al Ali and Farid Esmaeil from X Architects feel that the foundations and principles of Xeritown will provide the Emirates with their own architectural identity. "Cities in the UAE aren’t growing in a way that their design respects this environment, this climate," Mr Ali said. "We want to do urban design in such a way that is as if it grew here naturally. We want to create an identity here."

The towns name comes from xeriscape principles. A Xeriscape is either an urban or garden area that is designed to use a minimal amount of water. The architects say that the concept is to make the desert elements the focal point of the Xeritown design, instead of going with the view that the natural elements should be overcome in urban design. Where there is a need for water that is for anything other than domestic domestic uses, Xertiown will utilize industrial waste water and grey water.

"The strategy was to maintain the existing landscape, to preserve it in its most original form," Mr al Ali said. "This hasn’t been done in Dubai. Most of the buildings here could be anywhere in the world. But we have a unique climate; it makes sense to design with it in mind."

The roads of Xeritown will be limited to no more than two lanes. This will reduce the number of vehicles that travel on them. Public transportation will be used extensively.

The town is a great exercise in the concepts of social sustainability, which is an attempt at making street life more comfortable, and lively with shops, shade, benches and cafes.

"We want different types of families, people of different ages, different incomes and different ethnicities to live here," he said. "We’re thinking about social sustainability, not just environmental."

The plan is that the buildings will be tall enough that they are capable of providing shade for the streets below them. They will provide the city with shade without the use of palm or other trees and this is important because most vegetation in the UAE isn’t native and is extremely energy intensive - and use quite a bit of water.

There will be large flat circles that hang over the walkways on streets that do not have access to shade from buildings and other photovoltaic cells. These circles will aid in the collection of solar energy.