Masdar City

A City Designed as an Experiment

Launched in 2008 and master-planned by Foster + Partners, Masdar City was conceived as a 6 km² clean-technology cluster near Abu Dhabi airport, designed to run on renewable energy and produce near-zero waste and carbon. It is less a finished city than a permanent testbed for desert sustainability.

Built for the Heat

Streets are narrow and angled to channel prevailing winds; buildings are clustered to shade one another; a perforated facade of Teflon-coated glass screens out the desert sun. The original design banned cars — personal rapid-transit pods ran beneath the raised street level.

Reality Check

Masdar has been built more slowly and at a smaller scale than first promised, and the fully zero-carbon ambition has softened. But as a real, operational district testing desert-adapted design, it remains one of the most important climate experiments in the Middle East.