Overambitious Developments Show Mirage of Sustainability

Masdar City’s Architecture is designed to use less energy and water in an effort for sustainability (Flickr)

Governments throughout Southwest Asia and North Africa promise that newly built futuristic cities will be sustainable utopias. However, the reality of sustainable development is that these promises remain largely unfulfilled.

Resource-rich states in the region have sought to enhance their prestige through massive development projects, including modern cities that promise a new way of living for their citizens. According to the Association for Project Management, these states invest heavily in sustainability and renewable energy to diversify their economies and avoid oil dependence. 

The United Arab Emirates proposed the first of these projects, Masdar City. Ninety percent of its buildings are constructed with low carbon cement and designed to consume 40 percent less energy and water, according to project organizers. Additionally, the city initially aimed to be carbon neutral by 2016, but that target has been delayed to 2050. Also, less than 15 percent of the fourty thousand residents projected to live in the city have become permanent residents. 

Planners in Saudi Arabia have developed a larger vision for a sustainable region with the construction of NEOM, an area including several developments. One is The Line, a city designed as two parallel mirrored structures extending 170 kilometers straight into the desert. With a budget liberally padded by the Saudi government, project organizers promise a community fully powered by renewable energy, supported by artificial intelligence, and connected by electric vehicles. However, such technology development requires vast critical resource acquisition, potentially causing environmental catastrophes as these minerals are mined and habitats destroyed all to construct a sustainable region the size of Albania.

According to AGBI, the Saudi government is searching for the raw materials critical for batteries and wind turbines, key inputs of sustainable energy infrastructure. However, with the Saudi economy still largely dependent on oil and water accessed through the energy-intensive process of desalination, it is unlikely that NEOM can fulfill both its sustainability and development goals. In fact, Bloomberg reports that government officials have privately scaled back The Line to extend just under 2.5 kilometers instead of the proposed 170. 

Dozens of projects like these are in various stages of planning and development throughout Southwest Asia. They are often the product of autocratic regimes seeking to present ritzy digital renderings and grand sustainability promises to attract global attention. Yet the implementation of these programs have shown that they struggle to live up to expectations. Overly ambitious projects cannot meet their climate targets and are often scaled back or scrapped. Planners have yet to address problems related to the need for rare minerals, the damage to local flora and fauna, and the damage to the communities displaced by construction. Dreams of sustainable development in the Southwest Asian desert may soon prove to be nothing more than a flashy mirage.