The master planners of Abu Dhabi’s carbon-neutral community were now working on the launch of a modified version of the city for the government of Jordan that would be more than 10 times larger, the directors of the project said yesterday. “Masdar is fairly big, it’s a neighbourhood,” he said. “This project is big, it’s a full city.” Mr Younes said Amman’s more temperate climate and ingrained habits of sustainability among Jordanians made the project’s environmental goals much easier to achieve than at Masdar. He noted that Jordanians were some of the lowest per-capita consumers of water in the world, averaging 90 litres per day, per person. Estimates for per capita consumption in the UAE, by contrast, range up to 500 litres per day, partly because the economy here is more developed. Masdar itself will not have a hand in the Amman project. On Wednesday, the company’s chief executive indicated he was not yet ready to replicate the Masdar City model. The plans for a green city comes after King Abdullah of Jordan launched a US$7 billion (Dh25.7bn) programme in February to build 120,000 units of housing for middle- and low-income citizens in response to a housing shortage across the country. The financing details for what was sure to be a multibillion-dirham undertaking have yet to be finalised, Mr Younes said. He said the government had signalled interest in offering shares to the public. The project has the support of the highest levels of Jordan’s government, said James Rayner, lead master planner for the architectural firm BroadwayMalyan, which is developing the master plan in partnership with WSP. “It’s being underwritten at a very high level,” he said. “There’s a critical need to meet what the rest of the community wants,” he said. “This project is very much about meeting Jordan’s agenda, it’s not about making big statements.”
The city would be built on the outskirts of the capital Amman, with an initial population of 700,000 to grow to one million in five years, said Serge Younes, a director for the UK-based WSP Group. By contrast, Masdar City, which is being built near Abu Dhabi International Airport, will have an initial population of 50,000 that will eventually grow to 100,000.
Unlike its counterpart in Abu Dhabi, the new city, which has yet to receive a name, will not be zero carbon. It will, however, utilise many of the same elements: waste and water will be recycled and reused, housing will be built and orientated to take advantage of prevailing winds and maximise energy efficiency, efficient district-wide systems will handle heating and cooling, and electricity will come from planned wind and solar thermal plants, or be generated on site.
“It’s very, very nice weather and you don’t need to do as much. People will happily open their windows,” he said.
Average temperatures in Amman, which sits at an elevation of 779 metres, range from 12°C to 32°C throughout the year, compared with 23°C to 39°C in Abu Dhabi.
“In that circumstance, achieving sustainability is easier,” he said. “There is not much you have to do, because they have these habits already.”
“Yes, we have been approached by different governments and different interested parties from the international market to come and develop this model in their own backyards,” Sultan al Jaber said at the Abu Dhabi Cityscape exhibition. “But our position today is we need to produce our own city, capture the knowledge, capture the intellectual property, and then we will expand it.”
Mr Younes did not provide a cost estimate for the new project, which will be officially unveiled in June.
He expects contractors to break ground in December or January, and deliver the first 100,000 homes five years after that.
“The plan is to open it up to any investor,” he said. “They’re talking about an IPO, to allow any class of investors in.”
The city’s developers will clearly not have access to the same levels of funding as Masdar, which received an initial US$15 billion injection of funding from Mubadala, an investment arm of the Abu Dhabi Government. Jordan’s government has forecast a US$1 billion deficit for its 2008 budget.
“There’s a huge amount of investment going into Jordan right now, and this project is really part of that trend.”
The project will fill an acute need for middle-class housing in Jordan, said Mr Rayner, since developers have tended to focus on the luxury market.
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from Jordan
said:Ali my dear open up your mind a little bit. Environment comes in the form of energy effieciency, water conservation and shift from oil to solar and recycling of waste which will all mean a reduction in the energy, water and consumption bills.
I think you are suffering from a case of delusions of environmental grandeur. People who can afford energy saving systems will buy them. They don't need your long-winded analysis that no one reads and that is written for a place like China or France. I have bad news for you. you are trying to shove a cause down our throat for nothing other than self-promotion. Fact remains, Jordan is a small, poor country with little significant energy implications. If you care about energy saving, start writing articles about the best solar panel and the most cost efficient air conditioner. But of course that was never what you were after. You just wanted to sound important. You are as credible discussing the environment as you were discussing politics.
from Jordan
said:Ali, I am an environmentalist and carry a Master's Degree in Environmental Science from the University of Jordan.
Check my blog
www.arabenvironment.net
and
www.arabenvironment.net/arabic
It is always easier for you to be critical than look for the facts.
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Jordan is an impoverished, non-industrial country with one of the smallest populations of any country. Where does this environment thing come in for us?