Over winter break, I had the opportunity to go visit Masdar City in person. Among other things, I found that 1) Masdar is a bizarre and fascinating place, and 2) the world can be oddly serendipitous. On that second bit, first: on my way to Masdar City (which is outside Abu Dhabi), I spent a few days in Dubai. One of the nights, I was staying in a random AirBnb apartment with a shared balcony. Turns out, my neighbors were all students at Masdar Institute (the graduate school located in Masdar City) who just happened to be in Dubai for New Years. We became fast friends, and they were more than happy to show me around Masdar and answer my incessant questions once I got there. They also got me access to some of the research labs that wouldn’t ordinarily be open to the public, and introduced me to Dr. Ken Volk, Outreach Manager at Masdar, Dr. Steven Griffiths, Executive Director of Institute Initiatives, as well as a Student Ambassador. My field research would not have been even half as as fruitful if it weren’t for that chance meeting in Dubai.
The second stroke of luck was that my couchsurfing host in Abu Dhabi turned out to be a masters student in urban planning, doing her research on public transportation systems in Abu Dhabi. Imagine my surprise when I walked into her flat and the stack of books on her desk included works by Lefebrve, Harvey, Mike Davis, Peter Hall and a number of other authors featured in my working bibliography! She ended up being a great resource—letting me pick her brain a bit, as well as suggesting a bunch of books that should be very helpful in my research.
Back to Masdar. In it’s current state, it’s basically a very sparkly university campus and a few corporate headquarters built in the middle of a patch of empty desert. Outside that patch, to one side you can see the airport, and to the other, Khalifa City A (a very normal tract of suburbs). But! Masdar itself was pretty neat. Through my informal interviews and field reconnaissance, I found out some very interesting things about Masdar, which aren’t necessarily featured on the web:
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Due to its location in a special economic zone, Masdar City will be one of the few places in Abu Dhabi where expatriates can buy (rather than rent) property. This is significant, given that something like 80% of the emirate’s population is expats. It also allows companies to bypass national laws mandating at least 51% Emirati ownership.
- Tuition at Masdar Institute is paid in full by the Emirati government. Currently, the majority of students are international (I met students from Jordan, Russia, Mauritus, Indonesia, Taiwan and the Netherlands), though the administration is working hard to recruit “local talent.”
- Much of the research done by students at MI is commissioned/financed by the companies headquartered in Masdar (GE, Siemens, etc). Other than that, students said there is not a ton of interaction between businesses and students. Most businesses do have a focus on sustainability, though it is not a requirement.
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All courses taught at MI must promote either sustainability OR the development of Abu Dhabi’s economy and/or reputation (e.g: they’re trying to send a rocket to mars).
- Dr. Griffiths strongly emphasized Masdar City being a model for greenfield development in South and East Asia. He was upfront about the fact that it is not really an appropriate model for brownfield development or retrofit projects. He also mentioned a “Special Projects Unit” of Masdar, which is working to bring renewable energy to “challenging places,” such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Seychelles and Mauritania.
I also got a breakdown of how Masdar City is related to larger structures in the UAE. Basically, Masdar Inc, has four branches: Masdar City (the physical infrastructure), Masdar Institute (the graduate school based in Masdar City), Masdar Capital (the investment branch), and Masdar Energy. Much of Masdar Energy’s initiatives are actually based outside of Masdar City, e.g, Shams 1, a 100MW concentrated solar power plant located 100km SW of Abu Dhabi. Masdar Energy also has a 20% stake in the London Array, a 1000MW wind farm located off the shore of Britain, and a 40% stake in a big geothermal project in Spain. So….it seems like they’re pretty involved with a lot of the big, global players in the renewable energy game. Interestingly, Masdar Inc (all 4 branches listed here) is a subsidiary of the Mubadala Development Company, a wholly government-owned entity tasked with diversifying Abu Dhabi’s economy. In addition to Masdar (it’s clean energy branch), Mubadala also has branches dealing with aerospace, ICT, infrastructure, oil & gas, mining, real estate, semiconductors and utilities. I’m a bit fuzzy on this, but from what I understand, Mubadala basically reinvests and channels Abu Dhabi’s oil revenues into the different sectors it wants to promote. All of this is getting mighty complicated… it may be time to make a c-map…more posts to come!