From the get-go, what has interested me about new-build eco-cities is that so many of them have sprung up around the world in a relatively short time span. Because of that, my original plan had been to keep a wider focus for my thesis, doing a fairly in-depth narrative analysis of 4-6 of these cities’ planning documents. However, after visiting Masdar City in person, I’ve realized that many of the most interesting elements of the cities are highly context-specific—making me a bit wary that I won’t be able to do the topic justice if I take the wide-net approach. So. I’ve decided to reorient and reframe a bit. The new plan is to take a few pages to introduce the broad phenomenon of greenfield eco-cities, as well as some related concepts (eg, the Smart City, Techno City, Eco Village, etc). This will give me room to establish how ubiquitous these projects are becoming, without having to pin down the specific political/economic/social motivations for each one. I’ll save that for a more focused study of Masdar City, and how it fits into Abu Dhabi’s regional development strategy and political economic goals. One justification I’ll give for focusing on Masdar is that, relative to projects like Konza Techno City or KL Eco City whose ecological commitments are fairly easy to dismiss as greenwashing, Masdar City seems to take sustainability quite seriously, thus setting a higher-bar for my analyses. After giving my critique of Masdar, I’ll circle back around to briefly discuss how other eco-cities may be even more problematic.
Since deciding to zoom into Masdar, I’ve started trying to map out some of the main actors involved in the city’s development, as well as how it fits into the context of Abu Dhabi as a whole. Here’s the c-map I’ve got going so far:
I realize that this concept map is pretty huge and overwhelming, and I imagine that I’ll try to pare it down a bit if I include it in my final thesis. But, the intention was to go as big as possible with this first draft. What I think it shows well is that Masdar City is just a tiny piece of a much larger picture. The upper left hand corner (orange and purple bubbles) shows Masdar’s connections to Abu Dhabi’s overall vision for economic development. The upper right (pale yellow) illustrates how some of the upper-level executives at Masdar are connected to other industries and initiatives, particularly in the tourism, oil and real estate sectors. Most of the bottom half of the c-map is dedicated to sorting out Masdar Clean Energy’s numerous international projects, which, though linked to Masdar City, are geographically removed from it.
The crux of all this is perhaps unsurprising: environmental sustainability does not appear to be an end in and of itself for Abu Dhabi, but rather a strategic means to promote other goals (e.g, economic development, moving away from the volatility of oil and gas, building Abu Dhabi’s reputation as a “world-class” city). But, intentions alone don’t tell the whole story— the outcomes of Masdar’s clean energy initiatives are very real, and quite impressive in some cases (I’m thinking specifically of the London Array here). This brings me to an idea that Dr. Dipesh Chakrabarty brought up in one of my classes this morning: that turning “justice/rightness” arguments for sustainability into “rational self-interest” arguments may be our best bet at addressing climate change. Though philosophically unsettling, this point certainly has pragmatic value, and has been at the heart of my thoughts about green/natural capitalism for a while now. Parsing out this tension between pragmatism and idealism will be some of the hard work I’ll have to do in my thesis, I think.
…..In short: I’ve got lots of thoughts floatin’ around this head—it’s just time to get them sorted out and written down! Twenty-five days till draft #1 is complete!