Masdar 1ère sustainable eco-city in the world?

[Christophe]

I have just discovered Masdar, a new city entirely designed taking sustainable development into account: http://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar

It makes you want to emigrate ...

[Ahmed]

Masdar effectively concentrates and exacerbates all the fantasies of "sustainable development" and, as such, will be exemplary of the futility of the concept.
The Gulf States are working hard to become major economic centers of interest and attract big investors, with a post-oil perspective. Part of the oil revenue is therefore allocated to these seduction operations. Local emirs are too used to easy money not to attempt the transition to an oligarchic "ecology".

[sen-no-sen]

The Gulf states are making great efforts to become major centers of economic interest and attract large investors, with a view to post-oil.

In the post-oil perspective, it should mainly invest in the breeding of dromedaries, the rest is only a mirage in the desert of economic "exponentialism".

[Ahmed]

I mentioned their desire, not a future substantial reality ...
The dromedaries, meanwhile, remain a safe bet.

[Christophe]

I don't agree with you too much:

a) Nothing would oblige them to make such projects: with their petro-dollars, they could continue to make artificial islands or wander in a yacht or individual submarine (in fashion) ... well you will tell me: one does not prevent the other!

b) Here (in Europe I speak), there is no project of new sustainable city of such a scale .... however our industrial and social rent still exists (I do not know for how long ... ) but governments are more interested in crushing the people, projects and motivation under the guise of debt crisis and austerity for which they are ONLY responsible!

In short, and it is my only opinion when I see such an econological project: the emirs, not democratically elected, think more about the future of future generations than our politicians, them elected ...

[sen-no-sen]

The will of the emirs is to create added value via sustainable development.
Masdar is to cities what solar impulse is to aircraft, an advertising demonstrator aimed at attracting powerful multinationals.
It is part of the desire to continue growing by dazzling with great technological reinforcement an audience more and more circumspect with regard to such policies.
Masdar thus fits into the logic of smart city as proposed by a Jeremy Rifkin... i.e. apple tablets recharge by solar energy ...
In this philosophy, there is only the wish to continue in the worst by only changing the decor.
For my part, I see no desire to break away from the system.

I think that the resilience of French cities will be much greater than its mirages built for its modern pharaohs.

[Christophe]

I think Masdar is less of a technological mirage than Solar Impulse! On the contrary, I see a break (or at least an evolution) in the direction of a sustainable "carbon-free" city! It is already that not?

But if econologists start to criticize concrete projects of applied econology then I believe that econology is dead!

Growth and the search for "always more" are unfortunately in the hearts of men (for the vast majority of them) ... and this will take generations to change ... so, in the meantime, we might as well do of "green" and "carbon-free" growth no ????

We who think that less is better: are we already mutants?

[Ahmed]

Econology is a dialectical stage which can and should (in the moral sense) evolve towards something else: it corresponded to the idea of ​​the dead end of advanced modernity and to the commendable will to overcome it. In this sense, it was an emanation from the spirit of the times.

Henceforth, the system has seized upon this originally flawed concept, in the form of "sustainable development" and uses it both to simulate its reform (and therefore to reassure the agents of the system and to defuse criticism) and to generate criticism. new sources of profit *. Nothing therefore that reveals a fundamental break, quite the contrary.

Econology must therefore die so that a criticism finally freed from the desire to reconcile opposites and to limit itself to a truncated analysis of reality.

* Term attempts doomed to failure for structural reasons that I have already discussed at length; on the other hand, what is "solved" on the one hand leads to new problems, mainly growing social inequality ...

[moinsdewatt]

In the middle of the desert, the mirage of Masdar
Ten years after its launch, Masdar City launched by Abu Dhabi and designed as an urban ecological model, in the middle of the desert, is still only a semi-ghost town.

In a city growing at the speed of a mushroom, what could be more harmless than the gyratory movement of cranes and the back and forth of dump trucks. However, the huge wasteland visible a stone's throw from Abu Dhabi Airport, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is nothing ordinary.

20 km from the city center, this 6 km2 sandy area should - in the long term - be half built, in order to accommodate 52 inhabitants and 000 jobs. Ultimately? The construction of "Masdar City" ("Masdar" means "source" in Arabic) was to be completed in 40. It will not end until 000 ... in the best of cases. Ten years after its launch, “ecocity” guided by renewable energies, a low carbon transport network and a zero waste strategy, remains a mirage. The financial crisis of 2016 having dampened the Emirates ambitions.

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report and photos: http://www.lemonde.fr/grands-formats/vi ... 97053.html

[Ahmed]

Masdar, the first fantasy of an eco-city (sic!) Scientist built on sand and petrodollars, doomed from its conception to become a ruin. She will remain a witness to the spirit of the times and its errors ...