carbon reduction of the future

Two mega-projects in planning stages. I've mentioned the Eco-City of Dongtan near Shanghai. Another exercise in zero-carbon, zero-waste city-building is the Masdar Initiative in Abu Dhabi. As with any attempt to significantly reduce carbon output, this one also places strong emphasis on transportation considerations:

With a maximum distance of 200m to the nearest transport link and amenities, the compact network of streets encourages walking and is complemented by a personalised rapid transport system. The shaded walkways and narrow streets will create a pedestrian-friendly environment in the context of Abu Dhabi’s extreme climate.

When it comes to low-carbon planning at this scale, some practitioners are starting to think that it won't be good enough to be zero-carbon. If climate science suggests that we need to be carbon neutral globally, then it follows that some areas will need to be carbon negative to make up for areas that are carbon positive.

This is the thinking in Arup's work on Dongtan. It is easy to criticise China for continuing its expansion of coal-fired power plants to feed its hungry economy, but they know that planning for the 600 million new Chinese urban dwellers in the next 45 years requires energy, and lots of it. It's also easy to criticise the building of Dongtan on a greenfields site, but those 600 million have to go somewhere, and they sure as hell aren't going to fit into existing cities. (To put this number into perspective, it's more than the combined existing populations of the US, Canada, Australia, France, Scandinavia and the UK.)

To compensate, Arup is planning the city so that the carbon footprint of Dongtan's residents will be less than what is needed, on average, to maintain the earth's ecosystem in balance. The official target is to achieve a carbon neutral city, but Arup is fine-tuning its planning in the hope that Dongtan will be carbon negative.