Abstract
Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is one of the pioneering cities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region that have recently prepared urban sustainability agendas for their cities. Nonetheless, the recently developed urban neighborhoods in Abu Dhabi mostly rely on Land Use planning and their urban forms are still missing essential sustainability qualities. The Form-Based Code (FBC), a sustainable planning tool that helps realize sustainable urban forms, is suggested in this research as an alternative for the conventional Land Use planning currently applied for new urban neighborhoods in Abu Dhabi. The research adopted a method for ‘localizing’ the global tenets and initiation processes of FBCs that outfit the local urban conditions. The investigation of the locally applied form-related regulations and guidelines revealed that they could be transformed into a localized FBC, but still lack some essential components of the FBC’s principles while the community involvement in initiating them was fairly limited. The research examined the applicability of this localized FBC model through interviewing the concerned stakeholders to identify the challenges that might face the adoption of it. The research concluded with recommending a set of actions for implementing the model in Abu Dhabi and other cities sharing similar urban circumstances.
Highlights
Sustainable urban form is widely perceived as an essential pillar for realizing sustainable urban development
Many of the sustainable urban form principles were achieved in the traditional urbanism in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as a whole, where the influence of harsh climatic conditions was appropriately mitigated through the wise use of natural resources and the appropriate building and urban forms
In the USA and other regions, Form-Based Code (FBC) have been utilized as tools for attaining sustainable urban form in replacement of the lengthily applied conventional zoning in urban design and planning
Summary
Sustainable urban form is widely perceived as an essential pillar for realizing sustainable urban development. In the 1980s, a group of planners and architects in the USA rejected the conventional zoning by which land uses are controlled and buildings are disconnected from each other and from the street Instead, they worked on developing a Form-Based Code (FBC) that could efficiently define and enhance walkable, mixed-use, and sustainable communities through the principles of Smart Growth and the Charter of the New Urbanism. Most of the standards and guidelines that regulate urban development in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi are currently issued based on the concepts enclosed within Abu Dhabi 2030 Vision and Plan Abu Dhabi 2030 [26] Despite all these initiatives, the mostly prevailing urban form of the recently developed neighborhoods in Abu Dhabi city have been limited to low density developments composed of single-family houses surrounded by high solid fences (Figure 1) and supported by some central services and facilities.
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