The social imperative in sustainable urban development

Kasim Randeree,Nadeem Ahmed

doi:10.1108/sasbe-11-2017-0064

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine social sustainability effectiveness of eco-cities through the case of Masdar City’s strategy for urban sustainability in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.Design/methodology/approachUsing a case study approach, the paper is an exploratory, qualitative analysis, which investigates the social, environmental and economic performance of Masdar City, a purported carbon-neutral, zero-waste urban development.FindingsThough Masdar City substantively contributes to innovation in sustainable urban development within environmental and economic contexts and has been effective in capital circulation in green technology markets, the impetus as a commercially driven enterprise is most evident. Successful sustainable urban development requires greater consideration for the social imperative.Practical implicationsEco-city mega-projects, such as Masdar City, have the potential to fuse achievements in innovation, technology and economic enterprise with the social imperative of functional urban habitats.Originality/valueEco-cities are of increasing interest given the growing need for sustainable, energy-efficient living. This paper contributes through a novel case study, exploring how the concept of the eco-city has been developed and understood in the Masdar City context and discusses successes and deficits in its strategic implementation.

Highlights

Though the concept of ecologically healthy cities has been discussed for more than 30 years (Register, 1987), eco-cities have entered into more mainstream discourse in the new millennium, largely due to two global phenomena, those of climate change and urbanisation
As one Masdar representative conceded “Masdar City at the end of the day is a business” (Cugurullo, 2013b). Through viewpoints such as Connelly’s (2007) “continuous triangular field”, Masdar’s trajectory from a development promising a balanced approach to sustainable development, adhering to the United Nation’s triple bottom line (TBL) approach and conforming to the One Planet Living principles, to an “ecological modernisation” approach favouring technological and economic strategies to the detriment of social imperatives, were charted. Balancing such variables should be at the heart of eco-city design, whether framed in terms of planet-people-profit, as in the TBL, or biological-cultural-material, as espoused by Wann
It follows that the key lesson from Masdar City is for eco-cities to follow a balanced approach to their development with an emphasis on the social imperative

Summary

Introduction

Though the concept of ecologically healthy cities has been discussed for more than 30 years (Register, 1987), eco-cities have entered into more mainstream discourse in the new millennium, largely due to two global phenomena, those of climate change and urbanisation. More recent discourse on eco-cities has moved from focussing on analytical perspectives of sustainable cities, to more socially constructed understandings, adding to the subjective nature of what does or does not constitute an eco-city, formed as the outcome of a social process. To demonstrate this diversity, in addition to our case example, Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, examples of eco-city projects include Songdo IBD and Dongtan Eco-City, two cities in South Korea; PlanIT Valley in Portugal, SmartCity, located in Malta (Washburn and Sindhu, 2010); Sonoma Mountain Village and Eco-village Ithaca, two cities in USA; and Hammarby Sjöstad and Malmö bo, two cities in Sweden; (Rapoport and Vernay, 2011)

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